A porcelain veneer that keeps falling off usually indicates one or more of the following faults. Firstly the veneer may be of a poor fit in that it doesn’t fit flush on the surface of the tooth. If the gap between the surface of the veneer and the underlying tooth is not as it should be then that creates internal stresses which can cause the veneer to fall off. You will remember that when you had the veneer placed, the dentist modified the tooth underneath so over preparation or under preparation or a technically incorrect preparation will cause a veneer to fall off in some cases. A common cause of veneers falling off is that the bite has not being measured properly.  The bite must be taken into account both in the resting position but also when you are chewing. The jaw moves side to side and backwards and forwards so all this must be considered with care. Finally, the process of bonding the veneer onto the tooth is extremely technique sensitive. Even a small tiny amount of moisture will affect the bonding process and the veneer will just keep on falling off every time you try to put it back on.

Veneers in the hands of an experienced cosmetic dentist have a 5% failure rate. So for every 100 veneers that they place on their patients, about 5 will fail. However, in the hands of an inexperienced dentist, studies show that the failure rate can be in the region of 30 to 40 percent. This is quite high. If you imagine you are to have six front veneers done then an inexperienced dentist will have a failure rate of about two to three of those veneers. Studies also show that over 5 years, 87% of veneers were still on so after five years you have about a one in nine chance that the veneer will lead to replacement or it will come off. However another interesting study shows that once a veneer has come off just the once, then the likelihood of it coming off again is dramatically increased. This is the reason why many patients keep on going back to have the same veneer put back on repeatedly.

A dental veneer can be reattached if it is undamaged. The reattachment process is called bonding and it is quite time consuming in order to do it properly. The veneer which has been reattached is more likely to come off again in the future compared to the veneer that has been on for a long time and has never come off. Sometimes the veneer that needs reattaching has to be sent to the laboratory in order to prepare the fit surface so that the bonding process is more effective.

Veneers that keep shift chipping can have various faults.  There could be a fault in the fabrication of the porcelain veneer itself in the dental laboratory. If the process of bonding or cementing the veneer onto your tooth is not carried out precisely then that can weaken the veneer hence it will chip. If you are a patient who has an underlying habit of grinding or clenching their teeth then that increases the likelihood of your veneers chipping. Finally if there is an occlusal disharmony in the way you chew and bite together then that will place excessive stress on the veneers and lead to chipping. 

 The colour of your veneer can only be changed by taking the veneer off and making a new one. The veneer attains its colour from two sources. Firstly the actual base colour of the veneer itself and secondly the colour of the underlying tooth. If the colour of the underlying tooth is very dark then changing the colour of the veneer may not produce the result you are looking for.

If veneers don’t match you have two options.  Firstly try to alter or take off the veneers that do not match and have new ones made.  The other option is to take all of the veneers off and start from the beginning again. Either way it’s time consuming, costly both emotionally and financially and it is not without risks as further damage can occur especially  if veneers have been prepared excessively.

If you are unhappy with your veneers you can always get a second opinion from another dentist and sometimes even a third opinion. Unfortunately, if you are unhappy with your veneers there is no going back to the way your teeth were before you had the treatment. In any case your dentist should have warned you about this through the consent process. When veneers have to be replaced they can either be replaced with new veneers or if veneers are now no longer the best option for you may need permanent crowns instead.

 Veneers cannot be lightened unless they have surface stains. Surface stains are usually picked up from smoking and certain foods. In these cases the surface of the veneer can be polished using “dental prophylaxis” paste which contains small fine particles of pumice. There are other polishing pastes available which dentists can use such as a diamond polishing paste. 

As more and more patients are having cosmetic dental procedures done such as veneers, so are problems increasingly occurring. These problems can occur both during the procedure itself, shortly afterwards or only becoming apparent after sometime has lapsed. 

Once a problem occurs, it usually is very emotionally stressful for patients as well as being costly. Costs can also escalate when the patient has to take time off work continuously.  Sometimes it might not even be possible to correct the cosmetic dental treatment that has gone wrong and teeth sometimes have to be extracted in the process.