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Smile Design Paradigms

One of the advantages of getting a Smile Makeover, as opposed to buying a number of cosmetic dentistry procedures a la carte, is that you have the ability and the option to have your new smile designed as a whole to convey the effect you want with your smile.

Author: Sara Goldstein

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First impressions are important because people have built-in mechanisms to quickly characterize and establish ideas about people they meet, ideas that may be difficult to alter once in place. To enable us to make these kind of detailed snap decisions, we have a number of subconscious routines in our brain that automatically make judgments about people based on their smile.

One of the most obvious judgments related to smiles that we make automatically is that people with better teeth are better. According to a study conducted by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, not only are people with better smiles considered more attractive and assumed to be wealthier, but they are also judged to be smarter, kinder, and more understanding. Beyond this, though, there are subtle cues that can make a big difference in the way you are judged by people around you. A good cosmetic dentist will try to give you a smile that exploits these subtle cues to allow you to create the exact impression you want.

But how they do it depends on their smile design paradigm, they way they conceptualize smile design. If you are considering a Smile Makeover, it is important to understand your dentist's smile design paradigm to ensure you get the results you want, not just the results they think you should get.

Age-Centered Paradigm

One of the simplest paradigms of subconscious smile cues is the age-centered paradigm. Basically, this starts from the premise that when our teeth emerge they are very white and of different lengths. Especially important are the large, prominent central incisors, which are taken to be a guide to age because they wear with time. Sometimes age-centered cosmetic dentists will divide their smile designs into basic categories like "Sexy" (youthful), "Sophisticated" (older), and "Sporty" (somewhere in between), but it basically breaks down that their Smile Makeovers will use larger incisors and brighter white achieved by tooth whitening to try and convey youth, and more even teeth and dimmer white to convey age.

The Deist Paradigm

"Deist" is the term used to describe people that believe in the "Watchmaker God," who put the universe together as a precise, well-tuned machine, then walked away. I use the term to describe this particular school of cosmetic dentistry because they share one belief with the Deists of the 18th century: the universe is governed by mathematics. To these cosmetic dentists, a Smile Makeover should focus on the natural ratios that govern a pleasing appearance. They will strive to make your teeth fit certain mathematical formulas. In the past, the most popular formulas were the "Golden Ratio" of the Greeks and the Fibonacci sequence, which has been found to have a good agreement to many natural phenomena such as the coiling of a snail's shell and the distance between leaf stalks on some seedlings. These dentists will use a combination of porcelain veneers, gum recontouring, and other techniques of tooth reshaping to achieve the mathematical ratios they desire.

Authoritative Paradigm

The authoritative paradigm assumes that somebody in a position of authority knows what's best when it comes to smile design. Somebody's done the research and had the experience to figure out what looks best. Cosmetic dentists who hold the authoritative paradigm will often use smile catalogs and guide books, often giving them to clients who pick their smile. They prefer smile designs that come as packages, like a set of veneers and/or crowns that come pre-proportioned from the dental lab and do not depend on their individual aesthetic judgment. At all costs will they avoid any technique that depends on their own aesthetic judgment or their own talent in shaping a restoration, such as dental bonding. This paradigm is prevalent among young and inexperienced cosmetic dentists.

These smile design paradigms are three of the most prevalent, but they are neither all-inclusive nor mutually exclusive. If you are considering a Smile Makeover, make sure you talk to your cosmetic dentist about how he or she approaches the problem of smile design, since it can have a big impact on your final results.

About Author

To start a discussion about smile design, read the website of Dr. Charles Janes in Hannibal, Missouri, then schedule a Smile Makeover consultation.

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