It's All About the Right Dentist - My Horror Story - Brentwood, CA

I am in the thick of a Lumineers nightmare right now that you need to read about before making the decision to do Lumineers. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes. I want to start off by saying I own some of the fault since I did not research the procedure and the dentist well enough. Having said that I placed my trust in the dentist and what she said, which should have been enough.

I had 8 Lumineers placed on my upper teeth right before New Years and had planned to do 4 more on the bottom. I chose Lumineers for the sales pitch of "2 easy visits, no drilling, no pain" and boy was that false advertisement! In my first visit I suffered through an hour of drilling on my 12 natural teeth to roughen the surface so the Lumineer will adhere to it. They not only roughened the surface of my teeth, they shaved some down a bit as well. Nothing major but definitely took some outer tooth off. After the upper Lumineers came in I sat through the initial application that took over 2 hours, half of which was spent drilling and shaving the new Lumineers down. They went in and literally looked like horse teeth. They were huge and stuck out well over my bottom lip. All of them were cemented together like one big tooth. I felt like they carved them out of a bar of soap! The first look at them left me in complete shock, to which the dentist said “we’re nowhere near done – I have to shape them now”. I thought there was no drilling! I thought you get the impressions done and send them to a lab so they come back exactly how they should be – no drilling, no shaping. Needless to say the first visit I sat through was about 1 ½ hours of drilling that left me with these huge teeth two days before my NY Eve party. I left her office sobbing out of control.

She scheduled a follow up visit to remove the cement that fused my Lumineers together and shape them more. After over 2 hours of drilling and shaving of the Lumineers, not to mention some of my natural teeth again, I decided to walk away. There was no way it should take so much drilling after putting them in. Don’t they come ready to put in? The shape is definitely not right now and I’ll never have a good bite if I don’t fix them. Sadly I could not find any other cosmetic dentists in this area that work with Lumineers so I’m in a tough situation. I saw another more reputable cosmetic dentist and have been told to take them all out and go with Veneers. He indicated the gumline is wrong, the shape is terrible and there is no way to repair the damage. To be fair he is trying to sell services as well so I have another appointment this week for a second opinion. Now I have to start a legal battle to get my money back so I can have the funds to fix my teeth, this time with Veneers. I hate that I am starting this nightmare all over again with the added cost this time of removing my damaged Lumineers.
I hope my experience is helpful to you and that you do what I didn’t do – ask a ton of questions and do a lot of research on your dentist. Nobody should have to go through what I went through.