Subjective evaluation of the effect of porcelain opacity on the resultant color of porcelain veneers.

The effect of porcelain veneer opacity on the resultant shade of a veneer/substrate system was subjectively evaluated. Three groups of porcelain discs were fabricated using shade A1 Ceramco G veneer porcelain diluted with 0%, 25%, or 50% translucent porcelain. The discs were luted to a shade C4 substrate using an untinted composite resin luting agent. Clinicians were instructed to match samples with a custom and a commercial shade guide, and to sort veneers into groups of similar shade. The Farnsworth-Munsell 83 Hue test was used to measure the clinicians' color vision. Results indicated that the participants were unable to distinguish any difference between veneer groups (kappa = 0.33). Shade C2 was the predominant shade chosen for all groups. All veneers provided some masking of the underlying substrate. Varying the percentage of translucent porcelain had little effect on the final shade assessment.