Elite Smile, LLC

The most useful appointment in cosmetic dentistry usually involves no drilling at all. Photographs, a scan and a wax or digital mock-up of the proposed result come first, because tooth length, width and the line the edges follow against your lip are design decisions, and they are far cheaper to change on a model than on porcelain already bonded into your mouth. Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Pena's practice on Morris Avenue in Elizabeth works in that order.

The cases that fill it tend to be adult ones. Teeth that drifted back together in the twenty years since teenage braces. One chipped incisor. Staining that stopped responding to drugstore strips. A gap covered by a hand in every photograph since school. Elite Smile pairs that appearance-driven work with the ordinary foundation it depends on, so exams, cleanings, fillings, dentures, implants and same-day attention when something breaks are all part of the practice, on the straightforward logic that a veneer bonded over an untreated problem will not last.

Porcelain veneers are the most misunderstood item on that list. A veneer is a thin shell of ceramic bonded to the front of a tooth. A small amount of enamel, often less than a millimetre, is reduced from that front surface so the shell sits flush instead of bulking the tooth forward. Temporaries protect the teeth while the laboratory builds the porcelain, and the finished shells are bonded with a resin cured by light. Two things deserve saying at the consultation rather than afterwards. The enamel removed does not grow back, so veneers are a permanent commitment. And porcelain does not respond to bleach, so any whitening you intend to do has to happen before the shade is chosen.

Clear aligners and conventional orthodontics are there for the cases where moving a tooth is a better answer than covering it, and whitening on its own is often worth trying first as the cheapest possible test of how much change you actually want. The schedule is the real constraint here: an early Monday start, late mornings into the evening Tuesday through Thursday, a one o'clock finish on Friday, and nothing at the weekend. If your own working week has the same shape, book well ahead of when you need the chair.