This article is part of the Future of Appearance, a collection of articles that investigates what we will look like in 20 years.
Season three of The White Lotus drew to a close last week. And class politics aside, audiences and publications have not stopped talking about one thing: actor Aimee Lou Wood and her teeth.
“I can’t believe the impact my teeth are having!” Wood said, speaking on UK talk show The Jonathan Ross Show a few weeks ago, after fellow guest Stephen Fry commended her for keeping her gappy, slightly protruding natural smile, which was met with applause. “I can’t believe I was bullied for them throughout my teen years and now people are in the audience clapping.”
The current fascination with Wood’s imperfect smile speaks to a broader trend: over the last five years, since pandemic remote working forced us to look at ourselves for hours a day on Zoom, and short-form video skyrocketed, giving rise to dental content on TikTok, we’ve become pretty obsessed with fixing our teeth. And while Wood and others like model Georgia May Jagger are celebrated for their imperfect teeth, they are also aligned with many other beauty standards like thinness and whiteness, and won’t move the needle on dental beauty standards for the average person, says Alex Peters, senior beauty director at Dazed.
On TikTok, there are currently one million videos featuring the hashtag #Teeth, up 40 per cent in the last 12 months, while 600,000 posts on the platform use the #Dentistry hashtag, up 35 per cent during the same period. Hashtags #TeethWhitening and #Teethcare also up 40 and 90 per cent, respectively, over the last year. And cosmetic dentists are benefitting: each dentist I spoke with for this story is seeing strong business growth post-pandemic.
Unlike medicine, or even cosmetic industries like skincare or haircare, “there has been very little innovation in dentistry in the last 100 years”, says Dr Brandon Nejati, co-founder of London’s ultra-high-end Nejati Dental Clinic, founded alongside his wife and fellow dentist Dr Mahsa in 2023. But today, as the rise of short-form video has prompted a cultural obsession with dental procedures, from veneers to whitening, consumers are more educated than ever about what’s possible for their teeth. And the wealthy continue to drive the market, seeking exclusive, innovative and most importantly undetectable dental treatments, to distinguish themselves from obvious procedures more readily associated with the masses. Over the next 20 years, we’ll see a rise in new treatments and products to improve the smile, while enhancing general health, longevity and the structure of the face.
So, what will our teeth look like in 2045?
The ‘skinification’ of dental care
You may have a 10-step skincare routine, and may have recently invested in scalp oils and masks for your hair. But do you have a multi-step dental regimen? When I enter Nejati Clinic, in London’s affluent Belgravia neighbourhood, it does feel a little like stepping into the future. I’m booked in for an “oral detox”, and unlike my routine visits to the dentist in my hometown Rochdale, I basically have a facial inside my mouth. There’s a low-abrasion exfoliation, gum serum and a bacteria-killing LED light applied to my mouth, all to remove the so-called biofilm bacteria that contributes to gum inflammation. In the next room, I can have acupuncture to further reduce the inflammation in my body or masseter Botox and acupressure to relieve jaw tension. To go home, I can take Dr Mahsa’s probiotic mouth serum, charcoal-activated mouthwash or different toothpastes for morning and night, to continue the skincare-inspired step-by-step.
“Our clients say they feel like they are at a dentist, but in 100 years from now,” Nejati says. Around 40 per cent of the clinic’s clientele are from overseas, as it offers a more advanced experience than most global dentists, he adds. Signalling what could hit mainstream by 2050, Nejati is adopting procedures from skincare and healthcare, including UV and LED light therapy or PRP therapy (aka the vampire facial), where blood is extracted from elsewhere in the body and then the platelets are reinjected into gums to improve dental tissue regeneration. In the coming decades, clinics like Nejati expect to use stem cells for many treatments, to aid regeneration and combat infection or inflammation. The global tooth regeneration market — including stem cells and biomaterials to regenerate dental tissue — is expected to grow from $4.5 billion in 2023 to $8.2 billion by 2033.
No more ‘Turkey teeth’?
“A couple of years ago, we saw a boom in veneer content. Suddenly, people started to notice them on celebrities like Miley Cyrus or The Weeknd and [analyse] them online,” Peters says. While veneers are costly in the UK (£500 to £1,500 per tooth) and the US ($900 to $2,500 per tooth), countries like Türkiye and Hungary have much cheaper options, with a full set of porcelain veneers for around £3,000. In the US or the UK, however, many clinics have implemented long-term payment plans to reduce barriers to entry. Traditional veneers, favoured by cheaper clinics, require teeth to be ground down to small pegs, to attach the thick porcelain veneer. As discourse around veneers boomed, more and more ‘regular’ people were undergoing the procedure, often resulting in beaming white, very obvious and thick new smiles, dubbed ‘Turkey teeth’ by many in the UK.
But recently, dentists are noting a shift away from the cookie-cutter, super-obvious veneers, as technology advances and allows people to have more natural looking ‘good’ teeth. “We’re not moving away from Hollywood smiles, but Hollywood smiles are changing, and even in Hollywood they want their smiles to be more natural looking,” Nejati says.
“Like we’re seeing in cosmetic surgery trends, there’s been this move to undetectable procedures. Wealthier people, people with more access to healthcare, will be able to get either dental work or veneers and you won’t be able to tell,” says Peters. “That will be the next trend after this cycle that we’re seeing now.”
To create a more undetectable look for high-end clients, many upmarket dental clinics are in a race to develop thinner veneers, also known as “no-prep” veneers, which can be placed directly onto the teeth without grinding them down, and are often fitted bespoke to the patient.
Dr Sam Jethwa is president of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (BACD) and founder of luxury dental clinic Bespoke Smile, which operates two clinics in London and Marlow, Kent. Just last month, Jethwa launched “feather veneers”, his latest ultra-thin ceramic design, which comes in at 0.3mm. For now, this arrives with a hefty price tag; a smile redesign with Jethwa can exceed £20,000. But as these innovations take hold more broadly, it could spell the end of so-called Turkey teeth by 2050, some dentists agree. “When it comes to [Turkey teeth], I think that a percentage of those people end up with that because they don’t know any better,” Jethwa says. “If they had been aware that something could be done differently, they wouldn’t have chosen it. They just think that’s all that can be done. So it’s about us putting things out there — Hollywood isn’t the only way.”
“They often say competition breeds innovation and for the industry as a whole it will. I believe there will be even more ceramics and business models that drive the prices down for no-prep veneers,” says Dr Joyce Kahng, an Orange County dentist with over 500,000 followers and 18.2 million likes on TikTok.
They may become more accessible, but it doesn’t mean all veneers will look good, Kahng adds. “Over the next 25 years, I think there will be a rush of people who do no-prep veneers on patients who are not a good candidate, so we will see a huge mix of results — both good, bad and really bad,” says Kahng. “Keep in mind, it truly is not the no-prep veneer that is the issue; they are a great treatment option. I am hoping that by 2050 both the public and the doctors providing the service will have calibrated their results and for those who are not a candidate, possibly methods like Invisalign can be used instead.”
Veneers and braces to improve facial structure
Another trend, one that is hardly talked about, is using veneers to create the effect of a lower face lift, which will be key in the coming decades, says Kahng. “Skin laxity is almost always thought to require a traditional face lift, but in many cases you would be surprised to find that it is also a result of loss of structure from the support of the teeth. In my office, we utilise veneers to open the bite back up and rebalance the way the teeth come together, which gives structure back to the lower face almost instantly,” she says. Looking ahead, we’ll see dental work become part of facial augmentation plans, used in tandem with aesthetics or surgery to achieve a more robust facial structure.
And we’re perhaps going to need it. As Jethwa explains, our mouths are still evolving, and future generations will likely experience more issues with jaw structure and tooth alignment, requiring a lot more dental work. “If you look at Western diets, now, our food is much softer than it used to be. What we are finding is that children are growing up needing a lot more intervention in terms of orthodontics than ever before,” he says. “It means that muscle and bone density is reduced, the jaw arch is narrower and muscles are not growing in the way they were [in the past].” This results in more mouth breathing, he continues, which ultimately takes a toll on facial structure. “A narrower jaw means narrower airways, which actually means untreated children can develop hooked noses and have less room for their tongue.”
Jaw widening with orthodontics, rather than extracting teeth that don’t fit in the mouth, will be crucial to reverse the trend, he adds. “If I fast forward 25 years, I think that’s going to be the main focus of dentistry.” If dentists don’t adopt this at scale, we’ll see increased use of braces and Invisalign in 2050, which has already been surging among adults. The global orthodontics market was worth $21.23 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $59.31 billion by 2033, according to Precedence Research. We’re also seeing a move towards train track , old-school braces, with teens and adults increasingly happy to embrace visible versions over Invisalign. It feels aligned with the rise in pimple patches, where brands like Starface have boomed as people embrace their imperfections and want to highlight — not hide — their correcting methods.
Better teeth may help you live longer
Traditionally, dental care has been separate from healthcare. But the Nejati Clinic is working to link oral care with longevity, particularly as affluent people wish to invest in living longer alongside looking better. And as we are seeing in aesthetics and cosmetics, dentistry will be all about preventative procedures by 2050. Increasingly, older patients are engaging with Nejati Clinic’s detox and anti-inflammation treatments, as they seek to avoid damage before it arises and learn about correlations between oral health and heart disease, Alzheimer’s and diabetes. Dr Hanna Kinsella notes a major surge in patients over 50 who are increasingly influenced by their children and by social media to improve their smiles, and are knowledgeable about the health risks of poor dental hygiene.
“There is so much research about inflammation in the body and its negative health effects, and we know that inflammation in the body is partly because of the biofilm from the mouth,” says Mahsa. “Research has shown Alzheimer’s is connected to bacteria that travels through the gum to the rest of the body, and we believe the future will be to heal the inflammation, to remove the biofilm in the mouth and to [thus] reduce the risk of diseases.”
Beyond innovations, ultimately the future of our teeth will depend on the accessibility of healthcare in 20 years, and what is exclusive and inclusive, Peters says. “So much of a beauty trend comes from what is inaccessible or rare. So if healthcare remains very or even more inaccessible globally, I think having ‘good’ teeth will still be desirable in 2050,” she says.
“However, if cosmetic dental work becomes more and more affordable and more and more accessible, I do see the backlash to that also being that these little imperfections could be seen as a way to differentiate yourself,” she counters. And with the rise of artificial intelligence-generated imagery and filters online, which will likely prioritise perfect teeth, we may want some points of difference from one another looking ahead. “If in 2050 a lot of our content is AI generated, I do think there’s a world where it will become desirable to have imperfect teeth in order to show that you’re a real human,” Peters says. “It could be a badge of honour.”
*Note on our images:
We created all lead images in this series using OpenAI GPT-4o’s image generation tool. To do that, we leveraged the ongoing partnership between Condé Nast and OpenAI and generated images that best reflect the expert insights and predictions about appearance found in this collection of articles.
We are aware of the debate surrounding the ethics of artificial intelligence in image-making, and we share concerns regarding creative ownership as well as that of our own image. In this series, we are talking about a world that doesn’t yet exist, and as AI is in so many ways the tool of the future, we felt it was appropriate to experiment with it in this way.
We guided the visuals entirely through written prompts. No external images or copyrighted materials were uploaded or referenced — every image was created from scratch based on our team’s original concepts.
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