Lisa from Dunedin — 8 Emax Press smile makeover

Real patient story, shared with permission. This patient has consented to Picasso Dental Clinic publishing their experience to help other New Zealand patients. Treatment, material, NZD price, and timeline are accurate to the case archive. Reviewed by Dr. Emily Nguyen, Founding Clinical Director.

Lisa is in her mid-forties, a veterinarian in Dunedin who spends her days reassuring anxious owners while a nervous dog shakes on the table. The two things she had stopped liking about her own smile were the gaps between her upper front teeth and the way the enamel had dulled to a tea-stained grey over twenty years of coffee and clinic hours. A Dunedin private clinic had quoted her around NZD 16,000 to bring all eight upper teeth back to where she wanted them — enough to make her close the browser more than once.

She sent us a handful of phone photos and a short note about the wedding she had coming up. We returned a written, itemised NZD quote within 24 hours: 8 Emax Press veneers at NZD 600 per tooth = NZD 4,800 (May 2026 Picasso price list, 1 NZD = 15,000 VND), with a 7-year warranty on the ceramic.

What she wanted from the design

Lisa was clear that she did not want a Hollywood result. As a clinician she is wary of anything that looks manufactured, and her worry was that “brighter” would mean “fake.” Our reply was to make the design the centre of the trip rather than an afterthought.

The Portrait Sitting on day 2 is where that gets resolved. We photograph the face at rest and mid-laugh, scan the teeth, and talk through shade, length, edge shape, and how much of the gap to close. Emax Press is a pressed lithium-disilicate ceramic chosen here for strength and for the way it handles light, so the new teeth read as enamel rather than as a flat white block. Lisa picked her shade sitting in the chair, against her own skin and the room’s lighting, not from a number on a card.

The 10-day trip

The fortnight away was the part she had dreaded logistically and ended up rating highest. “I treated it as a quiet working holiday — gentle days, good food, early nights — and the temporaries meant I was never walking around gap-toothed in between.”

What it cost end-to-end

Against the NZ benchmark of NZD 12,000 to 20,000 she had been quoted in Dunedin, the gross saving on the clinical work was roughly NZD 7,200 to 15,200, and the net saving after travel was about NZD 3,200 to 11,200. She used five days of annual leave, with the trip straddling two weekends.

The thing she didn’t expect

In her words from the post-trip survey: “Nobody warned me it would change my speech before it changed my looks. Closing the gaps shifted how air moved past my front teeth, and a faint whistle I’d never even noticed on certain words just vanished. I caught it mid-sentence on the phone to a client. There was a tiny lisp for a day after the fit too, and then it was gone.”

We have since added a line about this to the pre-trip pack. Real patient stories like Lisa’s are how we find those gaps.

Aftercare back in Dunedin

Lisa booked a check with her own NZ dentist for four weeks after the trip, confirmed before she flew. Her dentist reviewed the bite and the margins and signed the case off; we received a copy for her file. As a vet she keeps meticulous records, so she scanned her treatment notes and the 7-year veneer warranty the day she got home. Two 6-monthly cleans since have been uneventful.

Lisa’s three pieces of advice

From her survey response:

1. “Choose your shade in person, not from a chart online. Sitting in the chair against my own face is the only reason it looks like me and not like someone else’s teeth.”
2. “Use the temporaries phase properly. I almost let two edges go because I felt awkward asking — I went back, they fixed it in ten minutes, and I’m so glad I spoke up.”
3. “Plan the fortnight as recovery, not a tour. I came home rested instead of frazzled, and the whole thing felt calm rather than rushed.”

See also

• Smile makeover pillar — the protocol, materials, and NZD pricing.
• Veneer care tips — what Lisa was told for home maintenance.
• Dunedin to Vietnam smile makeover travel page — local benchmark and route logistics.

Request your own free NZD smile makeover quote

About this page

Medically reviewed by

Dr. Emily Nguyen

Founding Clinical Director, Picasso Dental Clinic

DDS · Founder and Clinical Director, Picasso Dental Clinic group

Clinical focus: Cosmetic dentistry · Veneers · Smile design

Dr. Emily Nguyen founded Picasso Dental Clinic in 2013 (originally Serenity International Dental Clinic) and led its 2023 rebrand. She sets clinical standards across the group's six branches in Hanoi, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City, and Da Lat, and personally reviews cosmetic protocols including the Portrait Sitting workflow for veneers and smile makeovers.

Last clinically reviewed

28 May 2026

Published by

Picasso Dental Clinic

Review policy

Every medical procedure page on this site is reviewed by a named Picasso clinician before publication and re-checked when pricing, materials, or protocols change. Source documents are linked at the bottom of each page.