Everyone cares for their oral health and wants to achieve the most beautiful smile. And there are two dental services for better and improved dental health: restorative and cosmetic. Restorative dentistry focuses on diagnosing, treating, and preventing dental diseases and disorders. Cosmetic dentistry is concerned with the appearance of teeth and smile enhancement. The two disciplines are similar in that they aim to improve oral health and treat damaged teeth, but they differ in their focus and approach.
Keep reading to learn more about the difference between restorative and cosmetic dentistry and which one would best suit your dental issues!
What is Restorative Dentistry
Restorative dentistry’s objective is to restore oral function and appearance while also enhancing the patient’s overall dental health. While the phrase may be confusing, the primary aim of this dental treatment is to keep the mouth healthy, functional, and aesthetically beautiful. Furthermore, experienced dentists that specialize in restorative surgery work to rebuild teeth that have been compromised due to medical problems or accidents. Improve and maintain oral function in order to avoid pain or discomfort, which is its overall goal.
Restorative dentistry procedures include the following:
- Inlays, Onlays
- Dental Bridges
- Fillings
- Dentures
- Porcelain Crowns
- Dental Veneers
- Root Canal Therapy
Moreover, there is no recognized specialty for restorative dentistry in the American Dental Association; practiced dentists can perform many operations without further training or certification. But if you’d still like to have an experienced professional for your restorative dental treatment, opt for those with a prosthodontic specialty. Nonetheless, there are two types of tooth restoration:
- Direct: Direct tooth restoration is inserting a filling into a tooth cavity.
- Indirect: This treatment refers to the partial or complete tooth restoration through inlays, onlays, or dental crowns.
What is Cosmetic Dentistry
Cosmetic dentistry services only focus on the aesthetic appeal of your teeth–in other words, smile makeovers. It won’t do anything about improving or restoring your oral health. With cosmetic dentistry treatments, you’d be one step away from your ideal smile. Moreover, Cosmetic dentistry uses a wide variety of dental procedures to hide flaws and imperfections in your smile.
Cosmetic procedures could be the following:
- Teeth whitening
- Dental bonding
- Veneers
Because of this, you’ll have an attractive smile that makes you feel good about yourself. Cosmetic care’s main goal is to boost your self-esteem and get rid of feelings of embarrassment and insecurity about your smile’s looks–making you feel more confident and comfortable with how the way your smile looks!
Restorative and Cosmetic Dentistry: Their differences
Everyone gets confused with cosmetic and restorative even after a brief definition of them, so here’s a detailed comparison between the two dental care treatments!
Purpose
Dental restorative procedures are designed to restore teeth damaged, decayed, or lost to achieve a healthy smile. On the other hand, cosmetic treatments focus on appearance.
However, a dental crown can be both used for restorative and cosmetic dentistry. If the procedure is restorative, dentists use it to protect the tooth from further decay, while if it’s a cosmetic procedure, it will alter and enhance the tooth’s shape, color, or size in some way.
Necessity
In order to treat a damaged, decaying, or missing tooth, restorative dental procedures are necessary. In contrast, cosmetic dental procedures are used to change the color, shape, size, alignment, and spacing of teeth in order to enhance their appearance. On the other hand, cosmetic dental procedures do not require the same urgency as restorative procedures.
Dental Materials
Long-lasting and cost-effective materials are commonly used to make dental restorations for restorative purposes. Cosmetic dental materials, on the other hand, are long-lasting and attractive.
Restorative and Cosmetic Dentistry: Which one do you need?
Cosmetic dentistry and restorative dentistry both use crowns and implants to restore teeth at times. Still, the main difference between the two is that restorative dentistry focuses more on improving teeth’s functionality, and cosmetic dentistry focuses more on aesthetics and appearance. The goal of a restorative dentist is to help an individual get a set of teeth that work properly. A cosmetic dentist, on the other hand, wants to help the person achieve a smile that fits their ideal.
If your teeth are damaged or missing, restorative dentistry can also fix them. This includes things like broken or missing teeth. Restorative dentists use procedures like dentures, crowns, bridges, onlays, inlays, and dental implants to help you get your teeth back to how they should be. But that’s where restorative dentistry comes to an end, as you can see.
To achieve a gorgeous smile, always get help from a cosmetic dentist. They go into both the science and the art of it. Cosmetic dentistry only cares about how your teeth look, not how they work. If you think your smile looks terrible, you can always go to a cosmetic dentist for help. Cosmetic dentistry can help you get rid of these problems so that you have more confidence in how you smile!
Call Smile Fort Wayne To Know More About Cosmetic and Restorative Dentistry
To learn more about cosmetic and restorative dentistry procedures, and know which treatment is perfect for your dental problems, get in touch with the most trusted dentist in Fort Wayne. When it comes to dentists in Fort Wayne, no one does it better than the Smile Fort Wayne team of dentists. Smile Fort Wayne is your ticket to achieving beautiful and healthy teeth!
