Search for what teeth whitening costs and the answers run from the price of a sandwich to the price of a weekend away, every one of them for something with “whitening” printed on the front. That enormous spread comes down to one line of UK law, and once you know it, every whitening price you have ever seen suddenly makes sense.
How much does teeth whitening cost in the UK?
At a dentist, take-home whitening with trays made for your teeth usually costs a few hundred pounds, and shop pastes and kits run from a few pounds to tens of pounds. At Designer Smiles, whitening is £200 all in on the current offer, half the usual £400: the scan, the custom trays and the gel.
Now, those look like three prices for one thing, a cheap version, a middling version and a posh version, the way you might think about a supermarket’s own-brand cereal and the one with the cartoon on the box. That is the natural way to read them, and it is the reason so many people spend money on whitening and feel short-changed afterwards. They are really prices for two quite different jobs, and the law is what decides which job you are buying.
Why are whitening kits so much cheaper than the dentist?
Think about a car wash and a respray. The car wash is quick and cheap, and your car comes out looking lovely, because all the road grime has gone. Go through it a hundred times, though, and the paint stays exactly the colour it left the factory in, because the car wash was never touching the paint. A respray changes the colour itself. It costs more because it is a different job, done with different stuff, by someone who is allowed to use it.
Teeth work the same way. What you drink and eat leaves a film on the outside of the enamel, and underneath that film is the colour of the enamel itself, which drifts darker as we get older. Lifting the stain is the car wash. Changing the colour of the tooth is the respray.
Here is the law that sits in the middle. In the UK, anything sold over a counter is capped at 0.1% hydrogen peroxide. Gel stronger than that, up to 6%, may only be supplied to dentists, only used on adults, and only started after a clinical examination. Gel at dentist strength is what passes into the enamel and breaks up the coloured molecules inside it, so the tooth itself becomes lighter. Gel held to the shop limit can shift the film on the surface, and that is about all it can reach.
So a cheap kit is honestly priced. It is a car wash sold at car wash prices, and when a little surface staining is all that is wrong, it can do a nice job. What it cannot become, at any price or in any number of boxes, is the respray. If you want strips, pastes, pens and LED kits taken one at a time, that has its own article.
What about salon whitening and cheap online deals?
This is where the law turns out to be surprisingly helpful to your wallet, once you know it.
Whitening that changes the colour of a tooth counts as dentistry in the UK, so only a dentist, or a hygienist or therapist working on a dentist’s prescription, may do it. A beauty salon or a shopping centre kiosk with no dentist involved can legally use only what a shop can sell you. So whatever the chair looks like and however blue the light is, a salon session is selling the car wash. That can be a pleasant half hour and a fair price for a surface clean. It is simply worth knowing that a surface clean is what you have bought.
Online deals follow the same rule. A kit posted straight to your door, with no dentist ever looking in your mouth, is held to the shop limit. And a kit that promises dentist strength with no dentist anywhere in the picture is one of two things: weaker than the box says, or not legal to sell. Neither of those is what you thought you were paying for.
Put side by side, it looks like this:
| Where you buy it | Gel strength allowed | What it can change | Examined first? | Usual cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shop strips, pastes and pens | Up to 0.1% | Surface stain | No | A few pounds to tens of pounds |
| Salon or kiosk, no dentist | Up to 0.1% | Surface stain | No | Usually less than a dentist |
| Online kit, no dentist | Up to 0.1% | Surface stain | No | Tens of pounds |
| Dentist take-home whitening | Up to 6% | The colour of the enamel itself | Yes, by law | A few hundred pounds |
The honest reading of any whitening price, then, is this. When a price looks too low for whitening, it is usually a perfectly fair price for something else.
What does the dentist’s price actually pay for?
Three things, and each one is there for a reason you would want even if the law did not ask for it.
The gel is the first, and it is the one the whole price hangs on. Dentist-strength gel is the only kind that lightens the tooth rather than the film on it, and it can only reach you through a dentist.
The trays are the second. Yours are made from a scan of your own teeth, so they are thin, they follow the curve of your smile all the way round, and they hold the gel on the enamel and away from your gums. It is a shoe made for your foot against a pair of hotel slippers, and it is why the result comes out even.
The examination is the third. The law asks for it before strong gel goes near a tooth, and common sense agrees, because whitening belongs on healthy teeth and healthy gums, and the gel would aggravate decay or gum disease. If you are new to the practice, the examination starts from £27.90. If anything needs sorting first, a filling or a clean, you are told at that visit and given the price, so there are no surprises later. The whitening page walks through the whole course, from the scan to the fortnight of wearing your trays at home.
Here is what that looks like on our fee guide today:
| What it is | What it covers | Price today |
|---|---|---|
| Teeth whitening | The scan, your custom trays and the whitening gel | £200 on the current offer, usually £400 |
| New patient examination | The check-up before whitening, if you are new to us | From £27.90 |
| Hygiene visit | A clean first, if you want the best start | £70 |
| Airflow stain removal | For heavy tea, coffee or tobacco staining | £105 |
Nothing is added afterwards for the fit or the shade check. The whitening price is the whitening price.
Do you need whitening, or just a good clean?
This is the question that can save you the most money, and it is well worth asking before anything else.
Go back to the car for a second. Plenty of people book the respray when the car wash was all it needed, and teeth are the same: a lot of the dullness people want gone is the film on top. A hygiene visit takes off the everyday layer, and Airflow stain removal is there for heavy tea, coffee or tobacco staining. If the mirror is happy afterwards, you have paid for a clean and kept the price of whitening in your pocket.
And if you do go on to whiten, the clean still earns its keep. It lifts the surface stain the gel would otherwise have to work through, so the whitening starts from a better place.
Can you get teeth whitening on the NHS?
No. Whitening is cosmetic, so it is private everywhere in England. The NHS pays towards treatment your teeth need to stay healthy, and whitening changes how a healthy tooth looks, which puts it outside what the NHS covers.
Here is a nice surprise, though, and it is about the check-up. The new patient examination here starts from £27.90, the NHS Band 1 figure, so the step before whitening starts from what it would cost on the NHS. If you want to see our everyday prices beside the NHS bands, they are set out side by side here.
What will whitening cost you over the years?
Less than the first bill suggests, and the reason is sitting in a drawer.
Once your trays are made, they are yours. When the shade starts to drift, with tea and coffee settling on the surface again, a top-up of gel in those same trays brings the colour back without starting again. The made-to-measure part, the part that took a scan and a fitting, never has to be paid for twice.
And the shade itself holds well. With a clean at each check-up and the occasional top-up, most people keep their lighter teeth for years, because the gel changed the tooth, and what settles back on afterwards is only ever a car wash job. How long whitening lasts, and what decides it, has its own article if you want the whole story.
One last thing on money, because it catches people out. Crowns, veneers, white fillings and bonding keep the colour they were made in, so if new work is coming on your front teeth, whiten first and have the new work matched to your lighter shade. Do it the other way round and the new work stays at the old shade, so it has to be made again to match.
So the real cost of teeth whitening is one respray, a set of trays that are yours to keep, and the odd top-up. The car wash is lovely too, and now you will always know which one you are paying for.
