Color and Shade Matching in Dentistry

Shade selection is an important procedure to provide patients with an esthetic restoration that harmoniously blends to the patient's existing dentition. Due to the great variety of natural tooth color, achieving a close shade match of an artificial restoration with the natural dentition is a complex process. Practitioner requires an understanding of color, light and related characteristic of porcelain and resin as well as the ability to clearly communicate instruction with the lab technicians in order to obtain natural looking restoration, there are two crucial steps in shade selection: Selection of color through shade guide and consequently the correct reproduction of this color in the prosthesis or restoration.