“Can you do it today?” is one of the most common questions we get asked on the phone, and it is a much better question than it looks. Sometimes the honest answer is yes, and we will have you out the door with a finished tooth. Sometimes the honest answer is no — not because we cannot, but because doing it today would make it worse.
Look, we know “same-day dentistry” has become a bit of a marketing phrase. Same-day crowns, same-day smiles, teeth in a day. Some of it is genuine and brilliant. Some of it is a two-visit treatment with the second visit quietly renamed.
So here is the honest version: what we can genuinely finish in one appointment at our Dublin 2 practice, what it costs, what we deliberately will not rush, and how to tell whether a practice is actually equipped for this or just advertising it. We really love this stuff — single-visit dentistry is the part of the job that has changed most in our careers.
What can a Dublin dentist actually finish in a single visit?
At Docklands Dental we routinely finish a milled ceramic crown at €1,050, edge bonding at €250 per tooth and most emergency front-tooth repairs inside one Dublin appointment.
The list is longer than most people expect, and shorter than the advertising suggests. Here is where the line actually falls for us:
| Genuinely done in one visit | Needs more than a day |
|---|---|
| Milled ceramic crown, inlay or onlay — €1,050 | Hand-layered feldspathic front crown — €1,200 |
| Composite bonding, chips and edges — €250 | Feldspathic porcelain veneers — €1,200 per tooth |
| Composite veneers, a few teeth — €450 per tooth | A single dental implant — from €3,000 to €3,500 |
| Fillings — €160 to €250 | Orthodontics of any kind |
| Emergency assessment and settling a tooth — €110 | A full smile makeover design |
| Re-cementing a crown that has come off — €250 | Gum treatment before cosmetic work |
The pattern is worth noticing. Everything in the left column is made here, by us, in the building. Everything in the right column either goes to a human ceramist who layers porcelain by hand, or needs biology to happen — bone healing, gums settling, teeth moving. No scanner in the world speeds those up.
How is a same-day crown actually made in one appointment?
A same-day crown in Dublin takes one appointment of roughly two hours: about a minute to scan, 15 to 20 minutes to mill the ceramic, then fitting and bonding.
Here is the whole sequence, honestly. We numb you up and reshape the tooth so there is room for the crown to sit over it. Then we take a digital scan with a Primescan scanner — about a minute, no impression trays, no gagging. We design the crown on screen. Our Primemill unit carves it out of a ceramic block, which takes roughly 15 to 20 minutes while you sit in the waiting area. We try it in, adjust it, check your bite, and bond it in.
You go home with a finished tooth. No temporary crown, no two-week wait, no second appointment. That matters more than convenience, incidentally: the €350 we charge for a temporary crown is simply a cost that never arises on this workflow, and a temporary is also the part of the old process most likely to come loose on a Friday night.
We have been doing this long enough that Dentsply Sirona work with us as one of a small number of Key Opinion Leaders and trainers in Ireland, which means we teach this workflow as well as use it. That is not a boast so much as an explanation of why we are fussy about it — you get pedantic about a thing you have to demonstrate to other dentists. There is a full walkthrough in our guide to same-day CEREC crowns.
Is a same-day crown as good as a lab-made one?
Yes, when it is made well. A practice-based study of 3,404 single-unit crowns found annual failure rates under 1%, and all-ceramic crowns show about 95% success at 15 years.
The research backs this up — a large practice-based study published in the Journal of Dentistry in 2018 followed 3,404 single-unit crowns in 1,557 patients and reported annual failure rates of around 0.7% for survival, which works out at roughly 92 to 97% of crowns still in service at eleven years. A separate prospective multi-centre study of all-ceramic crowns found about 95% success at up to fifteen years.
Here is the more interesting number, though. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis in the Journal of Contemporary Dental Practice pooled the clinical trials on CAD/CAM restorations and estimated five-year survival anywhere between 85.5% and 100%, and ten-year survival between 71% and 100%. Look at the width of that range. Same technology, same materials, wildly different outcomes.
That spread is the whole point of this article. The machine is not what determines whether your crown lasts. The person driving it is — how conservatively the tooth was prepared, whether the margin sits where the gum can tolerate it, whether the bite was checked properly, and whether the tooth underneath was healthy enough to be crowned at all. We have written separately about what separates a good crown from a cheap one, and every point in it applies double when the whole thing is being done between ten and twelve.
Can composite bonding really be finished in one appointment?
Most composite bonding is finished in one Dublin appointment lasting one to three hours, at €250 per tooth for simple work and €450 for a full hand-built composite veneer.
This one is genuinely single-visit, and it always has been — there is no laboratory involved at all. We build the composite up by hand, layer by layer, directly on the tooth, choosing shades and opacities as we go. In most cases we do not even need to numb you, because we are not removing tooth structure. Composite bonding is non-invasive in that specific sense: it requires no removal of healthy enamel.
What it does require is time and a dry field. We work under rubber dam for bonding, which keeps saliva off the tooth while the adhesive sets, and that single detail does more for how long the work lasts than any brand of composite. A systematic review in the Journal of Conservative Dentistry covering 25 studies and 75,637 anterior composite restorations found annual failure rates ranging from 0% to 27.11% depending on the study, with fracture — not decay — the predominant reason for failure. Again: enormous spread, same material.
Honestly, that range is the most useful thing in the whole literature for a patient to know. It tells you that asking “is composite any good?” is the wrong question. The right one is “is this composite, placed by this person, in these conditions, any good?” We go into the isolation side of it in why rubber dam changes how long bonding lasts.
Where bonding stops being a one-visit treatment is when it turns into a design job. Six or eight teeth being reshaped is a smile makeover, and that gets photographed, planned and mocked up first. We are not sculpting a new smile freehand on a Tuesday morning because someone is free.
What can we do today if you chip a front tooth?
A chipped front tooth is usually repairable the same day with edge bonding at €250, after an €80 examination and a €30 X-ray to check the nerve is unharmed.
This is the emergency we see most, and it is the one where same-day genuinely matters — not clinically, but because nobody wants to go to work on Monday with half a front tooth. An emergency appointment is €110.
What we will actually do: look at it, X-ray it to see how close the break came to the nerve, test whether the nerve is still alive, and in most cases rebuild the edge in composite there and then. It typically takes under an hour for one tooth. If several teeth are involved, we can often still do it in one sitting — we have written up a case where we restored four traumatised teeth in a single appointment.
The part we will not rush is the nerve. If a tooth has taken a heavy knock, the nerve can look fine on the day and die quietly over the following months. So we will repair the edge, tell you honestly that we need to re-test it in six to eight weeks, and explain what to watch for. Building a beautiful edge onto a tooth that is about to discolour from the inside is not a favour to anybody. If you are not sure whether what you have is urgent, our guide to dental emergencies in Dublin runs through it.
Can you really get dental implants in a day?
Not usually. A single implant in Dublin costs from €3,000 to €3,500 and needs three to six months to heal; only a full arch from €12,000 to €18,000 gets a fixed temporary bridge on surgery day.
This is the one where the advertising and the biology part company, so let us be plain about it.
A single dental implant is a titanium root that has to fuse with your jawbone. That fusion takes months. It cannot be hurried, and any practice implying otherwise is either describing something else or hoping you will not ask. Implant surgery is carried out at ISCD by specialist oral surgeon Dr. Marie O’Neill, and we do the restorative side here afterwards — placement at €1,650 and the porcelain crown at €1,350, so €3,000 all in for a straightforward case. There is a full breakdown in our guide to implant costs in Dublin.
Where “teeth in a day” is real is All-on-4, from €12,000 to €18,000 per arch. Four implants are placed and a fixed temporary bridge is attached the same day, so you genuinely do walk out with teeth. But that bridge is temporary. The permanent one is fitted after three to six months of healing. Both of those things are true at once, and the advertising usually only mentions the first.
There is one honest exception worth knowing about, because we do it: when a tooth has to come out and the site is suitable, an implant can sometimes be placed at the same appointment as the extraction. That preserves the shape of the gum, which matters enormously for how the final tooth looks. It is still months before the crown goes on — but the surgery is one visit instead of two.
When is same-day dentistry the wrong call?
Same-day work is wrong whenever the tooth underneath is unsettled — a dying nerve, inflamed gum at the margin, or active decay. Root-treated teeth carry 1.3 to 1.9 times the crown failure risk.
That figure comes from the same 3,404-crown study: endodontic treatment increased the hazard of failure by between 1.31 and 1.89 times. It is the single most useful number we know for this conversation, because it says that what is going on under a crown predicts its fate more reliably than what the crown is made of.
So the cases where we will deliberately not finish in a day:
- The nerve is uncertain. If a tooth is sensitive to heat, aching at night, or has taken recent trauma, we settle it first. A crown bonded over a nerve that then dies means drilling through brand-new ceramic to root-treat it.
- The gum at the margin is inflamed. Gum tissue moves as it heals. Fitting a crown edge against a swollen gum means the margin ends up in the wrong place once the swelling goes.
- There is decay we have not fully seen yet. Sometimes you only find out how deep it goes once you are in there. We would rather change the plan mid-appointment than commit to finishing today.
- The bite is unstable. If you grind heavily or the bite is collapsing, one crown made in isolation is a patch on a bigger problem.
- It is a prominent front tooth. Matching a single upper front tooth is the hardest thing in cosmetic dentistry. That goes to a ceramist who layers it by hand at €1,200 — more visits, better result. We say so.
None of that is us being precious. It is simply that “today” is a convenience, and the tooth has to last twenty years. When those two things conflict, the tooth wins. If a crown is even the right answer is its own question — we cover it in crown versus filling.
How can you tell if a Dublin practice is genuinely set up for same-day work?
Ask three questions: is the scanner and milling unit in the building, who designs the restoration, and how long is the appointment? A genuine same-day slot in Dublin is booked for about two hours.
This is the practical bit, and you can do it on the phone before you book anywhere.
“Is the milling unit here, or does the scan go somewhere?” A digital scanner alone does not make a practice same-day. Plenty of clinics scan beautifully and email the file to a laboratory, which is a perfectly good way to make a crown — it is just a two-visit way. Same-day needs a mill on site and someone who knows how to use it.
“Who designs the crown?” The design is where the clinical judgement lives: the shape of the margin, the contact with the neighbouring tooth, the contour that lets you floss. If your dentist designs it themselves, they are making those calls with your tooth in front of them.
“How long is the appointment?” This is the one that catches people out. A properly booked same-day crown appointment is around two hours. If you are offered forty-five minutes, something is being skipped, or you are coming back.
And one more, if you are being offered a same-day cosmetic result on front teeth: “will I see a design first?” For anything beyond a single chip, the answer should be yes. Digital Smile Design planning is €350 here, and it exists precisely so that nobody — us included — is improvising on the day.
What should happen before you leave the chair on a same-day appointment?
Before you leave, the bite should be checked side to side and not just straight down, the margin flossed, and the shade seen in daylight — the three checks time pressure tends to cost.
Every treatment has a failure mode, and the one specific to single-visit dentistry is time. Everything is happening in one sitting, the next patient is arriving, and the checks at the end are the compressible part. So these are the ones to notice, because you can notice them:
The bite, moving sideways. It is easy to check that your teeth meet when you close straight down. What matters just as much is what happens when you slide your jaw sideways and forwards. A crown that is fractionally high in that movement is a very common cause of a tooth that aches for weeks afterwards. You should be asked to grind side to side on the blue paper, not just tap.
Floss at the edge. Someone should pass floss between the new restoration and its neighbour before you leave. If it shreds, the margin needs adjusting — and it is far easier to fix in that moment than a fortnight later.
The shade, in real light. Surgery lighting flatters everything. For a front tooth, you should get a mirror and a look at it in daylight before it is permanently bonded.
If you have had same-day work elsewhere and something has not felt right since — floss catching, one gum redder than its neighbours, a tooth that is fine on cold but sore on chewing — those are all adjustable, and usually quickly. Our crown aftercare guide covers what is normal and what is not.
What does same-day dentistry cost in Dublin?
Same-day treatment in Dublin costs the same as the two-visit version at Docklands Dental: €1,050 for a milled ceramic crown, €250 for edge bonding and minor additions, €110 for an emergency appointment.
We do not charge a premium for doing it in a day, and we would be sceptical of anyone who does. The technology saves a visit; it does not add value you should be billed for twice. Straight from our price list:
- Milled ceramic crown, inlay or onlay — €1,050
- Hand-layered feldspathic anterior crown — €1,200 (not same-day)
- Edge bonding / minor additions — €250 per tooth
- Composite veneer — €450 per tooth
- Fillings — €160 to €250
- Emergency appointment — €110
- Examination — €80; small X-ray — €30
- Emergency pulpotomy (settling an angry nerve) — €250
- Re-cementing a crown — €250
- Digital Smile Design planning — €350
We do not run discounts, waived fees or limited-time offers on any of this. We would rather price it fairly, tell you what it costs before we start, and let you take as long as you like to decide. Costs across every cosmetic treatment are set out in our Dublin cosmetic dentistry cost guide, and crowns specifically in the same-day crown cost breakdown.
Frequently asked questions
Is a same-day crown weaker than a lab crown?
No. It is milled from a solid, industrially manufactured ceramic block, which is arguably more consistent than a hand-built layered restoration. The difference is aesthetic rather than structural: for a back tooth, a milled crown is our first choice at €1,050. For a prominent front tooth, hand-layered feldspathic at €1,200 wins on subtlety, and that takes more than a day. Our guide to crown types goes through the trade-off.
Can I get a root canal and a crown on the same day?
Sometimes, but we would usually rather not. A root canal on an incisor is €595 and a premolar €695, and it is technically possible to crown straight afterwards. In practice we prefer to let the tooth settle and confirm it is comfortable first — particularly given root-treated teeth carry a measurably higher crown failure risk. If a tooth is badly broken down we will often place a temporary and bring you back.
Do I need an appointment beforehand, or can you do it on the first visit?
For a straightforward crown or a chipped tooth, we can very often examine, plan and treat in the same visit — an examination is €80 and we will tell you there and then whether today is realistic. For cosmetic work across several front teeth, we plan first. That is a deliberate choice, not a scheduling one.
What if I chip a tooth on a Friday evening?
Ring us on 01 636 0192 and we will tell you honestly whether it needs attention immediately or whether it can safely wait until the next working day. Most chips can wait a day or two without any harm; pain, swelling, or a tooth knocked out completely cannot. An emergency appointment is €110.
Come in and we will tell you honestly whether today is possible
If you have a broken tooth, a chip, or a crown that has come off, ring us and describe it. We will tell you on the phone whether this is likely to be a one-visit fix, and we will not pretend it is if it is not.
An examination is €80, and you will leave knowing what is actually going on, what we would recommend, what it costs, and how many visits it genuinely takes. Sometimes the answer is one. Sometimes it is three, and we will explain why the extra two are worth having. No pressure, no hard sell, just a conversation.
Docklands Dental
1 Forbes Street, Grand Canal Dock, Dublin 2, D02 FN53
Phone: 01 636 0192
Email: hello@docklandsdental.ie
Written by Dr. Gregg Barry, BDS (UCC, 2008), Docklands Dental, 1 Forbes Street, Grand Canal Dock, Dublin 2, D02 FN53. Published 8 September 2026.
Need a dentist today? Call 01 636 0192 first so we can see you as quickly as possible, or book an appointment online for anything that can wait.
