What a smile makeover actually is
A smile makeover is not one treatment — it is a plan that combines treatments in the right order to change how your smile looks. The building blocks: whitening (from £330) changes colour; clear aligners (from £2,200) change position; composite bonding (from £350 per tooth) changes shape and repairs edges; porcelain veneers (from £590.75 per tooth) change shape and colour more comprehensively; and gum health work underpins everything. Smile makeovers at Station House start from £350 — because for some patients, a single edge-bonded tooth or a whitening course is the entire makeover. Bigger is not the goal; right is.
The sequence that protects your money
There is a correct order, and it exists for hard material reasons. First, health: decay and gum disease are treated before any cosmetics — cosmetic work on inflamed gums or active decay fails. Second, position: if alignment is part of the plan, aligners come before bonding or veneers, because straightening teeth often dramatically reduces how much bonding or how many veneers you need — sometimes to zero. Third, colour: whitening comes before any tooth-coloured restoration, because composite and porcelain are colour-matched at the moment of placement and never change shade afterwards. Whiten after veneers and your natural teeth lighten while the veneers stay put. Fourth, shape: bonding or veneers are matched to the final, whitened shade. Every expensive makeover mistake we are asked to fix violates one of these four steps.
Bonding or veneers — the honest comparison
Composite bonding: applied directly in one visit, usually no drilling and no anaesthetic, reversible, from £350 per tooth — and it stains over time, lasts roughly 5 to 7 years with care, and suits chips, gaps and edge irregularities. Porcelain veneers: laboratory-made over two visits, requiring minimal but permanent tooth preparation, from £590.75 per tooth — stain-resistant, longer-lived, and the stronger choice for major shape or colour change. The honest steer: bonding is the conservative default for younger patients and smaller corrections; veneers earn their cost where bonding would be repeatedly repaired or cannot achieve the change you want. Many of our best results mix both — veneers where the heavy lifting is, bonding where it isn't.
Don't skip the alignment question
The most common planning error is masking crowding with restorations. Veneering crooked teeth into apparent straightness means cutting healthy teeth aggressively and accepting bulky results; aligning them first (from £2,200, typically 6 to 18 months) means thinner, more conservative cosmetics afterwards — or discovering that straight, whitened teeth were the result you wanted all along. The trade-off is time, and it is a fair trade: months of patience routinely saves thousands of pounds and millimetres of enamel.
What it costs — built from real numbers
Because makeovers are modular, costs are too. Illustrative combinations from our published prices: whitening alone from £330; whitening plus four edge-bonded teeth from £1,730; aligners plus whitening from £2,530; a six-veneer transformation from £3,544.50. Your written plan prices your actual combination before anything starts, and 0% finance over £250 (via V12, subject to status) spreads the cost over 6 or 10 months.
The consultation that starts it
Our £40 Smile Consultation is the planning visit: a full examination, X-rays, photographs, a conversation about what you do and don't like about your smile, and a written plan with every option priced — the £40 redeemable against treatment. Bring photos of your smile from years ago, or smiles you admire; they tell us more than adjectives. And expect pushback where it is deserved: if a cheaper or more conservative route reaches the result you described, you will hear about it at this visit, not after the expensive one is paid for.
Maintenance — the part to plan for upfront
Whitening needs occasional top-ups in your custom trays. Bonding needs polishing visits and eventual repair or replacement on a 5-to-7-year horizon. Veneers outlast bonding but are not forever. Aligned teeth need retainers — indefinitely — or they drift back. And everything cosmetic sits on the foundation of hygiene visits (from £72) and check-ups (from £60). A makeover is an asset with running costs; we put them in the plan so the numbers you decide on are the whole truth.