"I want my teeth fixed" can mean three very different treatments. Bonding, veneers and crowns solve different problems, remove different amounts of tooth, last for different lengths of time and cost very different sums. This is how we sort them at İ-Klinik, and why we will sometimes talk you out of the option you came in asking for.
The rule we start from
Remove as little healthy tooth as the problem allows. Enamel does not grow back. A restoration can always be replaced; the tooth underneath it cannot. Every option below is placed on that scale, from the most conservative to the most complete.
Bonding: the one-visit repair
Composite bonding is tooth-coloured resin sculpted directly onto the tooth and hardened with light. It needs little or no drilling, is finished in a single appointment and is reversible in a way the other two options are not. It is the right answer for a chipped corner, a small gap, a slightly short tooth or a worn edge.
Its limits are honest ones. Composite is softer than porcelain, so it picks up stain over time and can chip on heavy biters. Expect to refresh or repolish it every few years. And because it is shaped by hand in the mouth, the result depends entirely on the dentist's hand and eye.
Veneers: a new surface, an intact tooth
A laminate veneer is a thin shell of porcelain, bonded to the front of the tooth. At İ-Klinik they are made from e.max lithium disilicate, layered by hand in our own laboratory. Preparation is minimal and enamel-preserving: in many cases we remove less than half a millimetre, and in some cases nothing at all.
Veneers are the treatment for colour that whitening cannot fix, for teeth that are slightly crowded, rotated, small or uneven, and for a smile that needs a consistent shape across the front six to ten teeth. They are not a way to straighten a genuinely crooked bite, and they are not for teeth that have already lost most of their structure to old fillings or root canal work. Porcelain needs enamel to bond to.
Before any tooth is touched, the design is previewed digitally and on a trial smile in your mouth, so you see the shape and length before we commit. The whole process is two to three visits over five to ten days in İstanbul.
"Nothing happens in my chair before it has been explained. If a patient with beautiful enamel asks me for veneers to fix a single chip, my job is to say no and offer bonding."
Crowns: when the tooth needs rebuilding
A crown covers the whole tooth. That means more preparation, so we reserve it for teeth that genuinely need it: heavily worn teeth, teeth with large old fillings, cracked teeth, and root-treated teeth that would otherwise fracture. In those cases a crown is not the aggressive option, it is the protective one.
Our default crown material is metal-free zirconia, milled and finished in İ Lab. It is white all the way through, so there is no grey line at the gum as it ages, and it is strong enough for back teeth and for patients who grind. Where a full-mouth restoration is needed, every tooth is planned individually and the bite is rebuilt as a whole, over three to five visits.
Three cases, three different answers
Real İ-Klinik patients, photographed with written consent. Matched framing, nothing about the result is retouched. Individual results vary.
A quick way to think about it
- Small chip, gap or edge, healthy enamel: bonding.
- Colour, shape or alignment across the front teeth, healthy enamel: veneers.
- Worn, cracked, heavily filled or root-treated teeth: crowns.
- A mix of all three in one mouth: very common, and exactly what a written treatment plan is for.
Send us a few photos and we will tell you which of the three your teeth actually need, tooth by tooth, before you book anything.
Not sure which option fits you?
Send a few photos of your smile through our UK line. Within 24 hours you will receive a written, tooth-by-tooth plan naming which treatment each tooth needs, at no obligation.