One trusted dental group. Four Southern California offices.

Español
Complete Dental CentersRequest an Appointment

Start with the symptom

Crooked or crowded teeth

Crooked teeth are the one problem on this list where the cosmetic question and the health question genuinely overlap. Crowded teeth are harder to clean, and a bite that meets badly wears unevenly. Here is what causes it, when it is worth treating, and how the routes differ.

Request an Appointmentor call your office

How urgent is it?

How soon this needs attention

Book an appointment

Not an emergency, but not something to sit on for months either.

  • A tooth that has moved noticeably or become loose in an adult mouth. Teeth do not usually shift on their own; when they do it can point at the bone and gum supporting them, and that is examined rather than straightened.
  • Teeth that have drifted into a gap left by a missing tooth. The drift continues, and it can complicate replacing the tooth later.
  • Retainers that no longer fit after previous orthodontic work. Relapse happens gradually and is much easier to address early.

Raise it at your next visit

Worth mentioning, worth planning, no need to rearrange your week.

  • Long-standing crowding, a gap, or a rotated tooth is not urgent, and there is no age at which it becomes too late to ask about. Adults make up a large share of orthodontic patients. Where crowding is making a particular spot hard to clean, that spot is worth watching in the meantime.

What it usually means

The common explanations

Alignment is mostly set by the relationship between tooth size and jaw size, which is largely inherited. A few things change it later.

More tooth than jaw

The most common explanation. When the teeth are wider than the arch has room for, they overlap, rotate, or sit forward. Nothing was done wrong; the arithmetic simply did not fit.

A missing tooth

Teeth lean and drift toward a space, and the opposing tooth can over-erupt into it. A gap that has been there for years often explains alignment changes elsewhere in the mouth.

Bone loss from gum disease

When supporting bone is lost, teeth can migrate and splay — often showing up as new gaps between front teeth in an adult. This is a reason to treat the gums before moving anything.

Relapse after earlier treatment

Teeth have a persistent tendency to move back toward where they started. This is what retainers exist to resist, and it is why a treated mouth can crowd again decades later.

Childhood habits and airway patterns

Prolonged thumb-sucking, long-term pacifier use, and habitual mouth-breathing can all influence how jaws and teeth develop. Their effects are usually visible well before adulthood.

Ordinary lifelong drift

Lower front teeth tend to crowd slowly across adult life whatever the history. It is common enough to be unremarkable, and it is why many adults notice a change without anything having happened.

The realistic routes

How it is usually treated

There is a real fork here: moving the teeth, or covering them. They are not interchangeable, and the difference matters more than the price does.

  • Invisalign Clear Aligners

    Moves the teeth using a sequence of clear removable trays. Suits many crowding, spacing and mild-to-moderate bite cases. The trays come out to eat, which helps hygiene and makes results depend on you wearing them.

    Provided at all four offices.

  • Orthodontics

    Fixed braces move teeth in ways aligners cannot always achieve — larger rotations, vertical movement, bigger bite corrections. Always working, nothing to remember, more care needed cleaning around the brackets.

    Provided at Beachside, Marina and Rio Hondo.

  • Porcelain Veneers

    Does not move anything. It changes the shape and position of the visible surface, which can make mildly crooked front teeth look even. Faster than orthodontics, and it asks a permanent price from the enamel — worth weighing carefully against actually moving the teeth.

    Provided at all four offices.

  • Cosmetic Dentistry

    The consultation route when the goal is a look rather than a specific treatment, and the honest answer might be orthodontics first and cosmetic work afterwards.

    Provided at all four offices.

  • Gum Disease Treatment

    Comes first, not instead. Teeth are not moved through unhealthy bone, so where crowding has come with bleeding or receding gums, the gums are treated before any alignment plan.

    Provided at Beachside, Marina and Rio Hondo.

What it costs

What actually moves the number

Orthodontic quotes are usually for a whole course of treatment rather than a visit, which makes them look large next to other dental numbers. These are the factors inside them.

How far the teeth have to move
A minor correction and a full bite correction are different amounts of treatment and different lengths of time. Records — photographs, X-rays, a scan — are what put a case in one bracket or the other.
One arch or both
Treating only the arch that shows costs less than treating both, and is not always possible: moving one arch can change how the two meet.
The appliance
Clear aligners and fixed braces are priced differently, and within aligners the number of tray sets in the plan matters. Ask how refinements — the extra trays that fine-tune the result — are handled in the quote.
What has to happen first
Gum treatment, a filling, an extraction for space, or replacing a missing tooth can all be prerequisites. They sit outside the orthodontic fee and belong in the total you compare.
Retention afterwards
Retainers are not optional and not permanent. Replacement retainers across the following years are a genuine ongoing cost, and the most common one to be surprised by.
How it is paid
Orthodontics is a multi-month project, so it is one of the treatments most often spread over monthly payments through third-party financing, subject to credit approval. Lenders differ by office.

Where to go

Offices that provide these treatments

Not every office provides every route above — each treatment says where it is available, and so does each office's own page. Every office answers its own phone.

Keep reading

Articles that go deeper

On this problem

Browse all patient resources — or read thefull article index.

Other problems

  • Discolored teeth

    Surface stain, deeper color change, or one dark tooth — three different problems that respond to three different treatments.

  • Missing teeth

    One tooth, several teeth, or a full arch — how the gap changes over time and which replacements fit which situation.

See all symptoms

Before you act on this

This is education, not a diagnosis

This is general education about alignment, not a treatment plan. Whether aligners can achieve a particular result, and whether the teeth should be moved at all, is decided from records — photographs, X-rays and a scan — not from how the teeth look in a mirror.

Sources

  1. Braces — American Dental Association (MouthHealthy)
  2. The Health Benefits of Straight Teeth — American Association of Orthodontists
  3. Veneers — American Dental Association (MouthHealthy)
  4. Gum Disease Information — American Academy of Periodontology
  5. Gum Disease — NIH — National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research

Get it looked at, then decide.

An exam turns a symptom into options you can actually compare. Request an appointment, or call the office closest to you.

Request an AppointmentChoose an office