This in vitro study evaluated the marginal integrity of partial ceramic crowns (PCCs) luted with or without a resin-coating and compared the results with the marginal sealing of a recently introduced self-adhesive universal resin cement. PCC preparations were performed on 84 extracted human molars, with proximal margins placed 1 mm below the cemento-enamel junction. The PCCs were fabricated from Vita Mark II ceramic (Vita) using the Cerec-3 Unit (Sirona). The prepared teeth were assigned to three groups: (1) conventional luting technique (n=36), (2) resin-coating luting technique (n=36) or (3) recently introduced self-adhesive universal resin cement (n=12). Within these three groups, the following materials were applied: (1) Excite/Variolink II (EVC), ED-Primer/Panavia-F2.0 (PAC), Syntac Classic/ Variolink II (SYC); (2) Excite/Variolink II with Excite/Tetric Flow resin-coating (EVR), ED-Primer/Panavia-F2.0 with Clearfil SE-Bond/ Protect-Liner F resin-coating (PAR), Excite/ Variolink II with Syntac Classic/Tetric Flow resin-coating (SYR); (3) RelyX Unicem (REX). After thermocycling and mechanical loading (TC: 5000 cycles at 5 degrees C/55 degrees C; 30 seconds/cycle; ML:500000 cycles at 72.5 N, 1.6 Hz), microleakage was assessed by evaluating silver staining (%) on multiple tooth sections. Ceramic/composite-, resin-coating/composite- (where applicable) and dentin/composite-interfaces were evaluated separately. The data were statistically analyzed with the Mann-Whitney-U-test and the Error Rates Method. In Groups 1 and 2, the evaluation of microleakage at dentin showed better marginal integrity when the resin-coating technique was applied (EVR, PAR, SYR: 18-53%) than within the conventional luting technique group (EVC, PAC, SYC: 58-67%). However, the lowest microleakage values were found for RelyX Unicem (REX: 15%). In conclusion, resin-coating may improve the marginal sealing within dentin, depending on the materials used. Luting with a self-adhesive universal resin cement showed the best marginal sealing of all groups.