The Two Trial Smiles: Seeing Your New Smile Before Anything Is Permanent

Written and clinically reviewed by Dr. Ritchie Beougher, DDS · Smile Maker of Texas, 6201 Dallas Pkwy, Suite 220, Plano, TX 75024 · Serving Plano, Dallas, Frisco, Richardson and the wider DFW metroplex.

Almost everyone who sits down to talk about veneers asks the same question within the first ten minutes, and they usually apologize for asking it: “What will I actually look like?”

It is the right question. It is also, historically, the question cosmetic dentistry has been worst at answering. For decades the honest reply was some version of trust me — a folder of other people’s photographs, a shade tab held up to your cheek, and a leap of faith taken on the day the enamel came off.

That is not how we work. At Smile Maker of Texas there are two separate previews built into the process, and they exist because they answer two different questions. Knowing which one you are looking at — and what it can and cannot tell you — is most of what makes the decision feel clear instead of nerve-racking.

Preview one: the digital Trial Smile

The first one costs nothing and never requires you to come in — useful if you are weighing up the drive from Dallas or Frisco before committing an afternoon to it.

You send us a clear photo of your smile and tell us what bothers you — whiter, straighter, more even, less gum showing, whatever it is in your own words. Our team digitally reworks the image to reflect those goals, and a customized preview of your potential result lands in your inbox within a few days.

Think of it as the sketch. It is genuinely useful — a great many people discover at this stage that they want something more conservative, or considerably bolder, than they first assumed — and it costs you a photograph and a few days of patience.

Preview two: the in-office Trial Smile™

The second preview is the one that changes minds, and it is included in your consultation.

Rather than looking at a rendering of your smile, you wear a physical mock-up of the proposed design. It sits over your own teeth. You can talk in it, smile in it, look at it in a mirror in ordinary daylight, and — this matters more than people expect — watch someone else react to it.

This is the point at which the design becomes negotiable in a way that is very hard to achieve on a screen. Patients will say the central incisors feel a half-millimeter too long, or that they want the corners softer, or that the whole thing is exactly right and can we please not change a single thing. All of that feedback arrives before anything permanent has happened.

What we are both actually looking at

When you and I stand in front of the mirror together, we are assessing four things. It is worth knowing them, because it makes your own feedback far more useful:

• Proportion. Do the two front teeth relate correctly to each other and to the teeth beside them? This is the single biggest driver of whether a smile reads as natural or as dental work.
• The gumline. Half of a beautiful smile is the frame, not the teeth. An uneven gumline will undermine perfect porcelain every time — which is why laser gum contouring is so often part of the plan.
• Midline and tilt. Whether the center of the smile agrees with the center of the face, and whether the whole arrangement sits level against your eyes rather than your jaw.
• Motion. How much tooth shows at rest, in a polite smile, and in a full one. A design that works in a photograph and fails in conversation is a failed design.

Before

After

Who gets the most out of this

In our experience the trial process is most valuable for three groups. People who have wanted to do something about their smile for years and have never quite been able to commit. People who have had cosmetic work before and were disappointed by it — they arrive knowing precisely what they do not want, which is enormously useful information. And people whose partner or family is quietly skeptical, because a mock-up settles a conversation that a brochure never will.

It is also, frankly, useful for the people who decide against treatment. Finding out at the preview stage that you would rather keep your own smile is a good outcome, and it costs you nothing but an afternoon.

Dr. Ritchie Beougher, DDS

Known as The Smile Architect^®, Dr. Beougher has practiced cosmetic and general dentistry in Plano for over 30 years and is a former NYU faculty member in advanced cosmetic instruction. He is also a painter — which is either a coincidence or the entire explanation, depending on who you ask.

This article is for general information and is not a substitute for an in-person examination or individual dental advice. Photographs show completed cases from our practice; every mouth is different and individual results vary. Suitability for any cosmetic procedure can only be determined at a clinical consultation.