Tooth Color Assessment

The color of teeth in dental medicine significantly affects the overall aesthetics of the teeth and face. Color perception depends on many factors, such as human factor, lighting, environment, background color, and other optical phenomena. Choosing the color in dental medicine is most often done visually using the factory-made color shade guide that are based on the tone of color, saturation or brightness. Colors from the prefabricated shade guide are compared to the color of the dental arch of the patient. Such a color assessment mode is very subjective and the selected color is difficult to reproduce. Therefore, objective and instrumental methods of determining the color were created using different devices such as digital cameras, a colorimeter and a spectrophotometer. Tooth color selected by these methods give results that are quantified, objectified, easily repeatable and reproduced in dental laboratory.