A dental crown is used when a tooth is broken or decayed to such extent where too little of the original tooth remains to be able to support or hold a filling.

A crown may be used to repair a damaged or decayed tooth, to better the cosmetic appearance of a broken or decayed tooth and also to strengthen a tooth weakened by decay, breakage or injury.

Metal crowns: Gold alloys and certain base metal alloys can be used for crown fabrication. Metal crowns have good strength and are relatively inexpensive as compared to ceramic crowns.

Ceramic or Porcelain Crowns: Ceramic is a compound of metallic and non metallic compounds. Dental ceramics are the most suitable tooth colored restorative materials. They are available in variety of shades similar to tooth colour. So, they provide with excellent esthetics. Full ceramic crown cannot be given for posterior teeth because posterior teeth are subjected to high forces of mastication which can lead to fracture of a full ceramic crown.

Porcelain Fused to Metal Crowns: In this type of crown, a coating of porcelain is fused on the surface of metal. By doing this the brittleness of full porcelain crown is overcome by using base of crown made up of metal esthetics are also not compromised by using porcelain on the crown surface which provides good colour matching. They are most commonly used crowns especially for posterior teeth. For anterior (front) teeth full ceramic crowns are preferred due to superior esthetics provided by them.

Temporary versus permanent: Temporary crowns can be made in your dentist's office whereas permanent crowns are made in a dental laboratory. Temporary crowns are made of acrylic or stainless steel and can be used as a temporary restoration until a permanent crown is constructed by the dental laboratory.