 If there is one thing that can make a denture look natural, feel comfortable, function properly, and avoid the dreaded “something looks wrong but I don’t know what” conversation with the patient, it is getting the horizontal plane and occlusal plane right.
At Bremadent Dental Laboratory, we receive hundreds of denture bite registrations every year. Many are excellent. Some are detailed, accurate, beautifully marked, and make our technicians quietly emotional in the best possible way. Others arrive with the vertical dimension recorded, but with no clear horizontal plane, no occlusal plane, no facial markings, and no useful indication of how the teeth should sit in relation to the patient’s face. In those cases, the bite rims have often only been used to establish the OVD, the occlusal vertical dimension. That is important, of course. But a denture bite registration should do much more than tell us how open or closed the patient should be. A properly recorded bite rim should transfer the patient’s aesthetics, function, orientation, phonetics, neutral zone, facial features, smile line, and jaw relationship to the laboratory. In simple terms, it should tell us where the teeth need to go. If the bite rim only tells us the OVD, we are missing half the map. And when you are trying to create a natural looking denture, half a map is not ideal. It is a bit like being told to drive to Manchester but only being given the first roundabout.
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 If there is one clinical record that can dramatically improve communication between a dental practice and dental laboratory whilst taking less than two minutes to record, it is the stick bite.
Yet despite its simplicity, it remains one of the most underused and misunderstood records in restorative dentistry. At Bremadent Dental Laboratory, we receive thousands of denture, implant, crown and bridge, and full arch rehabilitation cases every year. One thing we have noticed consistently is that many clinicians provide excellent impressions, accurate scans, detailed prescriptions, and beautiful photographs, but omit one of the most valuable records available for guiding anterior aesthetics and occlusal plane orientation. The stick bite. Ironically, some of the most expensive and complex cases we receive arrive without one. When this happens, the laboratory must rely on photographs, facial landmarks, experience, and clinical judgement to determine how the final smile should sit within the patient's face. When a stick bite is included, many of those assumptions disappear. The result is often greater predictability, improved communication, reduced chairside adjustments, and more confident smile design. This article explains exactly what a stick bite is, why it matters, how to take one correctly, when it should be used, and why many experienced clinicians consider it an essential record for full arch and aesthetic cases.  Let’s be honest, digital dentistry has revolutionised how we work. Intraoral scanners (IO Scans) have made impressions faster, cleaner, and in many cases, more accurate than traditional putty impressions. But with this transformation comes a new set of challenges, especially when crowns don’t seat the way we expect.
At Bremadent Dental Laboratory we see it, we solve it, and we want to help you minimise remakes, save chairtime and keep patients smiling.  Choosing the right restorative material shouldn’t feel like a gamble, but let’s be honest, sometimes it does. Zirconia or Emax? Strength or aesthetics? Masking or translucency? We hear these questions daily at Bremadent Dental Laboratory, and the answer is rarely black and white. It’s about understanding the case, the patient, and the material properties, then making a decision that delivers both function and aesthetics.
This guide is designed to simplify that decision-making process, giving you a clear, practical framework you can apply chairside.  Every now and then, a case lands on the bench that makes you pause, scratch your head, and say, “Right… what’s really going on here then?” This was one of those cases. Not because it was overly complex on paper, but because it refused to behave in a predictable, textbook way.
A dentist reached out to us at Bremadent Dental Laboratory after trying multiple labs. The feedback she kept getting was vague at best. No one could clearly explain why the case kept failing. The patient had an existing denture and originally retained a single premolar on the upper left-hand side. That one tooth was eventually extracted, and an addition was carried out. From that point onwards, everything changed. The bite was completely off. A new denture was prescribed. Same issue. Another lab tried. Same result again. |
Private Dental Laboratory in London
 Kash Qureshi - Managing Director, Clinical Dental Technician
About the author:
Kash Qureshi is a Clinical Dental Technician (Denturist) in the U.K who oversees and quality controls over 3000+ fixed and removable prosthesis including implant cases from a clinical and technical aspect monthly at Bremadent Dental Laboratory & Swissedent Denture Clinic in London. www.swissedent.co.uk www.bremadent.co.uk [email protected] Categories
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