Making dentures is a multi-step process that combines precise dental work with lab fabrication, typically requiring four to six appointments over several weeks. Whether you’re getting a full set or a partial, the process follows a similar arc: taking molds of your mouth, establishing how your jaw moves, creating a trial version, and then crafting the final product from durable acrylic resin.
The First Appointment: Impressions of Your Mouth
Everything starts with impressions, which are physical molds of your gums and any remaining teeth. Your dentist places a U-shaped tray filled with a soft material into your mouth and asks you to bite down for a couple of minutes while it sets. For this first round, called a primary impression, the material is usually alginate (a seaweed-based compound that firms up quickly) or a thick putty-like silicone.
These initial molds don’t need to be perfectly precise. Their job is to capture the general shape of your mouth so a dental lab can build a custom-fitted tray just for you. That custom tray is what makes the second, more detailed impression possible. During this visit, the dentist also notes key reference lines on your face: your lip line when you smile, the angle of your natural bite, and how much support your lips need from the denture base.
The Final Impression: Capturing Every Detail
At the next appointment, the custom tray goes in. But before taking the final mold, the dentist does something called border molding. A warm, pliable compound is applied to the edges of the tray, and you’re asked to move your lips, cheeks, and tongue through a series of motions. This shapes the tray’s borders to match exactly how your soft tissue moves, so the finished denture will hold suction and stay in place.
Once the borders are set, a thin layer of a more precise material fills the tray for the secondary impression. This is typically a zinc oxide paste or a light-bodied silicone that picks up every ridge and contour of your gums. The result is a highly accurate map of your mouth that the lab uses to build the denture base.
Setting the Bite: Jaw Relationship Records
Getting the bite right is one of the most critical steps. Your dentist needs to figure out two things: how far apart your jaws should be when your teeth meet, and how your upper and lower jaws line up side to side.
To do this, the lab creates wax rims, which are blocks of wax mounted on temporary bases that fit your gums. Your dentist adjusts these rims in your mouth, trimming and adding wax until the height and angle match your natural facial proportions. The distance between your nose and chin when these rims touch is called the vertical dimension of occlusion. Dentists determine this through a combination of facial measurements, observing how you look when your face is at rest, and listening to how you pronounce certain sounds. Saying words with “s” and “f” sounds, for example, helps confirm the teeth are positioned at the right height and distance from each other.
These wax rims also establish the “smile line,” showing the lab exactly how much tooth should be visible when you smile and where the midline of your face falls.
The Try-In: Testing Before It’s Final
Before the denture is permanently processed, the lab sets artificial teeth into a wax base so you can try them on. This trial denture looks close to the finished product but is still soft enough to adjust. Your dentist checks the fit, the bite, and how the teeth look on you. This is your chance to weigh in on the appearance. If the color, size, or arrangement of the teeth doesn’t look right, changes are easy to make at this stage.
The dentist will ask you to smile, talk, and bite down in different positions. They’re looking for even contact across all the teeth, a natural lip line, and comfortable jaw movement. If anything is off, the wax makes adjustments straightforward. Some patients need a second try-in, though most get it right in one visit.
Lab Fabrication: From Wax to Acrylic
Once you approve the trial version, the lab converts it into a permanent denture. The base material for nearly all dentures is polymethyl methacrylate, an acrylic resin that has been the industry standard for over 60 years. It’s lightweight, can be color-matched to natural gum tissue, and holds up well to daily use.
The lab encases the wax trial denture in a mold made of plaster or stone. They heat the mold to melt out all the wax, leaving a hollow space in the exact shape of your denture. Liquid acrylic resin is then packed or injected into that space and heat-cured in a pressurized water bath. This hardens the resin into a rigid, polished base with the artificial teeth permanently bonded in place. The teeth themselves are made from either acrylic or a composite resin designed to resist wear.
After curing, the denture is removed from the mold, trimmed, and polished until smooth. Any rough edges that could irritate your gums are filed down.
How Partial Dentures Differ
If you still have some natural teeth, you’ll get a partial denture instead of a full one. The process follows the same basic steps, but with one major addition: a metal framework. This framework includes clasps that hook onto your remaining teeth to hold the denture in place.
Cobalt-chromium alloy is the most common material for these frameworks because of its strength, corrosion resistance, and light weight. Traditionally, the framework is made using a lost-wax technique: a wax version of the framework is sculpted on a model of your mouth, encased in a heat-resistant mold, and then the wax is burned away and replaced with molten metal. Newer methods use digital scanning and laser sintering to 3D-print the metal framework directly, skipping the wax step entirely.
Immediate Dentures: Teeth the Same Day
If you’re having teeth extracted, you don’t necessarily have to go without teeth while your gums heal. Immediate dentures are fabricated before your extractions and placed in your mouth right after the teeth come out. The dentist takes all the impressions and bite records while your natural teeth are still present, and the lab works from those measurements plus some educated predictions about how the gums will look after healing.
The trade-off is fit. Your gums shrink significantly as they heal over the following months, so immediate dentures almost always need to be relined (resurfaced on the inside) or eventually replaced. You’ll typically keep the denture in for the first 24 hours straight, which helps the tissue adapt and protects the extraction sites. After that, you’ll have frequent follow-up visits for adjustments as the swelling goes down and your gum shape changes.
Digital and 3D-Printed Dentures
The traditional process described above hasn’t changed dramatically in decades, but digital workflows are gaining ground. In a digital approach, your mouth is scanned with an intraoral scanner instead of (or in addition to) physical impressions. The denture is then designed on a computer and either milled from a solid block of acrylic or 3D-printed layer by layer.
A 2025 systematic review comparing digital and conventional workflows found no significant differences in cost or the number of treatment sessions required. The real advantage of digital methods is repeatability. If your denture breaks or is lost, the lab already has your digital file and can produce an identical replacement without starting from scratch. Some digital workflows also reduce the number of appointments to as few as three by combining steps that traditionally required separate visits.
How Long Dentures Last
A well-made set of full dentures typically lasts 5 to 10 years, with most falling in the 5 to 7 year range. The denture base itself holds up reasonably well, but your mouth doesn’t stay the same. Bone loss in your jaw gradually changes the shape of the ridges the denture sits on, causing the fit to loosen over time. This is why relining, where the dentist resurfaces the inside of the denture to match your current gum shape, is a normal part of denture maintenance.
The artificial teeth also wear down from chewing. You may notice your bite feeling different or the teeth looking flatter after a few years. Regular dental checkups, even when you have no natural teeth, help catch fit problems before they cause sore spots or difficulty eating. Keeping your dentures clean and soaking them overnight also extends their usable life.