A while back my sister sent the family group chat a photo from Mum’s birthday lunch. Ten of us squeezed around a table at a Thai place in Yarraville, everyone mid-laugh, and there I was at the end with my lips clamped shut like I was hiding a lolly. I zoomed in. My bottom front teeth, which I’m fairly sure were straight in Year 12, had quietly shuffled into something resembling a queue at a Myki machine.
No serum fixes that. Neither does a better angle, and believe me, I tried a few.
I suspect plenty of people have a photo like that somewhere in their camera roll, which probably explains why orthodontic waiting rooms seem to have more grown-ups in them than they used to. If you’ve been wondering whether braces are a teenage thing you missed the boat on, this is what I found out about how adult treatment actually works, minus the brochure language.
Why Adults End Up Needing Braces
The first thing that surprised me is that teeth keep moving for most of your life. A large US study found that incisor crowding increases with age, with the biggest changes happening in early adulthood. So my wandering bottom teeth weren’t a personal failing. Probably.
From what I can tell, adults in the chair fall into roughly three groups. There are the ones who had braces as teenagers, lost the retainer somewhere around their second share house and have watched the old crookedness creep back. There are the ones who never had treatment because it wasn’t in the family budget at the time. And then I think there’s a newer group who spent so many hours staring at their own face on video calls that they started noticing things they’d happily ignored for twenty years. I’m in at least one of those groups and I’m not telling you which.
Is It Too Late for Braces in Your 30s or 40s?
I don’t believe age on its own is the problem. What seems to matter more is the health of your gums and the bone holding your teeth in place. The Australian Society of Orthodontists points out that gum problems become more common as we get older, so a decent orthodontist will look at that before anything else and might send you back to your dentist for a proper clean first.
The other difference is that an adult jaw has finished growing. Some problems an orthodontist can guide along in a growing teenager have to be handled differently in a 40-year-old, and in a smaller number of cases (usually a significant bite or jaw issue) treatment can involve surgery as well as braces. Most of us are nowhere near that territory, I’d guess, but it helps to know it’s a thing before you walk in.
Treatment might also take a bit longer than it would for a teenager. I’d take any timeframe you read online with a grain of salt, including mine, but one to two years seems to be a common ballpark.
Adult Braces and Aligner Options
Metal Braces
Still the workhorse. They’re the most visible option, they’re very effective and they tend to be the cheapest. If you can live with the look, I couldn’t find much to argue with.
Clear Braces
These work the same way but use tooth-coloured (ceramic) brackets, so from across a café table they’re much less obvious. The catch is that the little elastic ties holding the wire can pick up stains, which means the daily long black and the Friday night curry might need some rethinking. As I understand it, the ties get swapped at each adjustment, which helps.
Clear Aligners
These are the removable trays you’ve probably seen advertised everywhere, usually on someone with suspiciously perfect skin. For the right case they’re very good, and being able to pop them out for a work dinner is a real advantage. But the word “invisible” does a lot of heavy lifting in those ads. According to the ASO you usually need to wear aligners 20 to 22 hours a day, and an aligner sitting in its case at the bottom of your bag moves precisely zero teeth. If you’re the sort of person who’d “just leave them out for the arvo”, I’d be honest with yourself before choosing them. I know I would struggle.
Lipstick, Lisps and Other Beauty Snags
Lipstick and aligners have a slightly awkward relationship. The trays come out every time you eat or drink anything other than water, and going back in after lunch means brushing first, so a full lip ends up being reapplied far more often than planned. I gather plenty of people switch to tints or balms for the duration and never go back.
You may also lisp a little for the first few days, and teeth tend to feel tender for a day or two after a new tray or a braces adjustment. Neither seems to last. On the upside, braces apparently do wonders for your brushing habits, mostly because it becomes very obvious very quickly when you’ve skipped a spot.
How Much Do Adult Braces Cost in Australia?
I’m going to avoid quoting a figure, because it varies a lot depending on how complicated your teeth are and which option you pick, and anyone who gives you a firm price before looking in your mouth is guessing. For most people I think it lands somewhere in several-thousand-dollar territory. The better news is that a lot of practices now offer interest-free payment plans, which makes it feel less like buying a small car in one go.
Time-wise, braces mean regular check-ins every couple of months or so, while aligners usually mean fewer chair visits. Then there’s the part almost everyone forgets to budget for.
Retainers After Adult Braces
If you take one thing from this article, make it this: the retainer isn’t optional. The ASO says plainly that without a retainer, teeth will shift again, and people with removable retainers generally need to wear them every night for as long as possible. Yes, possibly forever. It sounds tedious and it is, a bit. But the alternative is doing all of this again at 55, and the lost-retainer crowd from earlier would happily tell you how that feels.
Seeing an Adult Orthodontist in Melbourne
The first step is a consultation, and I’d see a specialist rather than start with a mail-order aligner kit. A specialist orthodontist has completed three extra years of full-time study in orthodontics after their dental degree, which matters when the real question is whether your gums, bite and jaw suit the treatment you’ve already got your heart set on.
A consult with an adult orthodontist in Melbourne should tell you in one visit which options suit your teeth, roughly how long it would take and what it’s likely to cost. If you’re in the west, The Look Orthodontists in Altona is a short walk from the train station, which makes an appointment before work a little less grim than it sounds.
As for me, I’m still weighing it up. In the meantime I’ve been practising laughing with my mouth open, which my sister says looks worse.
