We derive a great deal of confidence from our smiles, so it comes as no surprise that when something goes awry with our pearly whites, we feel a little insecure. The good news is that the year is 2017, and dental methods have advanced a great deal since the days of cow tooth dentures and tools that look like they belong in a 16th century torture chamber. We have a number of sophisticated and pain-free methods to craft beautiful smiles. Crowns are a great example.

Dental crowns are small, tooth shaped covers placed over individual teeth to strengthen and improve the appearance of teeth. They are cemented to the tooth’s surface end where the the tooth meets the gum line.

There are many reasons you could need a dental crown, but here are some of the most common ones:

• To help a weak tooth from decaying or breaking
• To fix a broken tooth
• To cover and support a tooth that has so much filling inside that there is very little tooth left
• To improve the appearance of tooth color and alignment
• To hold a dental bridge in place

Typically, crowns are made from one of the following materials:

• Stainless steel
• Metals
• Porcelain and metal
• Resin
• Ceramic

While crowns can make a vast improvement in the strength and appearance of your teeth, some of their varieties can cause teeth to appear to have a black line where the tooth meets the gum. This line is typically found in crowns based in metal and topped with porcelain for a natural look. The line is the metal of the crown beginning to show, and that’s never good. (The other possibility is that the tooth is naturally darker because of a procedure that permanently limited blood flow to the tooth – a like a root canal).

Porcelain-fused-to-metal crowns are often used for their ability to withstand the biting force of molars, but improvements in dental materials are making all porcelain crowns an equally strong but better looking alternative. If you feel that your dark gumlines are detracting from your ability to smile with confidence, schedule a time to come talk with our Chauvin team so we can get you back to grinning.