In short / the answer
A name for an aesthetic result, not a procedure. Sometimes sold as a package of eight or ten veneers, which is a commercial choice, not a diagnosis.
A Hollywood smile is not a clinical procedure. It is a name given to a particular aesthetic result: brighter, more even-looking teeth. Sometimes it is sold as a package of eight or ten veneers, but that is a commercial arrangement, not a clinical diagnosis. The important question is whether the proposed treatment is actually what your teeth need.
When it starts to look artificial
A Hollywood smile can look artificial when the pursuit of perfection becomes a pursuit of uniformity. Every tooth the same width, the same brightness, the same shape, with the edges running along one flat line. None of that occurs in a natural face. Real front teeth differ slightly in width, the canines are a touch deeper in colour than the incisors, the edges follow a gentle curve, and almost nobody is symmetrical.
So to my eye a set of teeth that are all identical reads as teeth that were bought, even to someone who could not say why. The giveaway is rarely the brightness on its own. It is the repetition.
Where a predefined package goes wrong
A number of teeth decided in advance is a decision taken before anyone has looked at your face. Sometimes eight is right. Sometimes the answer is four, or two, or none of them and the real issue is that the teeth need moving rather than covering.
What the diagnosis is for is working out how far the change has to travel for the result to look even, and that distance is different in every mouth. A package cannot know it in advance, because it was priced before you walked in.
What to ask for instead
Not a brighter version of the same thing. Ask for a result that matches your face: proportions taken from your own features, a shade that sits beside the teeth you keep rather than overpowering them, and small irregularities left in on purpose.
And ask to see it before it is permanent. A preview you can look at and live with for a few days tells you more than any photograph of somebody else, which is the whole argument for designing veneers around one face rather than from a catalogue.
There is nothing inherently wrong with treating eight or ten teeth. The question is whether that number came from examining your smile or from a package decided before you arrived. The aim is not a perfect set of teeth. It is a smile that belongs to the person wearing it.
About the author
Dr. Omar Fabbro, DDS, Università dell'Aquila, Italy
Italian cosmetic and restorative dentist, practising in his own private practice in Jumeirah, Dubai. He qualified in Italy, invested five years in the university orthodontics and gnathology department, holds postgraduate clinical diplomas in orthognathic and gnathological therapy from L'Aquila and in dental implantology, and has five publications on occlusion and jaw function.
