Clear aligners usually take 6–18 months for adults.
Let’s face it. When you imagine a straighter smile looking in the mirror your next thought hardly ever goes into the biology of the bone remodeling. It’s the calendar that you think about. Will I be done with my wedding? By summer? By next year?
At Lema Dental Clinic in Turkey, we get this question all the time. It is obvious that adult patients want the results and, in fact, they want the results to be yesterday. Fortunately, clear aligners have completely changed the “waiting game” of orthodontics. Whereas the metal brackets and wires of the former orthodontics required the lasting of two or more years, clear aligners offer a nicer and often faster way to a perfect smile.
But really how long does it take?
The most common period is usually between 6 and 18 months. But the truth is, it varies according to each person’s jaw biology and the level of their self-discipline.
The “Iceberg” of Orthodontics: Orthodontics Hidden Features
Before you decide on a timeline, you should also know what happens under the gums. One way to picture this is to consider your teeth as trees. Moving the visible part of a tooth is quite easy but dragging the roots through your jawbone is the hard part and it takes time to happen with constant pressure.
Attempting to move a tooth quickly might lead to root resorption or bone damage, and this is exactly what happens if a tree is forcibly uprooted. As the force of the aligner is kept low and steady, the bone will be resorbed on one side of the root and new bone will form on the other. This biological change is the fact that sets a limit to the treatment speed. No matter how tech gets improved, your biology can only handle so much stress.
Different Factors Affecting the Treatment Time
Firstly, at Lema Dental Clinic in Turkey, based on what patients and their outcomes teach us, the treatment duration can be categorized as follows:
- Social Six” (3–6 Months): Refers to cases where only the front six teeth, which are the most visible ones, require alignment. It is a surface-level, fast procedure, thus very appealing to adults who want to look great on their big day.
- Mild to Moderate Correction (6–12 Months): It covers situations where the gaps need to be closed, the crowding is minor, or the rotation is just a little bit off.
- Complex Bite Correction (12–18+ Months): First and foremost, it means that if the function of your back teeth (the way they bite together) needs to be fixed or an overbite is so excessive that it requires the diagnosis of the cause, then your treatment will be long-term.
Doctor Professor Coşkun Yıldız has already acknowledged that an adult’s bone is denser compared to a teenager’s. It is, therefore, less “malleable,” in other words, adults may not experience tooth movement as fast as a 14-year-old. On the other hand, adults perfectly compensate for this lack of speed with a feature which teenagers usually don’t have: strict compliance.”
The Role of Lema Dental Clinic & Expert Oversight
We often hear from patients that clear aligners are just “plastic trays,” and this is one of the misconceptions we debunk all the time. The truth is they are highly advanced medical devices. In our Turkey-based clinic, Dentist Polen Akkılıç and her team prepare your treatment digitally before you even put on your first tray.
We just don’t take a shot in the dark; we foresee and plan the entire movement.
The main advantage of coming to Turkey for your dental treatment is not only that you will save money, but also that you will get an excellent service. We employ the scanning top technology that allows us to achieve the perfect fit of every tray. The main source of treatment delay is poor-fitting trays. If the “steering wheel” (the aligner) lets go of the “tires” (your teeth), the car stops moving.
Clear Aligners vs. Traditional Braces: A Timeline Comparison
Most patients ask us if aligners are actually faster than braces. In quite a few cases, the answer is yes, and this is because the force is applied all over the tooth while with a bracket only on the front.
Here is a breakdown of what we typically see in the clinic:
| Feature | Clear Aligners | Traditional Metal Braces |
| Average Timeline (Adults) | 6 – 18 Months | 18 – 24+ Months |
| Force Application | 360-degree wrapping force | Pull/Push from brackets |
| Emergency Visits | Rare (no broken wires) | Frequent (loose brackets/wires) |
| Hygiene Impact | Low (Removable) | High (Hard to floss) |
| Esthetics | Nearly invisible | Highly visible |
| Compliance Required | High (22 hours/day) | Low (Fixed in place) |
The “22-Hour Rule” – The Secret to Speed
We basically tell every patient who is sitting in front of us the same honest thing: the aligners will only do their job if they are in your oral cavity.
This is something that contradicts what one might think at first, but it turns out to be the most important factor nevertheless. Wear aligners and keep them for 22 hours a day and you will not get off track. 18 hours of wearing means that 6 hours without aligners can cause a relapse (a slight backward movement of the teeth). In this way, extending a 10-month treatment to 14 months is so easy.
Imagine that you are rolling a boulder uphill. As long as you continue pushing the boulder (wearing the aligners), it will go up. But if you stop, the law of gravity will cause it to roll downhill a few inches.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most of us want to speed things up; however, biology is the boss here. Teeth cannot be made to move at a speed faster than bone remodeling without damage. On the other hand, you can avoid delays. You get the point, right? The chewies help to close the gaps between the teeth and the aligner thus making sure the force is coming from the right direction. Besides that, hesitating with the 22-hour wear time commitment is probably your worst enemy, not only does it delay the whole thing but also causes the pain to come back after it had just gone away.
Not to any noticeable extent. Although adult bone is denser, it is still possible to get the same results as those of patients in their teens given the same good condition of gum and bone. We have had 60 year-old patients and treated them successfully. It is the same process that just needs a steady and gentle move.
Do not panic but contact us as soon as possible. Normally, we make you wear the previous aligner to avoid teeth shifting until the new one is ready or we might also allow you to use the new tray if the switch is almost done. The worst thing you can do is just ignore the situation because that leads to the teeth shifting backwards which necessarily means the extension of the treatment time.
The best part of clear aligner treatment for our patients coming from abroad is that. Braces need regular tightening sessions, while we are able to give you a few months’ worth of aligners at once. Through remote progress monitoring or a smaller number of visits, we achieve the perfect combination of dental tourism and treatment.
In the medical area, we generally give estimates instead of guarantees. Your body might work either quicker or slower than average. Nevertheless, digital planning provides us with a very precise guide. Provided you do everything as instructed, our preliminary time estimation is usually quite close to what actually happens.
- Al-Sanea, J. A., & Al-Moghrabi, D. (2023). Effectiveness and efficiency of clear aligner therapy in adult patients: A systematic review. American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, 163(1), 12-22.
- Buschang, P. H., & Shaw, S. G. (2022). Biology of tooth movement and its clinical implications in clear aligner therapy. Orthodontics & Craniofacial Research, 25(S1), 45-53.
- Gu, J., Tang, J. S., & Skulski, B. (2017). Clear aligner treatment complications and risks: A review. Journal of Clinical Orthodontics, 51(2), 108-118.
- Papadimitriou, A., & Mousoulea, S. (2018). Clinical effectiveness of Invisalign® orthodontic treatment: a systematic review. Progress in Orthodontics, 19(1), 37.
- Rossini, G., Parrini, S., Castroflorio, T., Deregibus, A., & Debernardi, C. L. (2015). Efficacy of clear aligners in controlling orthodontic tooth movement: a systematic review. The Angle Orthodontist, 85(5), 881-889.
