Here is the part of the veneers versus crowns question that hardly anyone says out loud: you do not really get to pick, because your tooth has already picked for you. Once you can see which kind of tooth you have, a decision that feels enormous takes about ten seconds, and the rest of this page is about seeing it.
What is the difference between a veneer and a crown?
A veneer is a thin porcelain shell bonded to the front of a healthy tooth, to change its shape, length or shade. A crown is a cap that covers the whole tooth, the top and every side, to hold together a tooth that has been weakened.
Think of a veneer as a very good false nail. It changes how the front looks, it is fixed to the surface, and it relies completely on the real thing underneath being sound, because a false nail on a split nail is only hiding the split. A crown works more like a thimble slipped over a finger. It surrounds the tooth, so every bite lands on the crown and squeezes the tooth together, when the same bite on a weakened tooth would be prising its walls apart.
So one is about the look of a tooth that is already strong, and the other is about the strength of a tooth that has lost some. Everything else, the cost, how much tooth each one takes, the years they last, follows from that one difference.
When is a veneer the right choice?
When the tooth is healthy and it is the front of it you want changed, for the long term. Teeth that have always been a little short, or a shape you have never liked, or a shade that whitening will not shift: those are veneer teeth. So is enamel that has worn thin or been eroded by acid over the years, because a veneer covers the worn face and gives it back its surface.
Now, why healthy? A veneer is bonded, which means it is stuck on with a resin that holds on to sound enamel far more firmly than to an old filling or to the softer layer underneath. Give it a good, sound tooth and it holds on for years. Porcelain veneers commonly last ten to fifteen years, and porcelain shrugs off the tea and coffee that would stain a natural tooth.
Veneers are also most often done as a row rather than one tooth at a time, because the eye reads a smile as a row. A smile line is usually the six to ten teeth that show when you grin, and a single perfect tooth beside five untouched ones can look like a stranger at the party. That is exactly why the veneers here start with a trial smile: the new shape is placed over your own teeth so you can see it in the mirror, and change it, before a single tooth is touched.
When does a tooth need a crown instead?
When the tooth needs holding together. There are four situations where that happens, and most people recognise theirs straight away.
A large part of the tooth has broken off, and there is too little left for a filling to grip. A filling needs walls to sit inside, the way a jigsaw piece needs its neighbours, and a tooth with half its walls missing has nowhere to put one.
An old, large filling has been replaced once too often, and the ring of tooth around it has grown thin. Those thin walls are the part that cracks next, so the crown covers them before they do.
The tooth has had a root canal. Cleaning out the inside of a tooth leaves it hollower than it was, and a root-filled back tooth, which takes the full force of chewing, cracks without a crown over it.
The tooth has worn down, from grinding or years of hard use, and needs its height given back. A thin shell on the front cannot rebuild a biting surface that has been ground away; the new height has to be built over the top, where the bite lands.
Crowns commonly last ten years and often a good deal longer. What usually ends one is decay creeping in under its edge or a crack in the tooth beneath it, both of which a check-up catches early.
How much of my tooth does each one take away?
This is the question people really care about, and it deserves a straight answer for both.
A porcelain veneer takes a fraction of a millimetre of enamel from the front of the tooth, just enough that the shell sits flush instead of making the tooth look thick. A crown takes the tooth down on every side, top included, to a small core the crown fits over.
Here is the honest bit, though. Enamel does not grow back, so both are for keeps. A tooth prepared for a veneer will always need covering, and a tooth cut for a crown will always need a crown. That is why the sorting matters so much: the right choice takes only what your tooth actually has to give, and the wrong one either takes more than it needed to or holds together less than it should.
Veneer, crown or bonding: how do they compare?
Bonding belongs in this comparison too, because it is the answer for a surprising number of people who walk in asking for veneers. Dentists often call it a composite veneer, which tells you how close the two are.
| Porcelain veneer | Crown | Composite bonding | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it covers | The front of the tooth | The whole tooth, top and every side | The part being reshaped |
| The tooth it is for | Healthy, with a shape, length or shade you want changed | Broken, root-filled, heavily filled or worn down | Healthy, with a chip, small gap or uneven edge |
| What is removed | A fraction of a millimetre of enamel from the front | The tooth, down to a small core | Nothing |
| Visits | Consultation, trial smile, then two about two weeks apart | Consultation, then two about two weeks apart | Consultation, trial smile, then one |
| How long it lasts | Ten to fifteen years | Ten years, often much longer | Five years or more; chips are repaired |
| Price at Designer Smiles | £800 a tooth | From £332.10 a tooth | From £200 – £250 a tooth (standard £400) |
| On the NHS | For looks, private everywhere in England | Band 3, £332.10, at an NHS practice | For looks, private everywhere in England |
Read down any one column and you get a whole treatment. Read across a row and you see the trade: how much tooth goes, against how long it lasts and how much it changes.
Why is a veneer priced one way and a crown another?
The two prices come from different places, because the two treatments do different jobs.
A crown is repair work, everyday dentistry that keeps a weakened tooth in service, and a crown at Designer Smiles starts from £332.10 in metal, the same figure as an NHS Band 3 course of treatment, which is where the NHS puts a crown, with white crowns from £450 and porcelain from £800. That is deliberate: the everyday prices here start from the NHS band figures. If the tooth needs a root canal before it can be crowned, that is priced separately, from £550 for a front tooth to £850 for a molar, and you are told first. What moves the price of a crown has its own page.
A porcelain veneer is £800 a tooth, and what you are paying for is the look, because the look is the whole point of it. Each veneer is designed on screen to your face, tried in as the trial smile, and made in a shade matched against your own teeth so it sits in the row as though it grew there. What decides what veneers cost, porcelain against composite and per tooth against per smile, is set out on its own page. Either way the figure is written down before anything starts, and 0% finance through Tabeo is there if you would rather spread it.
Could I have a crown on a healthy front tooth, or a veneer on a broken one?
You could find someone to do either, and both are the wrong fit.
A crown on a healthy front tooth takes the whole outside of a perfectly good tooth to change its colour, which is like knocking down a sound wall to repaint it. It is also, as it happens, what most package clinics abroad fit. “Turkey teeth” is the name that has stuck to full-coverage crowns: each tooth filed to a peg on every side with a crown cemented over it. So the first thing to find out from any quote, here or abroad, is which of the two you are being sold. We fit crowns when a tooth needs one, and we leave healthy front teeth their outsides, because bonding or veneers change the colour without taking the tooth away. The Turkey teeth comparison goes through that trip honestly.
A veneer on a broken tooth has the opposite problem. The shell only covers the front, so it hides the break without holding anything together, and the tooth underneath carries on weakening out of sight. It is the false nail on the split nail again.
That is the whole sorting, and it is the one your dentist does at the consultation. How a crown, a veneer and bonding are each sorted and fitted is on the crowns and veneers page, with before and afters of crowns fitted at the practice.
What if my tooth needs neither?
Then you have had the best news on this page. If the change you want is small, a chipped corner, a short edge, a slight gap, composite bonding does it in one visit in tooth-coloured resin, for less, with nothing removed from the tooth at all. It can be polished, repaired or taken off later, and the tooth underneath is still yours. And if the teeth are fine but in the wrong places, the answer is to move them with Invisalign before anyone talks about covering them.
So there it is. A healthy tooth whose front you want changed is a veneer tooth, £800 a tooth with a trial smile first. A tooth that needs holding together is a crown tooth, from £332.10. A small change is bonding, and a tooth in the wrong place wants moving. The smile design consultation is free, it starts with a 3D scan of your face and teeth, and it ends with the right answer for your own tooth and its figure in writing. Ring 0121 709 3821, and we will tell you which one you have got.
