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What’s the best material to use in the anterior?

What’s the best material to use in the anterior? There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t get asked this question.

My answer is always the same: It depends. In reality, there is no "best material." There are different materials for different situations.

Ideally, we want to use the most translucent material possible when restoring teeth for the optimal esthetics. A translucent material gives us the most depth and esthetics in a restoration. The more opaque the material, the less depth and lack of esthetics it contains.

Increased translucency can be good and bad. It’s good for the reason we already discussed – enhanced esthetics. It’s bad because if the underlying tooth structure is dark, then that dark tooth structure will shine through, leading to a decrease in the esthetics by showing a dark root. This is ok if the patient has a low lip line, but not so good if the patient has a high smile.

So what, then, is the "best" material to use in the anterior? I use the list below as a guideline for when you have normal and dark stumps:

NORMAL SUBSTRUCTURE:

1a           Vita TriLuxe

1b           Empress Multi

1c            e.max HT

2              Vita Real Life (Single tooth only)

3              Vita TriLuxe Forte (older patients with dark cervicals)

4              e.max LT

DARK SUBSTRUCTURE:

1              e.max LT

2              Vita TriLuxe Forte

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