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This course will provide you with the necessary background information in color theory and shade matching as well as offer you an adjunctive workshop with an opportunity to use some of this knowledge and technology to refine your skills.

1. Dread when a patient wants you to match a front tooth with another front tooth?
2. Tired of sending out to the lab multiple times to get a shade correct?
3. Frustrated with incorrect shades?
4. Tried different ways to get the right shade and nothing works?
5. Having difficulty communicating with a lab?
6. What's the difference between hue value and chroma?
7. How to use photography to properly get a shade?
8. How hydration affects shade matching?
9. Incorporating the newest technology that affects shade matching?
10. Want to become the expert on cosmetic shading?

Course Description:

Patients today have much higher expectations when it comes to their dental work and expect it to look natural, closely match their other teeth.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of dentists receive little or no formal training in color theory or shade matching and still select shades by subjectively comparing a reference shade tab with the tooth or restoration being matched.

Ironically, the most popular shade guide contains only 16 possible shade tabs which are expected to accurately represent every nuance of shade and color found in the human dentition as well as every possible shade and opacity available in direct and indirect restorative products.

Additionally, ambient lighting conditions, the “temperature of the light”, room and cabinet colors, time of day, hydration level of the tooth and many other factors influence a successful shade match.

Some clinicians may also have unknown defects in their color vision or suffer side effects from medications that affect color vision and shade selection.

Fortunately, there are tools, techniques, and technology that you can use and knowledge you can acquire which can help you get a perfect shade match the first time, every time.

Some of the topics this course will cover are:

• How light interacts with restorative materials and why that is important to you.
• What are hue, value and chroma and how do we use them to get a perfect shade match?
• Why are fluorescence, opalescence and translucency so critical to shade matching?
• Color Context effects – what are they and how do they influence your selection of shade
• Could you possibly have some level of color blindness or other vision anomaly? Let’s find out.
• Who is the best in your practice to make shade selections? It might surprise you.
• What are the best manual shade guides and why?
• Step by step recommendations for optimally using manual shade guides.
• What are the ideal lighting conditions for shade matching?
• How can digital photography be critical to getting the best shade as well as chromatic characterizations?
• What technology exists to facilitate color and shade matching?
• How do we use technology to verify correct shades from our labs and to be able to make appropriate shade revisions when a restoration doesn’t match.
• These and many other topics will be covered.

Please note that this course requires working in pairs for the hands-on activities.