White Fillings

Modesto, Manteca, Ceres, Turlock, Salida, Ripon, California Dentist

The term “tooth-colored fillings” often refers to composite fillings that are used to cover a cavity in a tooth. Although composite cannot exactly match the color and luster of your tooth, it can be very close and is much less noticeable than traditional gray metal or gold fillings. Particularly for people who have very translucent teeth, tooth-colored fillings, also called white fillings, are recommended because they will not make your teeth look discolored by showing tint through the outside of your teeth.

Types of Tooth-Colored Fillings

White fillings may refer either to composite fillings or to porcelain fillings. Tooth-colored fillings, like metal fillings, are fairly resilient. They are often used to replace metal fillings if one comes loose or falls out, or metal fillings can be removed and replaced with white fillings.

Benefits of Tooth-Colored Fillings

At Sierra Dental Care, we offer tooth-colored fillings because we know your smile may be the first thing people notice about you. You want people to notice you, not your silver or gold fillings. Composite fillings are slightly more expensive than metal fillings, but they offer the additional benefit of having less expansion and retraction when contacted with cold and heat.

Metal fillings will often break the teeth they have been applied to over a period of several years due to constant expansion and contraction when they get cold or hot. Once a tooth has been broken, it will have to be repaired or replaced. Composite fillings are more chemically stable and do not cause breaking as frequently.

Read about White Fillings vs. Metal Fillings.

Tooth-Colored Filling Application

Tooth-Colored composite fillings are applied much like traditional metal fillings. The tooth is numbed and cleaned so that the decayed part can be removed. Then, several layers of the composite are compressed into the tooth. Finally, your tooth is covered with a more resilient layer that is polished down to lay flush with the surrounding tooth enamel. When complete, the filling is difficult to distinguish from the rest of your tooth, and it is much less visible than a metal filling.

If you are interested in white fillings to repair damaged teeth, please contact the experienced Modesto family dentists at Sierra Dental Care, serving Modesto, Ceres, Turlock, Ripon, Salida, and Manteca, California.