Somebody has just told you a tooth needs a crown, and the first thing you did after leaving the chair was type the price into your phone. What came back looks less like a price and more like a shrug, so let’s walk through where the money in a crown goes, and the number will start to make sense.
How much does a tooth crown cost in the UK?
On the NHS in England, a crown is a Band 3 course of treatment, £332.10. Privately, prices vary from practice to practice with the material, the tooth and the laboratory. At Designer Smiles a metal crown starts from £332.10, which today is the same figure as that NHS Band 3 charge; a white crown starts from £450 and a porcelain or ceramic crown from £800.
Here is the whole bill laid out, because a crown is rarely the only line on it:
| What you might pay for | On the NHS in England | At Designer Smiles |
|---|---|---|
| The examination | Band 1, £27.90, or inside a larger course | From £27.90 |
| A root canal, if the tooth needs one first | Inside the one Band 3 charge, when it is part of the same course | From £550 for a front tooth to £850 for a molar |
| The crown | Band 3, £332.10 | From £332.10 |
| The material | Whatever is clinically necessary for that tooth | Metal from £332.10, white from £450, porcelain or ceramic from £800, each made to a scan of your mouth |
Why does a crown cost so much more than a filling?
Because a filling is made in your mouth and a crown is made somewhere else, by somebody else, just for you.
Think of the difference between having a jacket altered and having one made. A filling is the alteration: the dentist shapes soft white material straight into the tooth and sets it hard, all in one sitting. A crown is the made-to-measure jacket. The tooth is shaped under local anaesthetic, a scan of your mouth goes off to a dental laboratory, and a technician builds your crown to that scan over about two weeks, in the shade chosen against your other teeth. Then you come back, the temporary comes off, and the new crown is tried, adjusted for your bite and bonded in place.
So there are two visits of dentist time, a temporary to keep you comfortable in between, and a skilled person in a laboratory you never meet, whose fee sits inside the price of every crown made that way. That last one is the bit most people never hear about, and it explains a lot. When two practices quote very different figures for what sounds like the same crown, the laboratory is often where the difference lives.
What decides the price of your crown?
Four things, and once you know them you can read any quote in the country.
The material comes first, and UK crowns are made three ways. There is all-metal, often a gold alloy, which is very strong and very thin and used on back teeth where nobody sees it. There is porcelain fused onto a metal core, which looks like a tooth from the outside. And there is porcelain all the way through, which lets light into it the way enamel does, so it looks like a tooth because it behaves like one. The crowns at Designer Smiles are porcelain, made to the scan. Different materials cost the laboratory different amounts to make, and that cost travels straight onto your quote.
Then there is the tooth itself. A front tooth has to match its neighbours in a photograph, so the shade and the shape carry most of the work. A back molar has to take the full force of chewing, so the crown is built around your bite. Our crowns page says it plainly: the final price depends on the tooth and the material, and it is written down before the tooth is prepared.
The third thing is what the tooth needs before a crown can go on it. A tooth whose nerve has died, or been reached by decay or a crack, needs a root canal first. That is priced here from £550 for a front tooth up to £850 for a molar, and the reason for the spread is simply the plumbing: a front tooth usually has one canal inside it, a molar three or four, and every one has to be cleaned and sealed. Sometimes so little tooth is left above the gum that the crown has nothing to grip, and the dentist builds a core, sometimes anchored by a small post down into the root-filled canal, a bit like a tent peg giving a tent something to hold.
And the fourth is the laboratory, which we have met already. A good technician’s time is the quiet cost inside every crown, and it is money well spent, because a crown that fits the tooth snugly at the edge is a crown that keeps decay out for years.
What does the NHS Band 3 charge actually buy?
Here is the part that surprises people, and you deserve to hear it straight. An NHS band charge covers a whole course of treatment, however many visits it takes. Band 3 includes everything in Bands 1 and 2 as well, which means the examination, the x-rays, and a root canal done as part of the same course all sit inside that one £332.10 charge along with the crown.
So if you can get a place at an NHS practice, and your tooth needs a root canal and a crown in the same course, the NHS is the cheaper route. If you qualify for free NHS dental treatment, it is cheaper still. We would much rather you knew that than found out later.
There are two catches, both about what the band is for. The NHS pays for what is clinically necessary to keep your mouth healthy, so the material is chosen for the job rather than for how it looks, and on a back tooth that can mean a metal-coloured crown. And the band only helps if a practice near you has NHS room, which varies from town to town and month to month.
Designer Smiles is a private practice. Today our metal crown starts from the same figure as the Band 3 charge, with white and porcelain crowns priced above it, and a root canal is priced separately and told to you before anything is done. What you get for that is a time you picked, porcelain made to a 3D scan of your mouth, and a dentist who talks you through what they see. The NHS charges set beside ours do the same for the rest of the fee guide.
How do I read a crown quote without getting caught out?
A good quote answers four questions, and you are entitled to ask every one.
Start with the word “from”. A “from” price is the start of a range, and the finished figure for your own tooth depends on the things above. The question to ask is what would take your tooth above it.
Then ask whether a root canal, a core or a post is needed first, and whether it is in the quote or on top of it. This is often where the gap between two quotes turns out to be hiding. A lower headline number with the root canal left off is a bigger bill in disguise.
Ask what the crown is made of, and which laboratory makes it, because a practice that knows its technician will tell you happily.
And ask for the whole figure in writing before the tooth is shaped. At Designer Smiles that is simply how it runs: the price is written down before anything starts, and if your tooth needs a root canal first, that is priced separately and told to you before the work begins.
If you are weighing a crown against a veneer for a front tooth, the choice is really about how healthy the tooth underneath is, and veneers and crowns set side by side walks through which is which.
What happens to the cost if I leave a cracked tooth?
It is completely understandable to want to wait, and with plenty of small chips you genuinely can. A cracked tooth is a little different, and the reason is chewing. Every bite presses on the crack and opens it a fraction, the way a small chip in a windscreen creeps across the glass once the car is back on the road.
Caught while the crack is still in the part of the tooth above the gum, the fix is usually exactly the crown you have been quoted. It covers the whole tooth like a helmet, so every bite squeezes the tooth together instead of prising it apart, and the crack stops travelling.
Given time, a crack can reach the nerve, and then a root canal comes before the crown. If it splits down into the root, the tooth cannot be held together any more, and the conversation becomes about replacing it: a single implant with its crown here is from £1,700, or a bridge from £400 a unit. So the cheapest moment to crown a cracked tooth is the moment someone first tells you it needs one.
If your tooth chipped rather than cracked, what a chipped tooth costs to fix has its own answer, and very often it is a much smaller one.
How long will a crown last for the money?
Ten years is the usual figure, and many last far longer. That matters when you are looking at the price, because you are buying a decade or more of chewing on that tooth without thinking about it.
What ends a crown is rarely the crown itself. It is decay creeping in under the edge, or a crack in the tooth beneath, and check-ups catch both early. Grinding and biting hard things shorten it too, so if you grind at night, that is worth telling your dentist.
So there is the whole of it. The NHS figure of £332.10 covers a crown and everything that comes before it in the same course, if you can get a place. Privately the price moves with the material, the tooth, the laboratory and whatever the tooth needs first. At Designer Smiles a porcelain crown starts from £332.10, with any root canal priced on its own and the full figure written down before the tooth is touched. How a crown is planned and fitted here, step by step is on the crowns page, and if you would like us to take a look at the tooth, ring 0121 709 3821.
