Spacing

Spacing is the opposite of crowding: more room along the jaw than the teeth need, leaving visible gaps. It can appear anywhere, and the best known example is a diastema, the gap between the two upper front teeth.

More on our spacing page.

Usually teeth that are small relative to the size of the jaw, which is inherited. Other causes include teeth that never developed, unusually narrow teeth, a low frenum where the band of tissue between lip and gum sits between the front teeth, and tongue thrusting.

Gum disease is different. Where teeth have drifted apart because supporting bone has been lost, the spacing is a symptom of something that needs treating first.

Braces or clear aligners close gaps predictably, and this is one of the situations where aligners perform very well.

Two things to know. Where teeth are missing or genuinely undersized, closing every gap can leave the remaining teeth looking too wide, so the better plan is often to gather the space in one place and have your dentist build up or replace a tooth. And closed spaces have a strong tendency to reopen, so a bonded retainer behind the front teeth is usually the sensible end point.

No. A diastema causes no harm on its own, and plenty of people like theirs and have no interest in closing it. Spacing does not cause progressive damage the way a deep bite does, so leaving it alone is a perfectly reasonable decision.

The reasons to treat are that you dislike how it looks, that food packs into the gap persistently, or that the spacing is part of a wider bite problem being corrected anyway. It is your call, and we will not push you either way.

Not inherently. A gap between healthy teeth with healthy gums is not a health problem.

What can matter is food packing. Where a gap traps food persistently and it is hard to clean, that raises the risk of decay and gum problems over time. And where gaps have appeared recently in an adult who did not have them before, that is worth investigating, because drifting teeth can be a sign of gum disease.

They can. Gaps that have been there since the adult teeth came through tend to be fairly stable, though they can widen slowly.

Gaps that appear or widen in adulthood are a different matter and should be checked. The usual cause is loss of bone support from gum disease, which lets teeth drift. Treating the gum problem comes before any orthodontics.

Strictly, none. In an ideal arrangement adjacent teeth contact each other, so there is no gap at all.

In practice small spaces are common and cause no trouble. A gap in children between the upper front teeth is often entirely normal and closes on its own once the canines come through, which is why we rarely treat a diastema in a young child.