Metal Braces in New Orleans

Written and medically reviewed by Dr. Allison Hamada, orthodontist. LSU School of Dentistry; orthodontic residency, Columbia University. Practicing orthodontics since 2004. Last reviewed October 12, 2026.

If you are looking into metal braces in New Orleans, you probably want to know three things: whether traditional braces still make sense now that clear aligners are everywhere, how long you will be wearing them, and what the whole thing is going to cost.

Braces are still the most versatile tool in orthodontics, and Dr. Hamada uses them every day for patients across the Greater New Orleans area from our offices in Metairie, Luling, and Destrehan. Consultations are free, most patients can start the same day they decide to move forward, and you will get a straight answer about whether braces are right for you or whether something else would serve you better.

Why Traditional Braces Are Still the Most Versatile Treatment We Offer

Clear aligners get most of the attention now, and for good reason. They work well for a lot of people. But braces have not gone anywhere, and there is a reason every orthodontic practice still keeps them on the menu.

Braces are bonded to your teeth. There are no trays to remember, remove, or lose. Hygiene, appointments, food precautions, and any elastics Dr. Hamada prescribes still matter, but the appliance itself keeps working whether or not you think about it. That predictability is why braces handle a long list of situations better than anything else we offer.

What Metal Braces Correct

• Crowding and crooked teeth, where there is not enough room in the arch for the teeth to line up
• Overbite, where the upper front teeth extend too far past the lower ones
• Underbite, where the lower jaw sits forward of the upper
• Crossbite, where upper and lower teeth meet in the wrong relationship, often on one side
• Open bite, where the front teeth do not touch when the back teeth are closed
• Spacing and diastema, including gaps between the front teeth
• Rotated or tipped teeth that need controlled movement in three dimensions
• Impacted teeth that have not erupted and need to be guided into position

Braces are also the stronger option for patients who are still growing, and for anyone who knows they will not wear a removable appliance twenty two hours a day. Aligner treatment is only as good as the wearing schedule behind it, and plenty of people know themselves well enough to admit the schedule is not happening. Busy parents, shift workers, teenagers with packed calendars, and anyone who has already tried aligners and stalled out tend to do better with something bonded on.

The Brackets We Use, and Why That Actually Matters

Real patient, treated by Dr. Hamada

Metal braces: before, during, and after

See how alignment changed during this patient’s treatment. Your plan and results will depend on your own teeth and bite.

Individual results vary. Dr. Hamada can explain what is realistic for your case at a consultation.

Schedule a free consultation

Nearly every orthodontic website around here describes braces the same way: metal brackets, a wire, some colored rubber bands. That description has been accurate since about 1975, and it skips the part that affects how your treatment feels day to day.

We use the Pitts21 bracket system, a passive self-ligating design. We should say plainly that research comparing self-ligating and conventional brackets does not consistently show shorter treatment, less pain, or better hygiene outcomes, and bracket marketing routinely overstates all three. Your diagnosis, your treatment plan, and your own brushing matter far more than the brand stamped on the hardware.

The difference is mechanical, and you might be wearing this for eighteen months, so it is fair to ask what it is.

Conventional brackets use a small elastic tie to hold the archwire against each bracket. Those ties need replacing at every visit and they collect plaque along the way. Self-ligating brackets use a built in clip instead. Nothing to tie, nothing to swap out, and less friction between wire and bracket. The Pitts21 slot is also square at the front teeth and rectangular toward the back, which gives more control over the teeth that show when you smile.

In practice that means fewer components in your mouth to clean around, and adjustment visits that involve changing a wire rather than untying and retying twenty brackets. Whether that translates into a faster or more comfortable result for you specifically is not something any orthodontist can promise on the basis of hardware alone.

Metal, Ceramic, or Clear Aligners?

Anyone who tells you one of these is universally superior is selling something. All three work well on the right case, and the right case is different for each of them.

Two things people get wrong: aligners are not automatically faster, and braces are not automatically cheaper. Both depend entirely on what your teeth need. We go deeper on the trade offs in our guide to aligners versus braces.

At your consultation we will tell you which we would recommend and why. If aligners are the better answer for you, we will say so. If you have your heart set on aligners and your bite really needs braces, we will say that too, even though it is not what you wanted to hear. You can compare options on our Invisalign for adults page.

What Affects the Cost of Metal Braces in the New Orleans Area

Cost depends on what your teeth actually need, and an exact figure requires an examination and a treatment plan. What we can do here is show you exactly what moves the number, so you can walk into a consultation anywhere and know what you are looking at.

What raises or lowers the cost of braces:

• Treatment length. Longer cases usually require more monitoring and more adjustment visits, which affects the fee.
• Case complexity. Straightforward alignment sits at the lower end. Bite correction involving jaw relationships sits higher.
• Whether additional appliances are needed, such as an expander, a space maintainer, or elastics worn during treatment.
• Whether treatment happens in one phase or two. Early intervention followed by full braces later costs more in total than a single phase.
• Bracket type. Ceramic brackets typically cost more than metal.
• Retention after treatment, including retainers and replacements, which some practices bundle and others bill separately. Always ask.

What your written estimate from us includes: the full treatment fee, the number of months it is based on, what your insurance is projected to cover after we verify your benefits, your monthly payment amount and the term, whether retainers are included, and what happens to the fee if treatment runs long. You get this in writing before you commit to anything.

On insurance and financing: we accept most major dental and orthodontic plans, and our team verifies benefits and files claims for you. Many plans carry a lifetime orthodontic maximum rather than an annual one, and some cover children but not adults, so the verification matters. Orthodontic treatment is also generally an eligible HSA and FSA expense, which matters if you have funds to spend before year end. We offer monthly payment plans, and we can often start treatment the same day you decide to move forward.

Your consultation is free, imaging included. For more on what shapes the number, see our guide to braces cost in the New Orleans area.

Before We Talk About Brackets, We Look at the Jaw

This is where our approach parts ways with most braces pages you will read.

Crooked teeth are usually a symptom. The question worth asking is why there was not enough room for those teeth in the first place. Very often the answer is that the jaw did not develop to the size it was supposed to reach.

As Dr. Hamada puts it, orthodontics as a field drifted toward straightening teeth and away from asking what caused the crowding. Jaws have been getting smaller, and a jaw that is too small for the teeth is often also a jaw with less room behind the tongue. That is why every exam here includes a look at how the jaw developed, how you or your child breathes, and how you sleep, not only at where the teeth ended up.

Sometimes that changes the plan. A child with a narrow upper jaw may need expansion before braces rather than braces alone. Sometimes it changes nothing about the mechanics and simply means we caught something your physician should hear about. Either way, you leave knowing more than you came in with.

If snoring, mouth breathing, restless sleep, or grinding are part of your household’s picture, that belongs in the conversation. Skeletal and jaw deficiencies can be a contributing factor in sleep disordered breathing, and identifying them is part of what we do. An orthodontic exam does not diagnose a sleep disorder, and we will not tell you it does. What it can do is surface findings that belong in front of your pediatrician, an ENT, a myofunctional therapist, or a sleep physician, and Dr. Hamada coordinates with all of them. You can read more about our airway centric approach to orthodontics.

“Will I Need Teeth Pulled?”

This is the question patients ask us most often and the one almost no orthodontic website in New Orleans answers directly.

The honest answer: sometimes, and we will tell you before you start rather than partway through.

For years, the standard fix for crowding was to remove healthy premolars and close the space with braces. That approach works, and it is still the correct call in some cases, particularly with severe crowding or significant protrusion. What it should not be is the automatic answer, which for a long stretch of orthodontic history it was.

Where the jaw has room to develop, or where the arch can be shaped without extraction, that is generally the direction we prefer, because keeping your own teeth is a good thing when the result is equally stable. Where extraction genuinely is the right plan, we will explain exactly why, show you what we are seeing, and walk through the alternatives and their trade offs.

What you will not get is a plan handed to you without a reason attached to it. If you have been told elsewhere that teeth need to come out and you want a second opinion before you agree, that is a completely reasonable thing to want, and it is a common reason people book with us.

Metal Braces for Every Stage of Life

Children

Most children are not ready for full braces, and we will not put them in braces early just to get started. What early evaluation does is catch developing problems while the jaw is still growing and easy to influence. If your child does need intervention now, it is often early treatment rather than a full set of braces.

Watch for crowding, a bite that looks off to you, baby teeth lost early or hanging on late, or jaws that seem out of balance. Watch just as closely for snoring, mouth breathing during the day or at sleep, grinding, restless sleep, and difficulty concentrating. Parents notice these things long before anyone else does, and that instinct is usually right. The American Association of Orthodontists suggests a first orthodontic check by age seven, but symptoms matter more than the calendar. Waiting is not a neutral choice when the jaw is still developing.

Teens

The most common age for braces, and for good reason: this is when all the teeth have usually come into the mouth. Treatment fits naturally between middle school and senior photos. Teens choose their own elastic colors at each visit, which sounds like a small thing and is a surprisingly big deal at thirteen.

Sports are fine. We will fit a mouthguard that works over braces, and athletes across Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Charles parishes get through full seasons in them every year.

Adults

The American Association of Orthodontists reports that one in three orthodontic patients today is over the age of eighteen. A good number of ours are people whose teeth shifted years after they had braces the first time. Teeth move for your whole life. If you wore a retainer for six months in 2003 and then stopped, what you are seeing now is normal and it is fixable. We wrote more about orthodontic relapse in adults if that is what brought you here.

Adults also come to us because something has started to hurt. Jaw tension, headaches, clicking, worn down teeth, or a bite that never quite felt right. Those symptoms deserve an explanation, not just tolerance. See our TMJ and myofunctional care page for more.

What Treatment Actually Looks Like

Your first visit takes about an hour. Digital records and imaging, a full examination of teeth, bite, jaw, and airway, and then a conversation with Dr. Hamada about what she found and what she would recommend. Consultations are free, and there is no referral required.

Getting braces on takes roughly an hour to ninety minutes. It is generally not painful, though holding your mouth open that long is tiring and the pressure can feel strange. Tenderness usually sets in over the next day and lasts a few days. Soft foods plus over the counter pain relief handle it comfortably.

Adjustment visits run every six to ten weeks and usually take twenty to thirty minutes. We schedule these across all three offices, so if you started in Metairie and your job moves you closer to Destrehan, we work with that.

Total treatment time for most patients falls between twelve and twenty four months. Simple alignment can finish faster. Cases involving bite correction or jaw development run longer. You will get a realistic estimate at your consultation, not an optimistic one.

Foods to avoid are ice, hard candy, popcorn kernels, nuts, and anything sticky enough to pull a bracket loose. In this city that unfortunately includes pralines and saltwater taffy. Crawfish, po-boys, and king cake are all fine with reasonable care.

If a bracket or wire comes loose, call us and we will tell you whether it needs prompt attention or can wait until your next visit. A loose bracket on its own is not an emergency. A wire poking your cheek can be pushed back with the eraser end of a pencil, and orthodontic wax over the spot solves it until we see you. If a piece of hardware comes off and is swallowed, call our office promptly and we will tell you what to do. 

After braces come off, you wear retainers. This is the part people skip, and it is the most common reason adults end up back in our chair fifteen years later asking what happened.

Who Will Be Treating You

Dr. Allison Hamada earned her dental degree at the LSU School of Dentistry and completed her orthodontic residency at Columbia University. She has been practicing orthodontics since 2004.

The direction of her practice changed because of her own daughter. Sophia’s struggles with sleep, focus, and anxiety led Dr. Hamada to the connection between jaw development, breathing, and whole body health, and to the realization that she had been trained to look at teeth while missing something larger. That experience is why every exam here includes an airway and jaw evaluation alongside the standard bite assessment, and why she works alongside ENTs, myofunctional therapists, and general dentists throughout the region instead of working alone.

You can read more about Dr. Hamada and the practice, or, if you are a provider looking to coordinate care, see our referring providers page.

• LSU School of Dentistry
• Columbia University Residency
• Practicing since 2004
• Airway-focused care

Related Orthodontic Care

Braces are one part of a larger picture. These pages cover the problems braces are most often used to correct, and the approach behind how we plan treatment.

• Braces for kids in Metairie, if you are researching treatment for a child instead of yourself
• Airway orthodontics in New Orleans, the evaluation approach behind every treatment plan we build
• Orthodontist in the New Orleans area, a full overview of what we treat and where