Inlays & Onlays: Helping You Smile With Confidence!

A dazzling smile can ignite a room. It projects strength, confidence, and beauty. For decades dentists have worked on ways to treat dental problems. But now we can provide beautiful esthetics as well as change the way your teeth look and the way you feel!

Because your mouth is one of the focal points of your face, it plays a major role in how you perceive yourself and how others perceive you. Think about it…

Nowadays, we’re surprised when a big-screen star laughs with abandon and we catch a flash of a silver-gray amalgam filling. It’s so unusual to see because advances in dental technology are making silver mouth such a vision of the past. And not just for red-carpet stars but for all of us “real” people.

The natural-looking alternatives to silver restorations not only look great, they also strengthen teeth. One option is called “inlays and onlays.” They’re made of tooth-colored materials that are virtually invisible to the casual eye. Let’s get to the simple definitions:

Inlays & Onlays – Both are tooth restorations for premolars and molars that are custom-made outside of the mouth. They’re one solid piece that is the exact shape and size of the cavity they will fill and used for restoring a tooth when there is too much damage to support a direct filling (composite, silver-colored amalgam, etc.) but not enough trauma to require a crown. Inlays and onlays are cemented into place.

  • Inlay – As above, but it fits into the biting surface between the cusps of the tooth.
  • Onlay – As above, but it covers one or more cusps of the tooth.

Bonus… Unlike silver-colored fillings, preparing for inlays and onlays does not require the removal of large amounts of healthy tooth – we only must remove the damaged or decayed part of the tooth.