Occlusal Guards
Occlusal Guards: Custom Night Guard Fabrication
An occlusal guard only protects the dentition if the patient actually wears it, and patients wear what fits. We fabricate custom night guards with controlled thickness, balanced contacts, and comfortable margins in our California, Colorado, and Texas labs, delivered to practices nationwide.
What Is an Occlusal Guard?
An occlusal guard, most patients say nightguard, is a removable appliance that separates the arches and absorbs the forces of bruxism before enamel, restorations, or implants take the damage. Dentists prescribe occlusal guards under many names, night guard, bite guard, grinding guard, and the terminology matters less than the construction. The classic prescription is a night guard for teeth grinding, worn during sleep, but daytime clenchers and post-restorative patients profit from the same protection. What separates a custom occlusal guard from a pharmacy tray is everything a lab controls: verified fit on the model, planned occlusal contacts, material hardness chosen for the case, and margins that do not bother the tongue. A guard with those qualities gets worn; a bulky one ends up in the nightstand drawer.
When to Prescribe an Occlusal Guard for Your Patient
Wear facets, fractured cusps, morning jaw fatigue, and chipped ceramics all argue for a bruxism mouth guard before the next restoration fails. Many clinicians also protect fresh crown and bridge work or implant restorations as a standing protocol. Severity steers the design: a soft guard for light grinders, dual-laminate for comfort with resistance, and a hard full arch occlusal guard for heavy bruxers, while heavy clenchers who overpower full-coverage guards may be candidates for an NTI night guard. The indication and occlusal scheme stay your call; we build to the prescription and advise when asked. For patients who grind through restorations on a schedule, pair the occlusal guard with shorter recall intervals and let the wear pattern guide the next design.
Materials & Options
- Materials
- Hard, soft & dual-laminate appliance acrylics (brand-name materials)
- Options
- Full arch, upper or lower; thickness & occlusal scheme per Rx
- Turnaround
- 5-10 working days (appliance department)
- Rush Available
- Yes, contact us for scheduling
- Delivery
- Nationwide UPS/FedEx
- Digital Files
- STL, OBJ accepted
How We Process Your Occlusal Guard Case
- 1
Send Your Case
Impressions or intraoral scan with bite registration, via portal or courier
- 2
Plan & Form
Model work, material selection and controlled forming or milling
- 3
Adjust & Polish
Occlusal contacts balanced on the articulator, margins finished by hand
- 4
Deliver
Nationwide UPS/FedEx, scheduled to your seat date
Contact Us
Frequently Asked Questions
Start Sending Night Guard Cases
New accounts: we respond within 24 hours. Pickup & nationwide delivery available.
Open a Lab AccountPatients ask about pharmacy nightguards: what do I tell them?
Boil-and-bite trays from the drugstore are bulky, unbalanced, and rarely survive a serious bruxer. A doctor's nightguard is made on the patient's own model, with contacts you control and a hardness that matches the grinding pattern. Most patients feel the difference the first night, and adherence is the whole point of the appliance.
How should patients clean a nightguard?
Cool water and a soft brush after every wear, a non-abrasive cleaner as needed, and never hot water, which can distort thermoplastic layers. Give patients a ventilated storage case and have them bring the guard to recalls, so you can check wear patterns and fit. A cared-for occlusal guard survives daily use for a long time; visible wear-through is a signal to reorder, not to keep patching.
Occlusal guard or occlusal splint: which page am I looking for?
We use occlusal guard for protective appliances against grinding and clenching, the subject of this page. An occlusal splint in the therapeutic sense, with a defined bite position for occlusal or TMJ management, is its own appliance category with its own records. If your Rx is about protection, you are right here; for splint therapy, talk to us about the clinical goal first.
Can you replace a lost nightguard without new impressions?
If we fabricated the original, digital case records are retained for up to 30 days from fabrication as a courtesy, and a replacement can be made from those files on request within that window. After 30 days, teeth move enough that a new scan or impression is usually the safer route, at your discretion as the treating dentist.
An Occlusal Guard Lab With Three Decades of Appliance Craft
Reliable Dental Studio has fabricated protective appliances since 1994, and the lesson of those decades is simple: a custom nightguard is precision work disguised as a commodity. Uniform thickness across the arch, contacts that land evenly instead of on two molars, and edges the tongue stops noticing by night two, that is what keeps an appliance in use. Our family-owned lab builds every occlusal guard on the patient's verified model, checks it on the articulator, and signs off the fit before it ships.
Materials Matched to the Grinding Pattern
We stock brand-name appliance acrylics in hard, soft, and dual-laminate configurations and match them to the case rather than to a default. Light clenchers get comfort-first designs, heavy grinders get wear volume where they need it, and combination patients get a dual-laminate that is soft against the teeth and hard where the parafunction lands. Every dental night guard leaves with documented quality control, and if a patient chews through anything unusually fast, send the guard back with notes: wear patterns tell us how to build the next one better.
From Digital Records to Finished Night Guard
A mouth guard for teeth grinding is an ideal digital case. Export the scan plus a bite registration as STL or OBJ, drop both into the secure portal, and the case lands on a bench the same day; from there we print the model, form or mill at the prescribed thickness, and finish by hand. Practices without scanners ship impressions with prepaid labels and get the same appliance from the same bench, digitized in-house before the model is printed. Either way, the occlusal scheme follows your Rx, and questions go directly to the technician building the case.
Build a Nightguard Program, Not One-Off Appliances
Bruxism is chronic, which makes protection a program: initial appliance, recall checks, and timely replacement before wear-through. We support that rhythm with consistent fabrication your patients can feel between the first guard and the fifth, notes we keep on file for thickness and design preferences, and the nightguard dental code documentation your front office needs for claims. For group practices and DSOs, that consistency holds across every office: one Rx standard, one contact, and a nightguard for teeth grinding that feels identical whether it was ordered in week one or year three of the program.
What to Specify on an Occlusal Guard Rx
A precise prescription saves a remake. State the arch, upper or lower, the material class, and the thickness if your patient has a history; note whether you want canine guidance or even posterior contacts; and flag anything unusual, from a gag reflex to a missing second molar the guard should not chase. If the Rx leaves the design open, we default to the configuration that clinical experience supports for the documented grinding pattern and record the choice in the case notes. Prescribing a night guard for teeth that already carry veneers or implant work? Say so: coverage and contact placement change, and the responsible technician will confirm the design with you before forming a single layer.
Grinding Does Not Pause, So Scheduling Cannot Either
The best nightguard is the one that is in the mouth tonight, not in a backlog. Appliance cases typically run five to ten working days in our appliance department, rush requests are welcome, and a mouth guard for grinding teeth that has to protect a freshly seated restoration gets planned backwards from your delivery appointment, with early warnings if anything slips. Put the next occlusal guard case in the portal today, or open a lab account first: we respond within 24 hours, and as soon as the paperwork is complete, the first guard can ship the same week, well ahead of your patient's next night shift of grinding.