Upper and Lower Veneers Case Study: 18-Unit Full-Arch Smile Rebuild for a Long-Term Grinder

She came in with three issues layered on top of each other:

• Years of mild bruxism she didn't know she had. The incisal edges of her upper centrals were worn flat and slightly concave — classic attrition pattern. The lower incisors had chipped twice in the past three years. She was wearing a soft night guard she bought online. Didn't help much.
• A row of composite restorations placed over the past twelve years — all on the upper six anteriors, mixed shades, all discoloring at the margins. Two had been redone, one more than once. She told the dentist she was "tired of chasing the color."
• Lower front teeth noticeably darker than the uppers. Partly intrinsic staining from years of black tea, partly from thin enamel on the lowers that let the dentin color read through. She covered her mouth when she laughed. The dentist caught that during the first consult.

What she said she wanted was pretty specific. Not "whiter." Her words, written on the referral: "I want them to look like my teeth, before any of this happened. Not fake. I don't want students asking me if I got work done." She also said she wanted both arches done so she wouldn't have to think about her teeth again for a long time.

Realistic expectations. Clear motivation. Good oral hygiene. Periodontally stable. From the lab side, this is the kind of case brief you hope lands on your bench.

What the Dentist Asked For

The prescription that came with the digital files was detailed. Here's what was on it:

• 18 units of porcelain veneers — 10 upper (second premolar to second premolar), 8 lower (first premolar to first premolar). Full smile zone, both arches.
• Material: lithium disilicate, pressed e.max. The dentist noted the bruxism history and asked us to flag any unit where the planned ceramic thickness fell outside the comfort range for pressed glass-ceramic. E.max is bondable and performs well for anterior esthetics when the prep stays in enamel, so this was a sensible call.
• Shade. Base body shade matched to the patient's existing canines (both of which were staying untreated as the color anchor). Slightly warmer chroma in the incisal third of the upper centrals. On the lowers — and this part the dentist underlined — the shade needed to carry over without a visible transition. "Don't make the lowers brighter to compensate," the note said.
• Occlusion. Maintain existing vertical dimension. Preserve the current anterior guidance path. The dentist had already done an occlusal workup, confirmed the patient was a grinder, and planned to deliver a hard night guard at the same appointment. We were asked to design the lower incisal edges thin enough that no new interference would be introduced. The written instruction: "OVJ 2.0mm pre-prep, must remain between 2.0 and 2.5mm post-cementation."
• Delivery format. 18 units individually trayed, FDI-labeled, cross-mounted models included for the try-in appointment, plus the hard night guard as a side item.

A couple of things we appreciated about this prescription:

1. The dentist included a written occlusal plan before preparation. That's not standard in every case we see, and for upper and lower veneers it's the single most load-bearing piece of information a lab can get. Most of the post-seat trouble we see on dual-arch cases traces back to occlusal planning that happened too late. The published outcome data on porcelain veneers support strong long-term survival when case selection and occlusal planning are controlled from the start.
2. The dentist specifically flagged the lower incisors. That matters because the clinical literature on restoring mandibular incisors with porcelain laminate veneers openly notes the long-term evidence base there is thinner than for upper restorations. Which means on dual-arch work, selecting the lower cases carefully and designing conservatively are not optional. The dentist got it.

How We Fulfilled the Prescription

Case receiving and digital evaluation

The intraoral scans landed in our inbox on a Monday morning. First thing our CAD team did — before any design work started — was check the preparation.

Prep depths averaged 0.4–0.6mm on the facial of the upper anteriors, 0.3–0.5mm on the lowers. All of it inside the enamel layer, which is where you want to be for a bondable e.max veneer. Margins were all supragingival, so no gingival emergence profile headaches. The dentist had also kept the line angles rounded — no sharp internal geometry.

Our CAD lead flagged two things to the account manager that same afternoon:

1. The patient's natural canines (shade reference teeth) didn't appear in the scan with enough surface detail to pull color data from. We asked for a close-up intraoral photo of both canines with a shade tab in frame, under standardized ring-flash lighting.
2. On tooth 25 (lower right first premolar), the prep extended slightly deeper on the mesial — right at the margin. We asked for the patient to come back for a quick refinement scan on that one tooth before we started cutting ceramic.

Dentist delivered both the next day. That's how this is supposed to work.

Shade mapping across both arches

One of the biggest technical hazards on upper and lower veneers is that the uppers and lowers end up looking like they came from two slightly different smiles. Not shade mismatch exactly — more like a subtle break in character between the arches. You see it on cases where the uppers were designed in one session, the lowers in another, by different hands.

We assign the entire dual-arch case to one CAD designer and one ceramist. On this one, that was a twelve-year ceramist on our anterior esthetic team. For high-esthetic anterior cases, our internal standard is that the design and layering sit with technicians who have at least a decade of hands-on experience, because the shade and texture decisions on a case like this don't live in software — they live in the ceramist's eye. The restorative dentistry literature on full-mouth veneer protocols is built around the same single-technician principle for exactly this reason.

The shade plan that came out of the first design pass:

• Base body shade keyed to the untreated canines — slightly between A2 and A3, a touch warmer than A2.
• Chroma gradient. Slightly more orange in the body of the upper laterals, slightly less in the centrals, to break up the chiclet look. Canines read a touch warmer still.
• Incisal translucency. Light blue-grey halo on the upper centrals, soft fade on the laterals, minimal on the lowers. Lower incisors are thinner, so pushing translucency there would've shown the dark substrate.
• Surface texture. Soft horizontal perikymata on the uppers, lighter texture on the lowers. The dentist's note said no high-gloss finish, so we planned a satin glaze.

Digital wax-up was ready four working days after we received the complete file set. We sent it to the dentist on Friday afternoon.

Design approval and the one adjustment we made

The dentist got back to us the following Monday with two notes:

1. The upper centrals in the wax-up were a hair too square at the incisal corners. The patient had seen the design proof and said "a little softer, please." We rounded the incisal line angles on 11 and 21, resent, approved.
2. On the lower centrals, the dentist asked us to confirm — in writing — that the incisal thickness as designed would stay within the 2.0–2.5mm OVJ window specified in the prescription. We ran the overjet calculation in software, confirmed in writing, and locked the design.

Total elapsed time from file receipt to approved design: eight working days. One revision cycle. Our standard note applies: design-approval wait time doesn't eat into our lab clock — the clock starts fresh once the design is locked and we move into production.

Pressing, milling, and ceramic characterization

Approved design went to our pressing department. For an 18-unit e.max case, each veneer is pressed from a pre-selected ingot, then crystallized to full strength in a programmable furnace. Full crystallized e.max press reaches around 400 MPa flexural strength, well inside the safe envelope for anterior function — even with a known grinding history, provided the occlusion is correct and the patient wears their night guard.

Then the whole case moved to the same ceramist for external characterization. Three days of work. What she did that mattered:

• Shade continuity between arches. All 18 units were layered within one five-day working window. Same staining pigments. Same brush. Same furnace cycle. No swap-ins. On dual-arch work this is the biggest unseen quality variable — if the uppers and lowers come off different hands or get fired on different weeks, the smile reads uneven in the mouth even when the shade number is identical on paper.
• Natural variation inside the consistency. She built small differences between units: the centrals a hair more opaque than the laterals, the laterals carrying slightly more chroma in the gingival third, the canines with a bit more warmth. The lowers got the same treatment, muted — enough variation to look like real teeth, not identical copies.
• Incisal character. On the upper centrals, she added a very subtle white opalescent band near the incisal edge, mimicking the lightly chipped natural anatomy the patient had before. The dentist specifically asked for this. The patient had shown him a photo of her teeth at age 20 as a reference.
• Surface finish. Satin glaze firing. No high polish. Patient note was clear about not wanting "the shine."

Quality control before shipping

Before the case left the building, three independent checks ran in sequence:

• Fit verification. Each veneer seated passively on the printed master model. No rocking, no high spots. Margins between 0.3 and 0.5mm thick, smooth, no voids under magnification.
• Cross-mounted occlusal check. We mounted upper and lower cross-models together and verified the design intent was intact after firing — anterior guidance preserved, no new contacts, OVJ measured at 2.3mm (inside the specified window).
• Shade check under two light sources. D65 daylight and incandescent. Both because patients see their teeth in both.

Independent QC lead signed off on the whole set — her only job is verification against the prescription, not production. Each veneer labeled with FDI numbering. Try-in trays packed. Shipped on day 15 from file receipt, with the hard night guard the dentist had asked us to make on the side.

Try-In: What the Patient and Dentist Said

The dentist ran the try-in appointment ten days after delivery. We ask for feedback after every full-arch try-in — we build a dedicated WhatsApp case group with our clients so the back-and-forth stays in one place and doesn't get lost in email threads.

Here's what came back, condensed from the voice notes and photos the dentist sent that afternoon.

From the dentist, chairside

"Veneers seated passively on both arches. No ceramic adjustment needed on seat. I tried in all 18 units with try-in paste before I committed to anything, and the shade read exactly like the design proof — the warmth in the laterals is doing what it's supposed to do, the lower incisors blend into the uppers without a visible break, which is honestly where I've had the most trouble on past upper and lower veneers cases.

Occlusion check with articulating paper after try-in — anterior guidance landed on the natural guidance path. No premature contacts, no interference in protrusive or lateral excursions. OVJ measured 2.3mm, dead center of the window I asked for.

One contact on 23 was a touch tight on the mesial. Took me about thirty seconds with a finishing strip. Everything else was clean.

Proceeding with final bonding."

From the patient, after try-in

The dentist sent us a short note on what the patient said when she saw them in the mirror, after about ten minutes walking around the operatory with them in. Direct quotes, with her written permission to share for case documentation:

"Oh. They look like my teeth. I thought they'd look brighter than that but — no, this is right. They look like me."

And a few minutes later:

"The lower ones — I was worried about the lower ones. I kept telling my dentist 'please don't make them whiter than the uppers.' You can't see where they start. That's exactly what I wanted."

She asked if she could laugh. She did. The dentist's short video — which the patient agreed to let the clinic keep for internal reference — showed her covering her mouth out of old habit, catching herself, and dropping her hand. Then she asked when she could eat with them.

What the dentist flagged before final bonding

Two small requests:

1. Unit 12 glaze touch-up. One small reflective spot caught the operatory light differently than the rest. Fifteen-minute fix on our end, redelivered next day.
2. Night guard fit confirmation. The patient wanted to confirm the hard night guard was comfortable before she committed to final bonding. The dentist tried it in that same appointment, confirmed fit, patient wore it that night, no issues.

Final bonding appointment was five days later. The dentist's note after that appointment, three words: "Clean seat. Done."

Why Clinics and Labs Work With Us on Upper and Lower Veneers Cases

A few things about how we're set up that tend to matter on cases like this one.

Everything happens inside our own facility. CAD design, model printing, CAM milling, pressing, ceramic layering, glazing, polishing, and QC — all of it runs inside our Shenzhen and Huizhou labs. No part of this case was outsourced. For dual-arch anterior esthetic work, that matters more than for a single posterior crown, because the ceramist's hand is the biggest variable in whether the uppers and lowers look like one smile or two.

One designer and one ceramist own the full case. For a full-arch case, that's not a scheduling preference — it's a design decision. The small, invisible choices (how much orange goes in the lateral chroma, how the incisal halo tapers, how aggressive the surface texture is) stay internally consistent only when one person is making them.

Our anterior esthetic team is senior. High-esthetic anterior work in our lab is handled by ceramists with ten or more years of hands-on experience. For this case, the lead ceramist had twelve.

Full material traceability on every case. Each case gets a unique ID. That ID binds to the specific technicians, the specific equipment, the specific ingot batches, and every QC checkpoint along the way. If a question comes up six months later, we can tell you exactly what went into the veneer on tooth 11.

Three-stage QC with independent final sign-off. Pre-production review on the case files, in-process checks between departments, and a final release by a QC lead who doesn't produce. Her only job is independent verification against the prescription you sent.

Case communication through dedicated WhatsApp groups. For regular clients we build one case group per clinic, with the ceramist, account manager, and QC lead in the group. When the ceramist flags something — a thin margin, a tricky prep, a shade question — the question lands with the dentist directly, not through three layers of email.

Published lab turnaround: 2–3 working days for routine crowns and bridges, longer for full-arch anterior esthetic. Our lab clock starts the day complete files arrive — approval wait, missing-info chases, and shipping transit sit outside that window. For this 18-unit case, actual lab-floor time was 15 working days from file receipt to shipping, including the design proof cycle.

Scale that doesn't come at the cost of attention. Our two facilities run around 460 technicians across CAD, milling, implant, ceramic, denture, and QC departments, plus ~50 trained backup technicians for peak-season surges. Monthly capacity sits comfortably above our order volume, which means we can take a full-arch anterior case without displacing anyone else's schedule, and delivery windows stay stable.

Protocol experience across the markets we serve. We've shipped into the US and across Western Europe — the Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, the UK, Luxembourg, Switzerland — for dental labs, clinics, and DSOs. Over 400 dentists have cases on our bench at some point. We hold FDA listing for custom dental restorations including veneers, and we work under MDR Annex XIII custom-device notification for cases going into the EU.

Flexible cooperation. We work with dental labs, clinics, and dentists directly. Case data stays yours — original patient data and client files belong to the clinic; we only hold a processing right during fabrication. We can sign NDAs and quality agreements. If you're a lab reselling our work, your branding and client relationships stay with you — we do not contact your end clients, ever.

Factory visits and video audits always open. Dentists, DSOs, and partner labs can arrange a site visit to Shenzhen or Huizhou, or a video walk-through of the production line and QC area, any time. If you're sending us upper and lower veneers cases, you're sending us some of the most technically visible work your clinic will do all year. You should know who's actually making it.

That last part is why we wrote this case study the way we did. The result on a case like this doesn't come from a slogan. It comes from a prescription written carefully, a design that got reviewed before anything got cut, a ceramist who sat with the case for five days instead of a shift, and a QC lead who said no to one small reflective spot on unit 12. That's the work.

If that's the kind of lab partner you're looking for, we're easy to reach.