Smile Design

When it comes to designing your new smile, we seek to create harmony with your facial features. Choosing a new smile is a very individual process; there are many variations of beautiful.

Due to the way our brains are hardwired, we habitually search for incongruity, for defects. This is called Defect Dominant Analysis and all humans tend to do this since we are pre-wired to evaluate beauty within faces. The human eye is trained to seek minute imperfections and to notice incongruence and disharmony first, whether it is crooked teeth or a broken, discoloured smile. Our objective will be to create a smile that harmonizes with your facial features.

The human brain perceives some forms as beautiful and others as unbalanced and less pleasant. This sense of beauty is hardwired in the human brain and is not learned. Newborns recognize their mother by facial proportions. Infants respond to beautiful forms. Very young children can identify attractive faces. Even across different ethnicities and cultures there is a common understanding of who is attractive. We now better understand the underlying mathematical and scientific basis of beauty. The first reference in western culture to the pleasure derived from mathematical proportions came from the Greek philosopher Pythagoras.

The first mathematical formula for beauty came from Italy in the 1495 from Fibonacci who described the “golden ratio” which is 1:1.618. This ratio is often designated by the Greek letter ‘phi’ and is used to create geometrical forms including the golden rectangle, golden triangle and the golden spiral (Nautilus shell).

In 1509, Pacioli published a dissertation De Divina Proporcione (divine proportions) that related these proportions to human form art and architecture. Leonardo DaVinci illustrated that dissertation. Subsequently, the art and architecture of DaVinci demonstrated the use of golden proportions and golden spirals, keeping elements in the 1:1.618 ratio of the “Golden Proportions” We use the same principles and proportions to create natural, balanced, harmonious smiles for you.

The smile should fit to the overall proportions of the face. We utilize a Dento-Facial Analyzer to get specific measurements of ideal tooth proportions by measuring the face.

Maintaining harmony within a smile is essential so that everything blends in gracefully. We often accomplish this by looking at more than just one or two teeth and instead consider restoring multiple teeth to create change and transformation. Golden proportion plays an ideal role here.

Whiter, brighter teeth are generally considered more youthful and attractive but at the same time we want to balance the use of subtle colours by looking at things like skin, gum and lip tone to create a natural smile that lights up your face yet still looks like you were born with it!

The lips “frame” your smile. Full, symmetrical lips set the stage for a terrific smile. We evaluate how many teeth you “display” when you smile and the “corridor” between your smile and lip-corners.

The smile line is formed by the bottom edge of the upper teeth. Ideally this line should follow the curvature of the lower lip. A straight flat smile line is less pleasing. A reverse curve where the front teeth appear to be shorter than the canines gives a look of aging and wear and can be quite unattractive.

We examine the position, shape, colour and scalloping effect of your gum structure around the teeth. The gums should fill the space between teeth. Dark triangles of missing gum tissue can be unaesthetic. Similarly, the shape of the embrasures at chewing tip of the teeth can create visual appeal or disharmony.

Old fillings and dental work in the front teeth needs to be evaluated so that we are assured that the smile design is successful, strong and durable.

We evaluate tooth texture and surface characteristics to understand how your current and new smile will reflect and refract light. This enables us to further enhance aesthetic outcomes.