Veneer mock-up or trial smile: how to judge the new shape
Judge the resin shape by length, lip support, speech and daylight photos, not by a quick look in the mirror. Shade is chosen later, at a separate step.
Reviewed by Yiğit Bal, dentistWritten in Turkey by a dentist. Klinikle is a clinic directory, not a clinic — no practice pays to appear here, and we do not provide treatment. Where a page compares Turkey with treatment at home, read it knowing where it was written.
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A veneer mock-up, often called a trial smile in the UK, is the shape planned for your veneers, copied in a tooth-coloured resin and pressed over the teeth you already have, so you can see it in your own mouth before anything is cut. In the chair it goes like this: someone hands you a mirror, and your teeth are suddenly longer, wider and whiter than they were ten minutes ago. The resin comes off again with a fingernail and a scaler, and this is the easiest point in the whole process to change your mind.
Most people spend about thirty seconds with it, smile, and say it looks lovely. That is the wrong use of the most useful appointment in cosmetic dentistry.
How it is made
The clinic starts with impressions or an intraoral scan of your teeth. On that model a technician or the dentist designs the target shape, either in wax on a plaster cast or in software. A clear or silicone key is made from the design, filled with a temporary resin and seated over your teeth for a couple of minutes while it sets. The excess is trimmed off and you see the result in your own mouth, behind your own lips.
It can be a short visit that ends the same afternoon, or it can be left on for a few days so you can live with it. Both are legitimate. The second tells you more.
A picture on a screen is not the same test
Many clinics now send a digital smile design before you travel: a photograph of your face with new teeth drawn over the old ones. It is a good way to start a conversation and a poor way to finish one. A screen image is flat. It cannot show how the lip moves over the new edges, how much thicker the teeth feel from the inside, or what happens when you say a word with an S in it. A length that looks natural on a monitor can look long in a mouth, and the difference often only shows up once the resin is sitting there. If the only preview you have been offered is on a screen, ask whether the same design can be tried in your mouth before preparation begins. Clinics that work from a mock-up tend to use it as the guide for preparing the teeth as well, which is one of the protections described in over-preparation of teeth.
Nine things to test while it is in
Take your time with this, and do not let the chair or the lighting rush you.
- Length at rest. Relax your face with your lips slightly apart. How much of the upper teeth shows? Too much can look unnatural at rest; too little can look aged.
- Length when smiling broadly. Watch how much gum appears and whether the edges now sit on your lower lip.
- The curve of the edges. In most smiles the upper edges follow the line of the lower lip. A flat, straight row reads as artificial even when every tooth is well made.
- Width and proportion. Do the teeth suit your face, or do they look too big for it?
- The centre line. Does the gap between the two front teeth line up with the middle of your face?
- Lip support. Does your upper lip feel pushed forward or stretched?
- Speech. Say sentences heavy in F, V and S sounds. A whistle, a lisp or the lip catching on an edge is information the clinic needs now. Speech changes after new teeth explains why length and thickness do this.
- Biting. Try biting into something soft with the front teeth. If the lower teeth knock against the mock-up, that tells the dentist something about the bite.
- Photographs and video. Take pictures in daylight near a window, close up and from arm's length, and record a short video of yourself talking. Mirrors lie in your favour; cameras are what other people see.
Show the photographs to someone who knows your face well. People who love you are quick to notice when you no longer look like yourself.
Shade is chosen separately
The resin used for mock-ups comes in very few colours and does not transmit light the way porcelain does. The mock-up is for shape, length and proportion. Colour is chosen at a separate step, against a shade guide in natural light, and tooth colour and shade choice goes through why the brightest option so rarely ages well. Disliking the colour of a mock-up does not mean the plan is wrong. Liking it does not mean the finished veneers will match it.
When the mock-up does not tell the whole story
A mock-up works by adding material over your teeth. That is easy on small teeth, on teeth set slightly back or on teeth with gaps between them, because the new shape sits in front of the old one. On teeth that stand forward, the planned shape may lie partly inside the existing tooth, so resin cannot reproduce it and the mock-up looks bulkier than the final result would. The dentist may trim a little to show you, or suggest the teeth are moved first. This is the same line that decides between no-prep and conventional veneers, and it is worth understanding before you agree to either.
It is also not the same thing as a temporary. Temporaries go on after the teeth have been prepared and protect them while the laboratory works; a mock-up comes before any decision is made. And both are different again from the try-in of the finished porcelain, which the page on your dental lab describes.
Asking for changes, and fitting it into a trip
The mock-up is when an objection costs almost nothing. Ask for the edges shortened, the corners softened, the central teeth made less dominant, whatever it is that bothers you, and ask for a second mock-up if the changes are substantial. Then ask for photographs of the approved design to be added to your records, so the laboratory and the dentist are working from the same agreed image and so you have it if anything is disputed later.
On a treatment trip, this needs a place in the timetable. A mock-up done on the same morning as the preparation leaves no room to reconsider, and anyone told "we will do the design and prepare straight after" has effectively been given no mock-up at all. A day between the two is the minimum worth asking for, and some people prefer to see the mock-up on the first visit and have the veneers done on a second trip. How long to stay in Turkey shows where the other laboratory stages fall, and the timetable a clinic sends you should show where this one sits.
If the design you approved were photographed today and put next to your finished teeth in a year's time, would you be happy to compare them?
This page is general information, not medical advice. Outcomes vary between individuals and suitability can only be established after an in-person examination and imaging by a qualified dentist.
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