A soft tissue shade guide may be easily made by removing the teeth from an old shade guide and replacing them with processed buttons of acrylic resin stain colors and denture base colors. (Figure 4):

Figure 4: The custom shade guide includes tabs of mild, moderate and heavy Coe-Lor denture resin (GC America Inc., Chicago, IL); and tabs of resin shade modifiers in pale pink, tan, brown, purple, red and black.

The soft tissue shade guide is used to select a denture base material which is most representative of each patient's tissues. This is done at the appointment when the artificial teeth are selected. Using this same shade guide, other tissue colors and unusual characteristics, i.e., blotches of melanin, are also recorded on the denture tinting chart. Characterization of artificial teeth with stained incisals, cracks or simulated restorations may be requested on the same diagram³. This will become a part of the dental laboratory work authorization if the denture tinting is to be done by a dental laboratory technician. The dentist and technician should have identical custom shade guides.