19 Feb 2025

Teeth Crowding: What’s the big deal?

Dr. Nayanthara Perera Dentists Online Booking

My name is Nayanthara and I’m one of the dentists here at Museum Dental Suite. My passion is to restore and provide beautiful smiles for my patients. I want to talk about something that is often overlooked by most people.

Teeth crowding may be a bigger problem than you realise. Let me break this down and explore why in this blog post.

What is teeth crowding?

Teeth crowding is a dental condition where there isn't enough space in the mouth for all the teeth to align properly. This results in teeth overlapping, twisting, or becoming misaligned. It can occur when the teeth are too large for the jaw, the jaw is too small, or when there’s a combination of both. Crowding can happen in both the upper and lower jaw, and it can affect the appearance of your smile as well as your oral health.

Figure 1 – an example of crowding in teeth.

Figure 2 – an example of tooth wear than can occur due to excessing force caused by premature tooth contact due to misaligned teeth.

How does it affect function?

When we are enjoying our food and chewing with no problems are bottom teeth are meeting our top teeth in a smooth motion. Over a long period of time, even minor teeth crowding can lead to top and bottom teeth contacting in a way it shouldn’t.

Top and bottom teeth should have 2-3mm of space between them, so every time you chew, this space allows teeth to chew the food you’re eating instead of constantly hitting the opposing teeth.

When teeth are crowded and not in line, teeth that are either further forward or tipped leads to a reduction of this space and causes teeth to constantly chip and fracture because of premature contact.

Long term as crowding gets worse, certain teeth that are out of line can lead to contacting their opposing teeth with more force and pressure. This can lead to tooth wear as seen in Figure 2 below. As well as functional problems this can also lead to aesthetic concerns.

What can we do?

Monitor

We can take clinical photographs at each visit and monitor. Together we may notice your teeth becoming shorter, look slightly darker due to exposure of dentine, the second layer in our teeth. You also may notice on eating particular tooth is banging together. These are signs that as teeth crowding get worse, teeth are experiencing some wear.

Retainer

If you’re worried and want to focus on ensuring the situation doesn’t get worse for now, we can provide plastic retainers. These will simply stop the crowding from getting worse by preventing teeth from moving and protect teeth from progression of tooth wear

Align, Bleach and Bond

To really solve the problem and to prevent the situation from occurring again a combination of orthodontic treatment and composite bonding can be done. This involves realigning teeth to ensure teeth contact correctly during function and restoring teeth to it's original form with composite bonding.

If we want to boost the final result aesthetically, whitening can be done during the process. This process is otherwise called Algin, Bleach and Bond. This is a minimally invasive treatment option that doesn’t involve cutting teeth away and focuses on preserving what you have as much as possible.