Damon retainer question

[butlerbulldogfan]

I still have a ways to go but just wondered if anyone else when you got to the retainer phase if you got the clear plastic retainer. How noticeable is it to other people? Cant find many pics of one but the pics I have seen it only covers half of the top front teeth and looks a little odd.

[sirwired]

This is a question for your orthdontist. Each one has different preferences, and each case has different retention needs.

The clear style retainer (often called the "Essix") looks exactly like an Invisilign aligner, so if you want to know what they look like, there are bazillions of pictures of people wearing Invisilign.

Mine goes up a hair past my gumline, and other than making my teeth glossy, is utterly invisible. It feels exactly what you'd expect a sheet of stiff plastic over your teeth to feel like.

The other two major retainer types are the Hawley (the u-shaped chunk of acrylic and wire that is what most people think of when they think "retainer"), and bonded. A bonded retainer looks like an archwire glued to the backside of your teeth, but usually without anything that looks like a bracket. There are also spring retainers and wire-only models.