“How long is this going to take?” is usually the second question people ask us, right after the price. And it is a much harder question to answer honestly than it looks, because “a smile makeover” covers everything from four composite veneers placed in an afternoon to a staged rebuild that runs across most of a year.
So rather than give you a number that sounds good and means nothing, here is how the time actually gets spent — appointment by appointment, route by route — and the honest list of things that make a case take longer than whoever quoted you said it would. We really do think this matters. Most of the disappointment we see around cosmetic dentistry is not about the result. It is about someone being told six weeks and quietly discovering it was going to be six months.
How long does a smile makeover take in Dublin?
A Dublin smile makeover takes anywhere from a single three-hour appointment to eighteen months, depending entirely on whether your teeth need groundwork before the cosmetic work begins.
That range is frustratingly wide, we know. But the spread is real, and it is almost never about the cosmetic work itself. Placing composite, fitting veneers, seating crowns — that part is fairly predictable. What moves the timeline is everything underneath: whether your gums are healthy, whether there is decay hiding under an old filling, whether a tooth we want to crown has a nerve that is quietly dying, and whether your teeth are in a position where a beautiful result is even achievable without straightening them first.
Here is the useful way to think about it. There is active treatment time — hours in the chair — and there is elapsed calendar time, which includes laboratory work, healing, and the deliberate gaps we build in. A single implant involves maybe three hours of actual appointments spread across five months. Nobody is doing anything for most of that. Your bone is.
What actually happens at each appointment?
Most Dublin smile makeovers run across three to five appointments: an €80 examination, a €350 digital smile design planning visit, the treatment itself, and a review.
The first visit is diagnosis, not sales. We examine, photograph, take X-rays where needed, and check the health of the gums and the teeth underneath — because there is no point designing a beautiful smile on a foundation that will not hold it. This is also where we tell you if what you want is not the right thing for your mouth. That conversation happens more often than you would think.
The second visit is design. Our digital smile design process (€350) maps proportion, midline, and how your teeth sit against your lip before anything is touched, and in many cases we can turn that into a physical mock-up you can wear and look at in your own bathroom mirror. It is the single best hour you can spend, and it adds one to two weeks to the schedule. We think that is a bargain.
Then comes the treatment, which is where the routes diverge sharply — and finally a review a few weeks later to check the bite has settled and the gums are happy.
How long does a composite bonding smile makeover take?
A composite bonding smile makeover in Dublin is usually finished in one appointment of three to four hours, at €250 to €450 per tooth, with no laboratory stage at all.
Bonding is the sprinter. We sculpt the composite directly onto your teeth by hand, layer by layer, in the chair — there is no laboratory, no impressions being couriered anywhere, no waiting. Six to ten teeth is a long single appointment or two comfortable ones. You genuinely can walk in with one smile and out with another on the same day.
Add the planning visit beforehand and a review afterwards, and a realistic bonding makeover runs about two to three weeks start to finish. It is worth knowing that bonding is non-invasive — it requires no removal of healthy tooth structure — which is a large part of why it can move this fast. There is nothing to heal from. If you want the detail on what it costs and what changes the price, we have written that up in our composite bonding cost guide.
How long do porcelain veneers take from start to finish?
Porcelain veneers take six to ten weeks in Dublin across three to four appointments, because each €1,200 feldspathic veneer is hand-built by a ceramicist between your preparation and fitting visits.
This is where the laboratory enters the timeline, and it is time we are not willing to compress. Our porcelain veneers are built by hand by our ceramicist, Vladimir Savchuk, layering porcelain to get the translucency and internal character that makes a veneer look like a tooth rather than a tile. That takes weeks, not days, and there is no version of it that is faster without being worse.
The sequence runs: planning and design, then a preparation visit where we shape the teeth minimally and fit temporaries, then usually a try-in, then the fitting. Between the prep and the fit you are in provisionals, which is a genuinely useful stage — you get to live with the shape and tell us what you would change while changing it is still easy.
The research is the reason we protect this part of the schedule. A systematic review in the European Journal of Dentistry (AlJazairy, 2021) found porcelain veneers bonded to enamel surviving at 96% at ten years and 91% at both fifteen and twenty years — but that depends on bonding to enamel, which depends on preparing conservatively, which depends on having designed the case properly first. Rushing the front of that process is how you spend the back of it. We go deeper on that evidence in our guide to how long porcelain veneers last, and on the material itself in our feldspathic veneers guide.
How long does it take when crowns are involved?
Crowns add little time to a Dublin smile makeover: a milled ceramic crown at €1,050 is designed and fitted in a single visit, while a €1,200 hand-layered one takes two.
This surprises people. Because we scan, design and mill ceramic crowns on site with Primescan and Primemill — and we are one of a small number of Dentsply Sirona Key Opinion Leaders and trainers in Ireland — a back-tooth crown can genuinely be done between morning and afternoon, with no temporary crown (€350 elsewhere in the schedule) and no second appointment. Our same-day CEREC crowns page walks through how that works.
For a very prominent front tooth we will often recommend the hand-layered feldspathic crown at €1,200 instead, which means laboratory time and a second visit — the same trade-off as veneers, for the same reason. Which one suits which tooth is a clinical judgement, and we have set it out honestly in our guide to the types of dental crowns.
How long does a smile makeover take if you need implants?
Implants stretch a Dublin smile makeover to four to nine months, because an implant from €3,000 to €3,500 needs three to six months to fuse with bone before its crown goes on.
There is no way around this one, and anyone suggesting otherwise is selling something. Osseointegration — bone growing into the surface of the implant — takes the time it takes. Surgical implant placement (€1,650, including the abutment) is one appointment. The porcelain implant crown (€1,350, or €1,700 for a complex front tooth) is one or two more. Between them is months of waiting, during which you are in a provisional and getting on with your life.
If a bone graft (from €500 to €1,500) or a sinus lift (from €800 to €2,500) is needed first, add another three to six months before the implant even goes in. Those figures are standalone stage prices, incidentally, which is why they do not simply add up to the all-in €3,000 — we explain that arithmetic properly in our dental implant cost breakdown. Placement is done by a specialist oral surgeon, Dr. Marie O’Neill, through ISCD (the Institute of Specialist and Cosmetic Dentistry), the specialist practice we work closely with; the restoration is done here.
What if your teeth need straightening first?
Straightening first adds six to eighteen months to a Dublin smile makeover, but it usually means less enamel is removed later — which is what makes the final result last.
Look, we know this is the answer nobody wants. You came in asking about veneers and someone has just said “braces”. But when teeth are significantly crowded or rotated, making them look straight with porcelain alone means removing a lot more tooth to fake the position — and the more enamel that goes, the worse the long-term prognosis of the whole case.
A systematic review in BMC Oral Health (Ke, 2019) found no statistically significant difference in outcomes between clear aligners and fixed braces for mild to moderate cases, with aligners finishing an average of 6.31 months sooner — though for complex cases fixed braces still do things aligners cannot. In practice that means mild crowding might be six to nine months of aligners; a genuinely complex case is twelve to eighteen.
To be clear: we do not provide orthodontics at Docklands. That work is done by specialist orthodontists at ISCD — Dr. Susan O’Connell — where Invisalign runs €2,500 to €3,500 per case. We then do the cosmetic work afterwards. Our post on when orthodontics comes before veneers explains how we decide which cases genuinely need it.
What makes a smile makeover take longer than you were told?
The three things that most often add months to a Dublin smile makeover are untreated gum disease, decay or a dying nerve under a tooth we planned to crown, and an unstable bite.
This is the section we wish someone had written before we did, because it is where nearly every “why is this taking so long” conversation actually comes from. None of these things are visible in the photograph you brought in. All of them change the schedule.
Gum health first. You cannot bond or fit veneers accurately to a gum line that is inflamed and bleeding — the margins end up in the wrong place and the aesthetics move as the gums settle. A course of hygiene (€95 per visit) and a few weeks of healing is common, and occasionally a referral for specialist periodontal treatment.
The tooth underneath. If a tooth we planned to crown turns out to need root canal treatment first (incisor €595, premolar €695), that is an extra appointment and a healing interval. It is also not optional. A practice-based study of 3,404 crowns in the Journal of Dentistry (Abt, 2018) found an annual failure rate under 1% overall, but with a meaningfully higher hazard on root-treated teeth — which is exactly why we deal with what is going on inside the tooth before we build something beautiful on top of it.
The bite. If you grind, or if your teeth do not meet evenly, restoring the front teeth without addressing that is a fast route to chipped composite and fractured porcelain. Sometimes that means splint therapy (€650) before we start, or a night guard (€180, or €250 hard-soft) after we finish. Usually the latter.
Why do we deliberately build pauses into the plan?
We build deliberate pauses into every smile makeover — two weeks for whitening shade to settle, a try-in before final fitting — because a rushed cosmetic case gets redone within years.
Some of the gaps in your schedule are not waiting. They are the work.
Whitening is the clearest example. If whitening is part of the plan (our custom-made home kit is €350), it has to come first and it has to finish about two weeks before anything is bonded or fitted, because the shade lifts, then rebounds slightly as the teeth rehydrate — and composite and porcelain cannot be whitened once they are in. Match to the wrong shade and the only fix is replacing the work.
The try-in is the other one. Seeing veneers in your mouth before they are cemented, in daylight, with your own face around them, is the last cheap moment to change something. After cementation it is no longer cheap. We would far rather add a week than have you living with something you were too polite to mention.
What is the fastest a smile makeover can realistically be done?
The fastest realistic smile makeover in Dublin is composite bonding on healthy teeth, planned one week and placed the next — about two weeks from first consultation to finished smile.
That is the honest floor, and it only applies if your gums are healthy, there is no decay, your bite is stable, and bonding is genuinely the right treatment for what you want. Which is a real scenario — it describes a good number of the cases we do.
What we will not do is compress a porcelain or implant case to hit a date. If you are working to a deadline, tell us at the first appointment and we will be straight with you about what is achievable and what is not. Sometimes the right answer is a staged plan: bonding now so you look great for the thing, porcelain later when there is time to do it properly. If the deadline is a wedding, we have written a full countdown guide in our wedding smile prep timeline.
And if the timeline you have been quoted elsewhere sounds remarkably short, it is worth asking what has been left out of it — the hygiene phase, the try-in, the settling. Those are usually the first things to disappear.
Frequently asked questions
How many appointments is a smile makeover?
Between two and around eight, depending on the route. Composite bonding is typically three including planning and review; porcelain veneers are usually four; a case involving implants can run to seven or eight across several months.
Can I have a smile makeover in one day?
Composite bonding, yes — on healthy teeth with the design done beforehand. Porcelain veneers and implants, no. Anyone promising a full porcelain makeover in a day is skipping stages that protect the result.
Does a longer treatment mean a better result?
Not by itself. Time is not the point — the right sequence is. A well-planned bonding case done in an afternoon can be excellent; a rushed porcelain case dragged out badly can be poor. What matters is that nothing needed was skipped.
Talk to us about your timeline
If you are trying to work out whether what you want is achievable in the time you have, come and ask us. We will examine, tell you what is actually going on with your teeth and gums, and give you a realistic schedule — including the parts that are inconvenient. No pressure, no hard sell, just a conversation. We do not run discounts or limited-time offers, and we do not do free consultations; what we do is give you an honest plan and a fixed cost before anything begins.
You can read more about the routes themselves in our guides to smile makeover options and smile makeover cost, see how to judge the result before you commit, or look through a full case from start to finish. Every figure quoted above is on our price list.
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 24 August 2026.
Planning a smile makeover? You can book a cosmetic consultation online — thirty minutes with one of our dentists to look at your teeth and talk through the options and what they would cost (€80, as listed on our price list).
