Your Timeline to a Brighter Smile: How Long Common Cosmetic Procedures Take

Do you have a gap between your front teeth that you’ve always wanted to fix before your next high school reunion? Do you want whiter teeth for those pictures at your daughter’s wedding?

Enhancing your smile is easy with Beckham Square Family Dental. But achieving your goal requires knowing how long a cosmetic treatment will take and how many dental visits it requires. If you’re preparing for a special occasion, having an accurate timeline will help you plan accordingly so that you’ll have your new smile in plenty of time.

We provide a typical timeframe for each of our most popular cosmetic dental procedures.

Professional Teeth Whitening

Teeth whitening is typically the least complex and invasive of the cosmetic options we offer at Beckham Square Family Dental. It’s a safe, painless, and straightforward way to remove stains and achieve a brighter, more attractive smile. Compared with over-the-counter whitening kits, a professional, take-home whitening kit from your dentist is safe, is significantly more effective at lightening your teeth, and lasts longer.

At Beckham Square Family Dental, we offer take-home whitening kits that are convenient to use. They also provide better results than over-the-counter whitening strips and one-size-fits-all trays. Instead, we start with an initial consultation to ensure your teeth are in good condition for whitening. We then provide you with a professional-grade tray and customized whitening gel. Your dentist will give you instructions on how many days to wear the tray and for how many minutes each day.

Our patients start to see results after just a few days, but the full effect takes about two weeks. Depending on the quality of your at-home dental hygiene, you can expect the results to last six months to three years. To maintain your white smile, we recommend a touch-up treatment every 12 months, or sooner if you smoke or consume many stain-causing foods.

If you’re whitening your teeth in anticipation of a special event, it’s best not to wait until a day or two beforehand. Start the process a couple of weeks in advance so you can adjust your treatments to achieve the look you want. You’ll also want to allow enough time for the temporary sensitivity from whitening to diminish.

Tooth Veneers

Unlike teeth whitening, tooth veneers require some alteration to the teeth you want to treat. However, the process itself remains painless, and veneers from our Cincinnati dental office are less drastic than restorative options like crowns. A porcelain veneer is a thin, customized layers that cover the front part of the tooth. The patients we see for veneers like them because they’re effective at covering stains, concealing cracks and other flaws, evening out the shape of their teeth, and correcting noticeable gaps.

Most porcelain veneers require two dental visits spaced 2-4 weeks apart. At your first appointment, your dentist will take impressions of the teeth you want to treat. They’ll then send those impressions to a lab, where the veneers will be created. At your second appointment, the dentist will permanently bond the veneers to your teeth.

Our Cincinnati patients are amazed by how immediate the effect is. Also, veneers last 5-15 years with proper care, ensuring a long-term enhancement to your smile.

Dental Bonding

At Beckham Square Family Dental, we offer dental bonding using composite material, shaped to match your natural teeth. Bonding is a popular choice among our Cincinnati patients because it conceals imperfections such as minor cracks or chips. It can also close wide gaps and reshape teeth to make them wider, longer, or more even.

This painless, non-invasive cosmetic treatment requires just one session lasting 30-60 minutes. Your dentist first selects a shade of composite resin that matches the tooth you want to correct. The resin starts as a putty-like material that the dentist can mold and fit to the tooth’s shape. Before attaching the bonding, the dentist prepares the tooth by slightly etching it to roughen the surface, allowing the bonding to adhere to the tooth.

After placing the bonding material, the dentist applies a liquid to help it adhere properly. An ultraviolet laser or light is then used to harden the resin, after which some trimming may be needed to achieve the right shape and texture. Finally, the bonding material is polished to match the rest of the surface.

One aspect of bonding that our patients most appreciate is that they won’t need any recovery time. Plus, the results typically last five to eight years.

To summarize, here’s a breakdown of these cosmetic procedures and their varied timeframes:

Take the First Steps to Your Smile Transformation

At Beckham Square Family Dental, we enjoy seeing our patients achieve brighter smiles and restored confidence. If you’re considering a cosmetic dental treatment, contact us today to schedule an appointment or request more information. We want to ensure you understand what’s involved in your procedure and how long it will take to achieve the results you want. Get in touch with our experienced and compassionate team today and enjoy a beautiful, long-lasting smile.