When selecting the right color for your denture, you must be precise and practical. You need to understand that there are a few factors that you should take into consideration instead of solely depending on the shade you want.
Indeed, the best shade for your denture will be a compromise between what you want it to be and what is right for you.
4 Essential Factors to Consider Before Selecting Your Denture Color
1. Facial Features: Choose a shade that looks natural with your face.
Your mouth has to look perfect with your eyes, nose, cheeks, ears, hair, and chin. You do not want to emphasize one, for example, your mouth, leaving the rest in the dark. Because if you do, you will not look natural.
Dentures may look natural, but they are fake. You know that they are. Therefore, there is no meaning in making them less natural by emphasizing their color or structure.
Accept their color the way you have accepted the color of your eyes, the sharpness of your chin or the absence of that sharpness, and the structure of your entire face.
2. Skin Tone: Do not wear a denture that makes you uncomfortable
Consider the color of your skin and which shade goes well with it. You may not know such a technical matter well, but your dentist can help you.
Your skin may have a fair, light, medium, brown, or dark tone. Respect your skin tone while choosing a color for your denture because the tone of your facial skin correlates with the color of your natural teeth.
Look at your face in natural, unobstructed daylight. Light has a special contribution to determining one’s skin tone.
If you’re a female and wear makeup, look at yourself without makeup.
But it may still be difficult for you to determine your skin tone. Color has to maintain specific parameters to make itself visible. These parameters are hue, value, chroma, and translucency.
According to research, people with dark facial skin have teeth of B2 shade, and those with fair facial skin have teeth of B1 shade.
But who will determine whether your facial tone is fair, medium, or dark? Determining your facial skin tone depends on where you are from and what cultural knowledge you have been brought up with. You may consider yourself fair-skinned, but you may technically be of medium tone.
You have to decide what tone you have with the assistance of your dentist and the color chart they may offer you. After all, you should not wear a denture that makes you uncomfortable. Dentures can be expensive and are expected to last long. Permanent dentures may not be removable. Therefore, decide on a tone that makes you happy.
3. Your gender identity may influence the color of your precious dentures
Women, compared to men, have lighter teeth shades. Such a conclusion is based on research. But gender can be fluid, and in various ethnic backgrounds, such a conclusion is not true unless you compare yourself only to the opposite gender of your own ethnicity.
Then, can you be sunburned? Can you have mild, almost negligible skin inflammation?
And do you wear sunglasses or jewelry?
What color of clothes do you wear? Do your clothes reflect light?
How much of your teeth may be visible when you open your mouth to have a conversation or smile?
Or how much light do your lips allow to enter your mouth when you speak?
These are valuable questions. Answering some of these questions may be more important than saying whether you are male or female and what color of dentures you should select based on your gender identity.
4. Age: If you’re old, you may not choose the whitest color for your dentures
Your facial skin tone may change as you grow old. That is also true for your natural teeth.
It is normal to see young people with bright teeth, while middle-aged or older people may have teeth less bright than those of young people.
Lifestyle and oral habits may accelerate that change or postpone it.
Besides, your facial skin may lose its gloss or freshness with age.
This indicates that you may not choose a specific shade for your denture unless you are young or old.
That is why it is wise to accommodate your age while selecting a shade for your dentures.
If age is what you are hesitant about, talk to your dentist. They can help you choose the best bright tone for your denture instead of what is unusually bright and not a good tone.
What shade guides are used to determine denture colors?
Your dentist may use one of the following shade guides as a tool to help you select the best color for your dentures:
- Vita Classical: Offers A1-A4, B1-B4, C1-C4, and D1-D4. A1 is reddish, and D4 is gray.
- Vita Toothguide 3D-Master Shade Guide: You can determine the shade of your teeth in 3 easy steps. The guide offers 26 natural shades and 3 additional shades for teeth whitening.
- Chromascop: It is the standard shade guide for Ivoclar Vivadent products.
Why you should not fully trust the shade guides while selecting the color of your dentures
Shade guides have their limitations. They are not unique. Each company may have its own color shade chart.
Besides, the material used in dentures for creating shade guides (for example, porcelain) may be qualitatively different from that of your artificial teeth.
Shade guides also reflect light making the shades more vibrant than they may be in real life.
At the same time, the process of making the shade for a shade guide does not control the manufacturing process of your dentures. There is always a chance that the final product will not match the shade you wanted.
Moreover, the denture manufacturing laboratory has to have equipment that matches the color measuring equipment. Otherwise, you may measure the color correctly, but getting that color on the dentures may be difficult.
That is why it is wise to see a sample of the final dentures to understand what shade those dentures have come from.
6 Academic Dental Studies on Choosing the Best Denture Color for Your Mouth
1. The Bulletin of Tokyo Dental College
Most frequent color of natural tooth: C-type. Most requested color of dentures: B-type.
2. The Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry
Older people are more likely to have darker teeth.
3. Journal of Dentistry Research
The tooth shade a clinician selects for you is based on their experience and technical skill and may not be objective.
4. Journal of the Nepal Medical Association
Your denture color should blend with your face and harmonize with your complexion.
5. European Oral Research
Skin tone and eye color significantly correlate with tooth color.
6. Applied Sciences
“Researchers have viewed that almost one million color shades can be distinguished by the human brain, whereas around 10 million different shades can be sensed through the latest designed electronic devices.”
Denture Color Chart: Final Words
Do not hide your hesitation from your dentist.
The best is to be honest with yourself and with your dentist. Whatever tone or shade you choose for your dentures is what tone or shade is best for you.
Intrinsic coloration is related to your tooth enamel’s ability to reflect light.
It is the coloration you get by consuming red wine, fruit juice, coffee, etc.
Hue is the variation in color that differentiates it from another color.
It is possible. But dentists nowadays use technology, so the difference may be minor, if at all. If the source of light remains the same, dentists are very likely to recommend the same denture shade. However, seeing two different dentists in two different settings may influence the shades of color they choose.
Spectrophotometers are electronic gadgets that measure the intensity of light beams at different wavelengths. They contain radiators and have the ability to change light into a signal for measurement. They are used in dentistry to determine the shade of the tooth.
According to research, dentures fabricated with Vita Toothguide 3D-Master shade guide provide a closer color match to the natural teeth than those of the Vitapan Classical guide. The research was published in the Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry in 2012.
Sources:
- Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research
- Journal of the Nepal Medical Association
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