What Is The Difference Between A Crown And A Veener?

Hello, I’m Dr. Grey Kantor. I’m here at Kantor Dental Group, Aesthetic Dentistry and Implantology.

Today, I want to talk about the difference between crowns and veneers. Many people have this question because they want to know if on a front tooth they should get a crown or a veneer.

Veneers are kinda like we think of as a nail, a nail veneer. It’s very thin, it only needs to be reduced… The tooth is only reduced 0.7 millimeters. So, 7/10 of a millimeter, very small reduction on the front teeth.

A crown, on the other hand, covers both the front and the back of the teeth. It really strengthens the tooth, giving it a full surrounding coverage as well as changes the shape and the color to make it look nice.

Here’s an example I have here. This is some teeth up front, the front four teeth. You can see they’re a little misshapen and what you can do with veneers is just kinda shave down the front 0.7 millimeters, like we talked about. And then put on veneers right on top, making them perfectly in alignment.

A crown on the other hand, is going to be a little different. A crown is for a broken down tooth, that has decay, fractures on both the front and the back of the tooth and it needs full coverage in order to have the strength to survive the forces that are found in the mouth. So what you do is you reduce it down, and you do have to reduce it down a lot more than you would with a veneer. Not a lot more, maybe twice as much. And then you build it back up and put a crown over the top or the whole thing. So, it’s more of a three dimensional thing, all the way around the tooth, while veneers just on the front of the tooth with minimal reduction.

Again, my name’s Dr. Grey Kantor with Kantor Dental Group, Aesthetic Dentistry and Implantology. Thanks for watching and please subscribe.