I had a dental crown placed and it is darker than the rest of my teeth. My dentist insists he gave me the whitest crown and even showed me his color contraption. It is the whitest on there. I do whiten my teeth a lot but not with my normal dentist because he doesn’t do teeth whitening, just basic dental services. Is it possible my whitening dentist could also whiten the crown?

Grace

Dear Grace,

I’m guessing your dentist’s shade guide has colors similar to what you see above. This is a basic shade guide and pretty much the only option for many years. Then in the 90s, teeth whitening became quite popular and the whitest shades were no longer white enough. As a result, the companies that put out the shade guides came out with an updated version of the guide (pictured directly below).

As you can see, this has much whiter options for dentist to match to teeth that are regularly bleached. Because your dentist does not do much teeth whitening, he will not have the updated shade guide. Having dental crowns that match the rest of your teeth is a pretty basic expectation.

Unfortunately, teeth whitening will only work on natural tooth structure, so whitening the dental crowns is not an option. There is a solution, though. In fact you have a couple of options. First, you can show your dentist this post and ask him to get the updated shade guide in order to replace your dental crowns with some that match.

The other option is to ask your dentist for a refund and then go to your teeth whitening dentist to have the crowns done. Because they do some cosmetic work, they will likely have the updated shade guide and can get you a good match.

I hope this helps you.

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