Braces (Train Tracks)

Goatstown

Fees vary widely between practices and between cases, so any figure quoted online is a guess until someone has looked in your mouth.

What moves the number is the complexity of the case, the appliance chosen, whether both arches are treated and how long it takes. Metal fixed braces are generally the most affordable route to a corrected bite. Ceramic braces and clear aligners sit above them.

We give you a firm written figure at your consultation at our Ballinteer Road clinic, with nothing added later.

Twice a day at minimum, ideally after every meal, and give it a proper two minutes.

Angle the brush to clean above and below each bracket separately rather than sweeping across the middle, and follow the gum line all the way round. Interdental brushes get under the wire and between the teeth where a normal brush cannot reach. A water flosser helps but does not replace brushing.

This is the part that decides whether you finish with clean teeth or permanent white marks. Our hygienist will go through it with you if it is slipping.

Not in the way people fear. Fitting braces is not painful at all, since nothing is being drilled or injected.

What you get afterwards is tenderness, starting a few hours later and lasting three or four days. Teeth feel bruised and biting into anything firm is uncomfortable. The same happens more briefly after each adjustment.

Soft food and ordinary painkillers deal with it. It settles, and it does not come back in the same way later in treatment.

For most people, yes, though the reasons are worth being honest about.

The health case is real: straighter teeth are easier to clean over decades, and a corrected bite spreads chewing forces evenly instead of wearing particular teeth. Where there is a deep bite, a crossbite or a large overjet, treatment prevents damage that would otherwise accumulate.

Where teeth are mildly irregular and the bite is sound, it is a cosmetic decision, and that is a perfectly legitimate reason too. We will tell you which of those situations you are in.

Sometimes, subtly, and usually for the better. The clearest changes come where the front teeth were markedly protruding or the bite was deep, because lip support and profile shift as those are corrected.

Where extractions are part of the plan, the profile can flatten slightly, and that is something we consider deliberately rather than by accident.

What braces do not do is reshape the jawbone or sharpen a jawline. Anything claiming otherwise is overselling. Real skeletal change requires surgery or, in children, appliances that influence growth.