A gummy smile isn’t a medical problem. It’s a cosmetic concern, and a surprisingly common one.
If you smile in photos and find yourself trying to lower your top lip without quite knowing why, you’re describing the experience most of our gummy smile patients arrive with. Anti-wrinkle injections are one of the simplest, least invasive routes to addressing it, and we’ve been offering anti-wrinkle gummy smile Westcliff treatments for long enough to know what works and what doesn’t.
What counts as a gummy smile
Roughly speaking, when you smile, if more than two to three millimetres of gum tissue shows above your upper teeth, that’s clinically considered a gummy smile. It’s not a strict line. Some people show four millimetres and don’t notice. Others show two and feel self-conscious about every photograph.
The cause is usually one of three things, sometimes a combination. Either the upper lip is short and hyperactive (lifts higher than average when smiling), the gum tissue itself is excessive, or the upper jaw bone is positioned slightly forward. Each of these has a different treatment route.
Anti-wrinkle injections only address the first cause. That’s important, and we’d rather say it now than have you arrive expecting a fix for something else.
A short consultation usually tells us which category you fall into. It also tells us whether you’ll see a meaningful change from injectables or whether you’d be better steered toward something else.
In our experience, the consultation conversation matters more than the procedure itself. Half the patients who book one realise during the chat that the route they assumed they wanted isn’t actually the right one for their case.
How the treatment actually works
Two small injections, one either side of the nose, in the muscle that lifts the upper lip when you smile (the levator labii superioris alaeque nasi, if you’re after the full anatomical name).
Relaxing this muscle slightly reduces how high the upper lip rises during a smile. The lip still moves. You still smile normally. There’s just a little less lift, which means a little less gum on display.
The whole appointment takes about ten minutes once we’ve talked through it. The injections themselves are very fast.
In our experience, patients are surprised by how few injections this involves. A lot of them arrive expecting several pinprick sites and a dramatic procedure. It really isn’t that.
The needle is fine, the dose is small, and most patients describe the sensation as briefer than they’d anticipated.
Who it suits and who it doesn’t
Patients with a hyperactive upper lip and otherwise healthy gum and bone position get the cleanest results. Roughly seven in ten of the gummy smile patients we see fall into this category.
For the other three, we usually need to have a different conversation. Excessive gum tissue might respond better to a gum reshaping procedure. Skeletal causes (where the upper jaw sits forward) are harder to treat without orthodontics or, in significant cases, surgery.
Actually, that needs a slight correction. We’ve had patients with a mild skeletal contribution get good cosmetic results from injectables alone, even though the underlying anatomy hadn’t changed. It camouflaged the appearance well enough for them. So it’s not always either-or.
You’ll find advice online suggesting anti-wrinkle treatment fixes any gummy smile. It doesn’t. Honest expectations from the start save everyone time.
That said, the first appointment is the right place to test the assumption rather than rule it in or out from a photograph alone.
What the result looks like
Subtle. That word matters. The aim is to bring your smile line down by two to three millimetres so it sits within a more conventionally pleasing range, not to flatten your smile or make it look stiff.
If the result looks obvious, we’ve done too much. If it looks like nothing’s changed, we haven’t done enough. The window between those two is narrower than people assume.
The change should sit at the threshold of noticeable. Friends might say you look well rested or ask if you’ve changed your hair, without quite identifying what’s different. That’s a good outcome, in our experience.
How long it lasts and what maintenance looks like
Somewhere between three and four months for most patients. The upper lip muscle is one of the most active in the face, so it tends to recover faster than, say, forehead muscles.
Some patients book three appointments a year and treat it as a maintenance routine. Others come in once before a wedding or a significant event and don’t return. Both are valid approaches.
Worth knowing: the second treatment usually settles more evenly than the first. There’s a learning curve, even within a single patient, where the muscle adapts to the reduced activity and the next round produces a slightly cleaner result. That isn’t universal. But it’s common enough that we mention it.
One detail worth knowing for repeat patients: dose tends to drift slightly downward over time once we’ve worked out what the muscle responds to. The first round is calibrated conservatively, the second adjusted with more information, and by the third or fourth round we’re often using a touch less product to maintain the same effect. This is genuinely useful for cost planning, since the per-treatment fee on smaller doses is sometimes a little lower than the initial round. We don’t promise reductions, but the trend is real, and we’d rather use less product to get the same look than chase larger doses unnecessarily.
Patients who treat the gummy smile alongside another upper-face concern (such as forehead or frown lines) often find the appointment is more efficient than booking each separately. The consultation, mapping, and aftercare conversations cover the whole face at once, and the additional time for the lip injections is short. We’d never suggest adding areas just to fill the appointment, but if you’ve been considering both, it’s worth asking how the combined plan would look.
What to compare it against
If you’re weighing options, here’s the rough landscape for gummy smile correction.
| Approach | Best for | Duration of effect | Reversibility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anti-wrinkle injections | Hyperactive upper lip | 3 to 4 months | Fully reversible (wears off) |
| Gum reshaping (gingivectomy) | Excess gum tissue | Permanent | Not reversible |
| Lip repositioning surgery | Severe lip hyperactivity | Long-term, sometimes permanent | Reversible with surgery |
| Orthognathic surgery | Skeletal jaw position | Permanent | Reversible only with further surgery |
| Orthodontics (braces, aligners) | Mild skeletal cases | Long-term | Limited reversibility |
The injectable route is usually where patients start, partly because it’s the lowest commitment, partly because if it works it answers the question without needing anything more involved. The range of normal smile presentations is wider than you might think, and not every gummy smile actually needs treatment, only the ones that bother the person wearing them.
That last point is the one we tend to lean on. If you’ve never been bothered by your smile, no treatment is required.
If you’re considering this and want a measured opinion before committing, our team is happy to talk it through with you. You’re welcome to ring us on 01702 344 500 or have a look at Westcliff Dental Practice online. A consultation will tell you within a few minutes whether it’s the right route, and if it isn’t, we’ll be straight with you about that too.
