Before and after, with the rules I hold myself to

Drag the slider to see how a case started and how it finished. Everything on this page is real, consented and unretouched, and I have set out below exactly what that means.

Crowded and overlapping lower front teeth before clear aligner treatment — **Upper and lower arches, seven months.** Crowding and rotation of the lower incisors, corrected without removing any teeth. Both photographs were taken by me in the same surgery under the same light, at the start on 9 September 2021 and at the finish on 4 April 2022. Nothing has been edited. The lips are held back by hand in the first and by a retractor in the second, which is why you can see further round the arch in the second one.

The same lower front teeth aligned at the end of clear aligner treatment — **Upper and lower arches, seven months.** Crowding and rotation of the lower incisors, corrected without removing any teeth. Both photographs were taken by me in the same surgery under the same light, at the start on 9 September 2021 and at the finish on 4 April 2022. Nothing has been edited. The lips are held back by hand in the first and by a retractor in the second, which is why you can see further round the arch in the second one.

The standard

Every photograph on this page is a patient I treated personally. Each one gave signed and dated written consent for their photographs to be used here, and each can withdraw that consent at any time, in which case the images come down.

None of these images is retouched, filtered, whitened or straightened in software. The lighting and the camera are the same for the before and the after. If a case needed a refinement to finish, the picture you are looking at is the finished result, not a midpoint.

Results vary between patients. What is achievable depends on how your teeth start, the health of your gums and bone, how consistently the aligners are worn, and whether anything else needs doing first. These cases are shown because they are typical of what I treat, not because they are the best ones I have.

Why you should be sceptical of other people's galleries

Before and after images in dentistry are governed by the advertising rules in the same way as testimonials. They have to be genuine, they have to be representative of what most people achieve, and the practice has to hold signed and dated proof. A good many galleries you will see locally do not meet that, because the images came from the aligner manufacturer rather than from the practice treating you.

Three questions worth asking anyone, including me:

Did you treat this patient yourself? Not your practice, not your supplier. You.
Is the after photo the finished case? Or is it stage 14 of 22, when the front teeth already look good and the bite is not finished?
Has anything been edited? Whitening applied in software to an after photo is the oldest trick there is, and it is the one the ASA rules against most often.

Want to know what is realistic for you?

I am not going to show you a computer generated picture of your own teeth and let you read it as a promise. Software can produce a very persuasive image in about four seconds, and it knows nothing about your gums, your bone, your bite or your old fillings.

What I will do is look properly and tell you honestly. Send me a few photographs of your own smile and I will tell you whether aligners are likely to give you what you want, what I would expect to be able to change, what I would not, and roughly what it would cost. If the answer is that you need something other than aligners, or someone other than me, I will say so.

Send me a few photos