Building a Natural Smile Through Cosmetic Dentistry

Everyone wants to have a beautiful smile. After all, your smile is often the first thing people notice about you. Conversely, not smiling because you are self-conscious about tooth damage or dental issues can hamper your mood and confidence. 

We aren’t all born with perfect teeth, but we can find our ideal smile in today’s world of dental advancement. Today, we’ll explore what we aim for as we work with you to revitalize your natural smile.

What Do We Call a Perfect Smile?

So, what makes a perfect smile? That’s a more complex answer than you might think. Why? Because everyone has their own opinion on the matter, and everyone is different. What would look amazing and perfectly natural on you might look thoroughly out of place and unnatural on someone else. 

We are all one-of-a-kind, and so are our teeth. That’s why a dentist specializing in cosmetic dentistry requires an extremely high level of experience, skill, and artistry. Creating a smile that is pain-free, functional, and perfectly suited to your face shape and bone structure is a highly specialized skill. We have been perfecting one since 2015, when Dr. Meza became the first Costa Rican dentist accredited by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (AACD).

A school of thought believes the ‘perfect’ smile must be sparkling white, and if you are a Hollywood star or a politician, that artificially white smile could be your ideal. But that’s just one opinion, and for many people, the ideal smile they’re searching for can be very different! 

And that’s okay! Here, we believe that your smile should reflect who you are; it should be uniquely you, you should feel comfortable and happy with it, and it should be created in a way that best compliments your natural appearance. 

So, let’s talk about how our staff uses artistry, experience, and technical know-how to do just that.

How Your Unique Facial Structure Informs Our Process

As mentioned earlier, each person looks different, partly because of your underlying bone structure. That bone structure determines the height of your cheekbones, the distance between the base of your nose and the top of your lip, the height of your gums, and the line of your jaw. 

All of this must be measured, not only to provide a perfect fit but because it will help us determine the necessary proportions so that elements of your new smile fit seamlessly into your existing smile.

 In the case of all-on-x procedures, creating a completely new smile also allows us to tweak your prosthesis so that it has the best proportional ratio (which is accomplished using a mathematical equation). Here is a simple example: if you have a relatively long face shape or your gums are long, short teeth would look out of place. To look more pleasing, we would lengthen the teeth and provide a more pleasing ratio. 

Conversely, if you have a short upper lip that allows quite a lot of gum to show, we would adjust the length of the gum in the prosthesis so that your smile shows more teeth and less gum. We believe a naturally beautiful smile is more about balance and proportion than perfectly straight white teeth of some “golden standard” size.

How the Muscles and Tendons in Your Face Affect Your Smile

As you can already see, knowing how to create the perfect smile for you is a complex process that must consider many different things. Where your underlying bone structure governs the shape of your face, the muscles and tendons of your face determine the way that you smile. 

How they move, and the amount of tension your muscles and tendons create will decide quite a lot: if you have dimples, how much your cheeks lift, how wide your mouth draws back, and many other minute details that shape your smile. 

Knowing this, our team measures in exact detail the way that your mouth moves when you smile, as well as the way that your smile sits when at rest. They then use those measurements as a guideline so that when you light up the room with your dazzling new smile, it naturally fits you and your features.

Another consideration for patients above 40 is that our bodies tend to lose bone density as we age, which can affect the size of our jawbone. 

As your jawbone shrinks, it creates the look of loose, sagging skin and enhances any wrinkles around your mouth. This is especially noticeable in people who have missing teeth, but it’s another area where careful work can make a difference. 

For example, during the All-on-X procedure, a prosthesis is made for each arch of your teeth. When done correctly, this prosthesis creates a look of fullness, mimicking a more youthful bone structure and reducing the look of loose skin and wrinkles. 

Aging is a natural process, and by no means lessens your beauty, but if you’re not prepared for the challenges of aging, it can undoubtedly affect your level of self-confidence. Returning facial structure to a more youthful shape can go a long way! 

What Sets Meza Dental Apart

Knowledge, experience, and technical expertise combine with artistic abilities in every design process, from understanding your unique issues to assessing the proper solution and creating physical solutions: veneers, crowns, partial bridges, and prostheses. 

Without this combination of knowledge and artistry, even the most perfectly measured artificial teeth can be unnatural (a bad fit for you). 

So, let’s talk briefly about the processes behind designing your new smile. If there is one thing that Dr. Meza and our team understand, it is that “function comes first.” The goal when creating a beautiful, natural-looking smile is to mimic nature at its best. In other words, our teeth look their best when lined up correctly to provide a sound bite. 

There are many ways in which the team can adjust your existing teeth or design artificial teeth to correct issues with bites, and when that happens, it automatically improves the look of your smile. But that’s not the only thing that makes a smile look better. 

Our teeth will naturally have specific characteristics based on factors like:

• Gender (female teeth tend to be more oval, male teeth more square)
• Age (as you age, your soft tissue tends to droop, so your smile shows less tooth- this can be adjusted)
• Ethnicity (different races have evolved unique dental traits)
• Personal and Cultural Preferences (beauty ideals change from place to place)

When designing a beautiful smile, it is essential to consider all of these considerations. After all, one of the most important aspects of a dazzling smile is that it shines with confidence, and confidence comes from knowing you’re at your best!

So, how do we combine all of these factors — from facial and muscle structure to personal preferences — to create a smile that is uniquely you?

The design process is divided into two areas: macroesthetics and microesthetics.

Macro Esthetics

Macro esthetics are the considerations dealing with what other people can see. The visible areas show when your lips pull back into a smile. However, ensuring that your macro esthetics are natural includes many measurements and factors.

Much of the design revolves around getting as close to specific ideal proportions as possible. For instance:

Midline: If your teeth’ center line doesn’t align correctly, it stands out like a sore thumb. Picture a line that starts where your forehead meets the bridge of your nose and runs down to the dip in your top lip. The line between your front teeth should meet that line.

Macro esthetics also deals with things like achieving the perfect “reveal”. In other words, make sure that you show the ideal amount of tooth surface. Too much reveal can show a lot of gum, and too little can make you look a little older.

Another factor is the incisal display, which is the cutting edge of your teeth. Ideally, it will be a nice straight curve with indents where each tooth touches. Believe it or not, there is a mathematical ratio that is used to achieve the ideal incisal display.

Micro Esthetics

As the name suggests, microesthetics deal with minute details that the rest of us never even notice, at least consciously. However, these details create the illusion of reality when it comes to artificial teeth. To look completely realistic and natural, our excellent lab techs painstakingly create details like these:

• In natural teeth, as you go from the central to the outer teeth, the shade of your enamel darkens slightly. With artificial teeth, this must be recreated using very subtle shading.
• Your center teeth will always be more dominant and have the brightest color. This is achieved by carefully crafting their shape/size and shade.
• Natural teeth have irregular shapes and surfaces, which must be recreated with shaping tools and shading.
• Each tooth’s cutting edge and the outside edge are more translucent than the center (because the center is filled with pulp). This, too, is recreated using subtle shading.

A Work of Artistry and Science!

So many tiny details go into creating your most beautiful, natural-looking smile, but that’s the joy of this process! It’s fascinating to learn how it all comes together in the lab, and it makes you wonder at the fact that Dr. Meza and his team do the fantastic work that they do every day.

The result is a smile that gives you confidence, looks natural and beautiful, and is so comfortable you might forget they weren’t your natural teeth in the first place! 

We will talk with the team of fantastic lab techs in a future post, so be sure to check back soon.

In the meantime, if you want to take the first step to perfect your smile, all you need to do is click this link. We provide a free estimate for your care, and our friendly English-speaking staff is happy to answer your questions.
You can also email contact@mezadentalcare.com or call us toll-free from Canada and the US at 1-(877)-337-6392.