Everyone else in this city will offer to transform your smile. Most of our patients want the opposite of a transformation — their own face back, without explaining it to anyone at work. That is a different brief, and it is the one we take.
A cosmetic case is designed on paper and in wax before anything irreversible happens to a tooth. These are the lines that design gets built on. Move your cursor across the drawing — or switch them all on.
Move across the drawing
Your dental midline should agree with your face, not with the middle of your teeth. A millimetre of disagreement is invisible; three is the thing people can't name when they say a smile looks off.
The edges of the upper teeth should run parallel to your lower lip when you smile. Flat edges read as dentures — it is the single most common tell of cheap veneer work.
Seen straight on, the visible widths of central, lateral and canine fall close to 1 : 0.618 : 0.38. We design to it and then break it deliberately, because a perfectly proportioned smile on the wrong face looks manufactured.
The highest point of gum on each tooth. Get these wrong and the teeth look like different lengths even when they measure identically — which is why gum position gets planned before a single veneer is prepped.
Every practice in Charlotte lists Invisalign as a service and shows you the box. This is the actual plan for an adult relapse case — the same thing we build in ClinCheck before you commit a cent. Drag through it.
00of 26 trays
Where this patient starts: an upper lateral rotated in behind the central, from braces at fifteen and a retainer that stopped being worn at nineteen. It is the most common adult case we see.
Invisalign's tiers — Bronze through Diamond and above — rank case volume, not skill. The aligners are identical whoever you see. What differs between offices is the ClinCheck plan behind them, and we write ours in-house rather than approving the default that comes back.
Most adult cases need small tooth-coloured bumps bonded to some teeth so the trays have something to push against. Yours would go on six teeth, all behind the corner of your mouth except the laterals. On a video call at arm's length they don't read. On a first date, at close range, in raking light — they might. You should hear that before you pay, not in month two.
Teeth rarely track a plan perfectly to the millimetre. We assume one refinement round and price it in; anyone promising none is either lucky or is going to have a conversation with you later.
Every practice shows before-and-afters. Almost none tell you how they were shot — which is the only thing that makes them worth looking at. Ours are standardised, and the standard is published below.
Braces at fifteen, retainer abandoned at nineteen, and by thirty-four the upper lateral had rotated back in far enough to catch the light in every photograph. Invisalign only — no veneers, nothing prepped, because nothing needed to be.
Fifteen years of clenching had taken roughly two millimetres off the central and lateral edges — enough that the smile read as older than the face. Four porcelain veneers restored the original edge position, and a night guard protects them from the habit that caused it.
A two-millimetre diastema the patient had been told for years needed veneers. It didn't. Composite bonding added to four surfaces closed it in a single visit, kept every bit of enamel, and can be re-done in ten years for a fraction of porcelain.
The same results may not be achieved for every patient. Individual results depend on your starting position, bone and gum health, bite, and how consistently aligners are worn. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling.
Not one cosmetic practice in Charlotte publishes a number. The ranges are public anyway — you can find them in ten minutes — so the only thing hiding them achieves is making you call to be sold.
Ranges, not quotes — a scan and a set of photographs come first, and the number we give you after that is the number. We're out of network by choice, which keeps the treatment plan between you and the dentist; we file the paperwork for you either way, and third-party financing is available on cases over $2,000.
0
Years placing cosmetic work in Charlotte. Dr. Ellsworth has never worked in a corporate practice.
0
Aligner cases planned in-house, ClinCheck written here rather than approved as sent.
0%
Finished within the single refinement round quoted at the start.
0
Chairs. You see the same dentist at every visit, including the five-minute ones.
“I had it done over a summer and nobody at the firm said a word. That was the entire point.”
“They talked me out of veneers and into bonding that cost a fifth as much. I've sent four people since.”
“The mock-up meant I saw the result before anything was touched. I'd never have agreed without it.”
This goes to the practice inbox, not to a marketing platform. Dr. Ellsworth answers consultation requests herself, usually the same evening.