How Long Does Invisalign Take?
"How long will this take?" is usually the second question people ask me about clear aligners, right after what it costs. The honest answer is a range, and the reason it is a range is worth understanding — because one part of it is up to you.
The short answer
Most adult cases finish somewhere between six and eighteen months. Minor crowding or a bit of spacing — the kind where a few front teeth have drifted over the years — can be done in a few months. A bite that needs real correction, or teeth that have to travel a long way, can run two years or more. When I give someone a number at a consultation, it comes from their scan and X-rays and the plan their teeth actually need, not from an average.
What makes the difference
How far the teeth have to move. Rotating a round-rooted tooth or closing a real gap takes longer than tipping a crowded incisor back into line.
What your bite is doing. Overbite, underbite and crossbite problems add steps. Some respond well to aligners with elastics, some are better handled with braces, and a few need an oral surgeon involved.
Whether space has to be created. Crowded teeth need somewhere to go. That can mean polishing small amounts of enamel between teeth, or in some cases removing a tooth.
Your age, a little. Adult teeth tend to move somewhat more slowly than a teenager's, though that matters less than the next item on this list.
Wear time. This is the big one, and the only one entirely in your hands.
Wear time is the part you control
Aligners are meant to be in your mouth 20 to 22 hours a day. You take them out to eat, and to drink anything other than water, then brush and put them back in. That sounds simple written down. In practice a long lunch, a coffee you nurse for an hour, an evening where they sit in their case on the kitchen counter — those hours add up quickly, and the plan quietly falls behind. Teeth move on the schedule the aligners set only if the aligners are actually on the teeth.
If you do fall behind, we don't start over. Usually you go back to the last tray that seated properly and wear it longer. But the finish date moves, and there is no way around that.
What the first few weeks feel like
Tightness and pressure for a day or two after each new tray, strongest at the very beginning. Most people call it sore rather than painful, and it settles.
A slight lisp that usually fades within a week as your tongue adapts.
A drier mouth than you expected. Keeping water nearby helps, and it is good for your teeth anyway.
Small tooth-colored bumps bonded to some teeth, called attachments, so the aligners have something to grip and can push in the direction the plan needs. They come off at the end.
Changing trays on whatever schedule your plan sets, commonly every week or two.
One small tip that is worth more than it sounds: switch to a new tray at bedtime. You sleep through the tightest part of it.
Refinements, and why the first estimate isn't the last word
Teeth do not always move exactly the way the planning software predicted. Near the end of the first series, it is common to take a fresh scan and order a second, shorter set of aligners to finish the details — a tooth that didn't rotate all the way, a contact that isn't quite closing. That is called refinement. It is a normal part of treatment rather than a sign something went wrong, and it is a good part of why I quote a range instead of a date.
Then comes the retainer
This is the part people underestimate. Teeth don't stay where they are put on their own — they drift back toward where they came from, and that pull is strongest in the first year after treatment. Plan on wearing a retainer indefinitely in some form, nightly at first and often less frequently as time goes on. Straightening the teeth is the project. The retainer is the maintenance, and it is what keeps the months you just spent.
Is this even the right tool for your teeth?
Clear aligners handle a great many cases well, and there are some they handle poorly. Severe crowding, larger bite discrepancies, and teeth that need to move a long way vertically are often better served by braces. An exam with X-rays and a scan is what settles it, and if braces are the better answer for your mouth, that is what I will tell you — a shorter treatment that works beats a more comfortable one that doesn't.
This post is general information rather than a diagnosis. Your own treatment time depends on your teeth, your bite and your X-rays, and the only way to get a real estimate is to have someone look.
If you have been wondering about straightening your teeth and want a straight answer about what it would take, we are glad to take a look.
Hashimi Dental, 3701 Market St. Suite E, Riverside, CA 92501
Comments