White Colored Fillings
White colored fillings (composite fillings) is a quick and relatively inexpensive way to repair your teeth. While often called “bonding” by mistake, this material is placed into or on your teeth and hardened (cured) with a light. The ‘bonding” process uses a resin adhesive to bond the composite to the enamel of your teeth.
This material comes in many different shades and can be custom tinted to difficult shades if the dentist has a tinting kit. It can be placed inside a tooth to repair decay and it can be placed on top of the tooth (veneered) to change shades and to close gaps between teeth.
This material is approved for both front and back teeth and helps eliminate the leakage often seen around the older “silver” type fillings.
Here's how white colored fillings are done:
Step 1 Your dentist puts a mild chemical on your tooth to make it a little rough. This step helps the composite filling stick better to the enamel of your tooth.
Step 2 A coating of resin adhesive is painted onto or inside your tooth and hardened with a light.
Step 3 Your dentist puts the composite filling on your tooth in layers.
Step 4 A very bright light is used to harden (or cure) each layer of composite as it is put on your tooth.
Step 5 After the last layer of composite is hardened (or cured), your dentist shapes and polishes the filling so the finished tooth looks natural and smooth.
Advantages
- Bonding fillings to teeth allows us to conserve more tooth structure and can help strengthen the tooth.
- Color is close to or identical to the natural tooth.
- It costs a lot less than crowns and can be a low cost alternative to crowns.
- It can be used on children and adults.
Disadvantages
- Bonding treatment doesn't last as long as crowns. It can last from five to 10 years, compared to 10 to 20 years for crowns depending on the size of the filling.
- Some composite resins can be stained by tobacco, coffee, tea, blueberries, grape juice, cherries and red wine.
- The color will not change if you “whiten” your teeth with whitening gels.
