Porcelain Veneers: Why Planning Beats Polishing

A veneer case that fails was usually planned badly, not bonded badly. Here is the diagnostic sequence I follow before any tooth is touched.

A 38-year-old patient walked in last March with eight upper veneers placed two years ago in another country. Four were debonded. Two had margin staining a millimetre below the gum line. The shade was right. The shape was wrong. Her bite had never been analysed before the veneers were cut. This is what failed veneer cases look like. The lab was not the problem. The plan was the problem. What I diagnose before I touch a bur For every veneer case I want, on file, before any tooth is prepared: Full periodontal probing — no veneers on a patient with 4 mm bleeding pockets A bite analysis: canine guidance vs group function, interferences in protrusion, signs of bruxism on the cuspids and incisal edges Photographs with retractors and contrast, plus a smile-line video A diagnostic wax-up on mounted models, or a digital mock-up A trial smile bonded directly in the mouth with a bis-acrylic shell, so the patient sees the shape before we cut anything If a patient is not willing to come back twice before the first injection, I will not start the case. Veneers are not a same-day decision. The minimal-prep question, honestly Magne and Belser's work, published in their Bonded Porcelain Restorations textbook, established the case for additive, enamel-bonded veneers. Bonding to enamel is predictable for decades. Bonding to dentine is not. So my preparation target is 0.3 to 0.7 mm of facial reduction, finishing in enamel wherever possible, with chamfer margins kept supragingival or just at the gingival crest. True no-prep veneers exist, but the indication is narrow. Most patients have teeth that already sit slightly forward of where the final smile should be — meaning we need controlled reduction, not addition, to get the contour right. Material choice For most aesthetic cases I work with feldspathic porcelain or lithium disilicate (e.max) at 0.5 to 0.8 mm thickness. e.max gives me strength when bruxism is in the picture; feldspathic gives me optical depth when we are matching one veneer to seven untouched teeth. The cement is light-cure resin with a silane-treated intaglio, etched with hydrofluoric acid 9% for 20 seconds — that part has been standard since the early Magne protocols and there is no shortcut. Cost reality in the UAE Across Sharjah and Dubai, a single porcelain veneer ranges from AED 1,800 to AED 3,500 depending on material, lab and whether a digital workflow is…

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