Dental bonding is compared with porcelain veneers, as they both accomplish the same thing — masking cosmetic imperfections and giving you a beautiful smile.
While their end goal is the same, dental bonding and the application of porcelain veneers do it in different ways. Bonding uses a resin material that is sculpted on the teeth, cured, and then polished. Veneers are thin porcelain shells that are cemented onto the fronts of the teeth. To make room for the veneers, approximately 0.3 mm to 0.5 mm of the tooth enamel must be shaved off.
In use, porcelain veneers do not stain and are quite durable. The resin used in bonding is more resistant to staining than natural tooth enamel, but it can stain over time. Veneers last longer, but are more expensive than bonding. Also, bonding is usually done in a single appointment, while veneers require two appointments.
Once you have veneers on your teeth, you will always need to have either veneers or crowns. This is because a portion of the enamel is removed to make room for the veneer, and this is irreversible. Similarly, your teeth are etched to prepare them for bonding. And no one who has bonding is going to try and have it stripped off and go back to how his or her teeth were before. So, you’ll keep having teeth re-bonded as the years go by.
