A quick tip against dehydration while doing direct bonding with composite resin in the anterior!

Often when we are performing direct bonding with composite resin in the anterior, we struggle, chasing the moving color target of an adjacent tooth that is slowly dehydrating and changing in value. A quick tip to counter this is to apply bonding agent to the surface you wish to match, often a contralateral tooth, at the beginning of the bonding procedure. It will tend to stay true and be a more reliable reference for color matching while you work. When you are finished, just polish it away!

Note how by applying bonding agent to both centrals, by the end of the procedure, both centrals look the same, while the laterals have changed significantly due to dehydration.

Try it out! It has worked consistently for me.