Clear. Comfortable. Confident

Yes. Invisalign has versions designed for younger patients whose adult teeth are still coming through, and they can be used to guide jaw growth as well as straighten teeth. Because a child's mouth changes quickly, the dentist checks progress more often than with an adult, and the aligners are made with a small indicator so parents can see they are being worn for long enough each day.

Not in the way braces can. Each new set of aligners feels tight for the first day or two — that pressure is the aligner doing its job — and then settles. There are no wires or brackets to rub the inside of your cheeks, so the mouth ulcers that come with fixed braces are largely avoided. Most patients describe the sensation as an ache rather than a pain, and it fades before the next set is due.

The complexity of the case: how far the teeth have to move, how many aligners that will take, and whether attachments or a refinement stage are needed to finish. A mild crowding case and a full bite correction are very different amounts of treatment. After a digital scan you are given a written plan with the complete fee before anything starts, and that figure does not change part-way through.

For most people, yes. The aligners are made from a smooth, thin medical-grade plastic moulded to your teeth, so there is nothing sharp to catch on your lips or cheeks and nothing to adjust with a wire. You take them out to eat, so there are no food restrictions, and cleaning your teeth is the same as it was before treatment because there is nothing fixed in the way.

Briefly, if at all. A few patients notice a slight lisp on certain sounds for the first day or two with their very first aligner, while the tongue gets used to the thin layer over the teeth. It corrects itself quickly — usually within 48 hours — and later aligner changes do not bring it back. Reading aloud for a few minutes on the first day speeds the adjustment along.

In most cases, yes. Modern Invisalign treats crowding, gaps, overbites, underbites and crossbites, using small tooth-coloured attachments and, where needed, elastics to produce the movements that clear aligners on their own could not. A small number of severe jaw discrepancies are still better treated with fixed braces or a combined approach; that is a judgement the dentist makes from your scan at the assessment, not something to guess at in advance.

Twenty to twenty-two hours a day, every day. The aligners only move teeth while they are in, so the two hours out is for eating, drinking anything other than water, and brushing and flossing. Wearing them less than that is the most common reason a case runs late or needs extra aligners, so we are honest about it at the start: Invisalign suits people who can commit to keeping them in.

Yes. Your treatment begins with a digital scan of your mouth rather than a tray of impression putty. From that scan the treatment-planning software builds a 3D model of your teeth and maps the movement stage by stage, so you can see the projected end result on screen and the dentist can adjust the plan before a single aligner is made.