Try Your Smile First

Why See the Smile First?

It's hard to imagine a new smile from photographs of other people, and even a digital design on a screen only takes you so far. In your mouth, the same teeth look different: your lips move over them, you see them in your own face, you hear yourself talk. A trial smile turns the design into something you can check rather than something you have to hope for.

It matters most with porcelain veneers, because preparing a tooth for porcelain can't be undone. Nothing is prepared until you've seen the design in your mouth and approved it. For bonding and smile makeovers, it does the same job: it settles the questions about length, shape and proportion before any composite is placed, so the treatment appointment is spent making the smile, not deciding it.

How Does a Trial Smile Work?

It starts with your smile design appointment: photographs, a short video and a 3D scan of your teeth, which takes around 45 minutes, followed by the digital design itself. We design the new smile on your own face, so the proportions suit you, not a template. A smile design consultation takes around ninety minutes in all.

That design is turned into a mould, which is filled with tooth-coloured material and placed over your teeth for a short time. Nothing is drilled or bonded, so the mock-up simply lifts off again at the end of the appointment, and your teeth are exactly as they were. While it's in, you can look, talk, take photos and change anything. The whole point is that it's cheap to change at this stage and expensive to change later.

What Can You Check?

• Tooth length and shape. Whether the edges are too long or too short, too square or too rounded, and whether the two sides mirror each other.
• How your lips and smile look. How much tooth shows at rest and when you smile, and whether the new line follows your lower lip.
• How it feels when you talk. Say a few sentences. Longer front teeth can change some sounds at first, and this is the moment to notice.
• How it looks in photos, from every angle. Front, side, close up and from across the room, in natural light if you can.
• Whether it suits you. Brighter and more uniform, or softer and more age-appropriate, is a matter of taste, and the trial smile makes it a real choice rather than a guess.

What Happens Next?

If you'd like changes, we adjust the design. Longer, shorter, squarer, softer, more or less of a tooth showing: all of it is a change to a file, not to your teeth. Where the changes are significant, a second trial smile lets you check again.

Once you're happy, the approved design becomes the blueprint for everything that follows. For porcelain veneers, it guides how much each tooth is prepared, which is how preparation is kept to a minimum, and the laboratory makes the veneers to it. For composite bonding, your dentist shapes each tooth to the design by hand. The same design runs through every later step, so what you approved is what you get, allowing for the difference between a temporary material and the finished porcelain or composite.

Which Treatments Use a Trial Smile?

Porcelain veneers always do: treatment takes three visits, including the trial smile, before any enamel is prepared. Larger composite bonding and composite veneer cases use one too, and for a full smile makeover combining Invisalign, whitening, bonding, veneers or implants, the trial smile shows the end point the whole plan is working towards, before it starts.

It isn't needed for everything. Whitening changes colour only, so there's nothing to mock up. A single chipped edge is usually shaped directly in composite at the bonding appointment. For Invisalign, a 3D simulation of how your teeth are expected to move does a similar job on screen. Your dentist tells you at your consultation whether a trial smile is part of your plan. Our smile makeover page shows how the design, trial smile and treatment order fit together.

Is It Included?

Yes. At St Vincent Smile, your smile design and trial smile are included in your treatment fee. On our fee list, smile design is from £250 and a trial smile from £250, and both are included in the fee for your treatment. The consultation itself is free, with a £40 deposit refunded within 7 days of attending.

You leave the smile design consultation with a written plan: the sequence of treatment, which teeth change, and a fixed fee. The trial smile is available before you commit to any of it. Porcelain veneers are from £695 per tooth and composite bonding from £395 per tooth, and our veneers cost guide sets out typical totals.

What a Trial Smile Can't Tell You

It's an honest preview of shape, length and proportion, but it has limits. It's made in a temporary material, so the finished porcelain will be more translucent and lifelike, and the final shade is chosen separately, from your natural teeth after any whitening, your skin tone and the teeth around the veneers. Because the mock-up sits on top of your teeth without any preparation, it can feel slightly fuller than the finished veneers will.

It also can't show how teeth will move with Invisalign, or how your gums will look after any gum contouring, which is why those steps come first in a plan and the final shape is confirmed once they're done. Treat it as the design check it is: the most reliable way yet to know what you're going to get before anything is changed.

Questions

This guide is general information, not a diagnosis. A dentist needs to examine you to say what is right for your teeth.