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21 July 2026 · 5 min read
How long dental implants really take
Placement, healing and the crown, with honest timelines and the things that slow them down.
The honest answer is three to six months from the day the post goes in to the day you bite down on the final crown. Most of that is waiting rather than treatment. Here is where the time actually goes.
The assessment
Before anything is placed, we need to know there is enough bone to hold the implant and that the gum around the site is healthy. Sometimes a plain X-ray answers that. Where the site is close to a nerve or a sinus, it takes a scan. Untreated gum disease has to be dealt with first, because an implant placed into inflamed tissue is an implant that will loosen.
Placement day
This takes under an hour for a single implant, done under local anaesthesia. Most patients who have had a tooth removed before describe placement as the easier of the two. You go home the same day with instructions and, in most cases, a temporary tooth so there is no visible gap.
The wait, and why it exists
Bone has to grow directly against the surface of the titanium post. That process is called osseointegration and it is the whole reason implants last. It takes roughly three months in the lower jaw and closer to six in the upper, where the bone is softer. Nothing speeds it up. Loading an implant before it has integrated is how implants fail.
What slows it down
- Smoking, which measurably reduces the success rate
- Uncontrolled diabetes, which slows healing everywhere
- Bone grafting, if the site needed building up first, which adds a few months of its own
Fitting the crown
Once the implant has integrated, an impression is taken and the crown is made to match the shade and shape of your other teeth. It is tried in, checked against your bite from every angle, then fitted. Two appointments, usually a week or two apart.
After that
Implants do not decay. What does happen is that the gum around them becomes inflamed if it is not cleaned properly, and that inflammation eats into the bone holding the implant. Brush and floss around it as you would a natural tooth, and come in every six months so we can check the tissue before anything is visible to you.