The Effect of Color Training of Dental Students' on Dental Shades Matching Quality

Objective: To assess the effect of color training on the dental shade matching quality of dental students of both gender and to study the need to include lectures and exercises about shade selection in the undergraduate dental curriculum. Materials and Methods: One hundred and twenty junior dental students from the College of Dentistry at King Saud University participated in the present study and were distributed randomly into four testing groups. They were asked to match the color of four target shade tabs from the VITA Linearguide 3D-MASTER. Group 1 attended a brief lecture and a training exercise about dental shade matching, Group 2 only attended the lecture, and Group 3 only performed the training exercise. Group 4 did not participate in the lecture or the training exercise and served as a control. Exact matching rates were calculated and analyzed to determine the pre- and post-test matching values. Three way repeated measures analysis of variance, paired t test, and independent t-test were used to compare shade matching quality, with a significance level of p < 0.05. Results: There was a significant difference between the pre- and post-test values for the students' dental shade matching qualities for all of the test groups. Conclusion: The effectiveness of the dental shade matching training about color and dental shade matching for improving the students' shade matching quality was proven for both genders.