Adult braces take about 20 months on average, though the actual range spans from 14 to 33 months depending on the complexity of your case and the type of appliance you choose. That’s longer than most adults expect. Surveys show that nearly 43% of adult patients guess their treatment will wrap up in 6 to 12 months, which is realistic only for the mildest cases.
Why Adults Take Longer Than Teens
Adult bone is denser and remodels more slowly than adolescent bone. When braces push a tooth in one direction, the bone on one side needs to break down while new bone forms on the other side. In adults, less new bone builds up on the leading side, and more bone is lost on the trailing side. The result is that teeth move more slowly and end up with less bone support overall compared to teenagers undergoing the same movement. This biological difference is one reason orthodontists often quote longer timelines for adults even when the alignment problem looks straightforward.
Treatment Time by Type of Braces
The appliance you choose affects how long you’ll be in treatment. A comparative study found that traditional metal braces averaged 24 months, while clear aligners averaged 18 months. That six-month gap was statistically significant, though it comes with a caveat: clear aligners work best for mild to moderate cases. If your teeth need significant repositioning, your orthodontist may recommend fixed braces regardless of the longer timeline.
Lingual braces (attached to the back of your teeth) and ceramic braces generally follow the same timeline as traditional metal braces, since the underlying mechanics are similar.
How Specific Bite Problems Affect the Timeline
Not all alignment issues take the same amount of time to fix. Simple crowding or minor spacing problems sit on the shorter end of the spectrum, often 12 to 18 months. An overbite caused by tooth position alone typically falls in that same range. But a skeletal overbite, where the jaw bones themselves are misaligned, pushes treatment to 18 to 24 months or longer without surgery.
Cases that require jaw surgery have the longest timelines. The orthodontic work happens in phases before and after the surgical procedure, and the total process can stretch to 24 to 36 months. Open bites, severe underbites, and crossbites that involve skeletal discrepancies tend to land in this category for adults, since jaw growth is no longer an option.
Gum Disease Can Add Months Before You Start
Adults are far more likely than teens to have gum disease, and this can delay the start of orthodontic treatment significantly. Moving teeth through inflamed gums risks destroying the bone and tissue that hold your teeth in place. Orthodontists will not begin treatment until periodontal inflammation is fully resolved.
The recommended waiting period is at least six months after completing active gum treatment, with evidence that inflammation has cleared. In more severe cases, the periodontal phase alone can take over a year. One documented case required 16 months of gum treatment before a single bracket was placed. This pre-treatment time is separate from the braces timeline itself, so total time from first appointment to final result can be considerably longer than the numbers above suggest.
What You Control: Compliance and Appointments
Your own habits play a measurable role in how long treatment takes. Rubber bands (elastics) are prescribed to correct bite alignment, and skipping them is one of the most common reasons treatment runs over schedule. The same applies to clear aligner wear: removing trays for more than the allowed two to four hours per day slows tooth movement and forces your orthodontist to extend your treatment plan.
Appointment spacing also matters. Most orthodontists schedule adjustments every 6 to 10 weeks. Missing or rescheduling these visits pushes your end date back, sometimes by more than the time you missed, since teeth can drift between appointments if wires aren’t updated on schedule. Broken brackets or bent wires that go unrepaired between visits have the same effect.
Accelerated Treatment Options
For adults who want to shorten their timeline, accelerated orthodontic techniques can reduce treatment duration by roughly 30%. One method involves tiny perforations made in the bone near the teeth being moved, which stimulates the body’s bone-remodeling response. In a controlled study, this approach increased the rate of tooth movement from about 1.2 mm per month to 1.8 mm per month, cutting total treatment time from approximately 265 days to 185 days for the teeth involved.
These techniques aren’t appropriate for every case, and they add cost. But for adults motivated to finish faster, they represent one of the few evidence-backed ways to meaningfully compress the timeline.
What Happens After Braces Come Off
Treatment doesn’t truly end when the braces are removed. Adult teeth are especially prone to shifting back toward their original positions because the denser bone takes longer to stabilize around the new tooth positions. Retainer wear is a long-term commitment.
For the first 3 to 6 months, you’ll wear a retainer 20 to 22 hours a day, removing it only to eat and brush. After that initial stabilization phase, most orthodontists transition patients to nighttime-only wear, roughly 8 to 10 hours while you sleep. This transition typically happens around the one-year mark. From there, the standard recommendation is to continue wearing your retainer every night indefinitely. Stopping retainer use, even years later, allows teeth to gradually drift.