A strip crown is the technique behind a natural-looking, tooth-colored crown on a front tooth.

In kid words

"A strip crown is how the dentist gives your front tooth a shiny new outside that matches the rest of your smile." A tiny clear mold shaped just like a tooth gets filled with tooth-colored material, and once your tooth is ready, that mold gets peeled away. What's left behind is a tooth built to blend right in with the others.

The parent version

A strip crown, sometimes called a resin strip crown, describes both a material and a method together. A clear, tooth-shaped form is fitted over a prepared front tooth and filled with tooth-colored composite resin. Once the resin sets, the clear form is stripped away, leaving a smooth crown shaped to blend in with the tooth beside it.

Front teeth and back teeth get different crown materials at our office: durable stainless steel for back molars, natural-looking resin for front teeth. A strip crown is simply how that front-tooth resin version gets built and shaped, chairside, one tooth at a time. Whether this technique fits a particular tooth is a question for your pediatric dentist.

Where you might hear it at our office

Strip crown is a word that tends to surface on our restorative dentistry page, usually when a front baby tooth needs more coverage than a filling can provide, whether from a deep cavity or an injury. Matching the smile around it is always the goal with a front tooth, and this technique is simply the common way that happens.

Another word from a visit worth tracking down lives in the rest of the Kids' Dental Dictionary.

Related words

Crown. Composite. Bonding.