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Elamin HO, Abubakr NH et al. Eur J Dent 2015;9: 213–217

The objective when taking a shade is to 'locate' it in a three-dimensional colour space. The Munsell colour system is descriptive and requires estimates for value, chroma and hue. The CIELab is linked to Munsell, but is more quantitative and uses the following three colour coordinates: L* for lightness, a* for redness and b* for yellowness and blueness. In promotional material (see Accurate, esthetic shade matching made easy, VITA®), it is stated that the range of different tooth colour shades form a banana in an upright position. Yet a study with American subjects showed that the tooth colour space was an elongated oval, and another carried out with Germans formed a circular space. The key finding from this study, is that in a selected sample of Sudanese subjects (n = 227), the tooth colour space formed a parallelogram. As expected, the shade of young people's teeth were lighter than those of older people. In this study, shades were recorded using both the VITA 3D-MASTER Shade Guide and a spectrophotometer (VITA Easyshade®).