It is not every day that a principal dentist with twenty-five years of experience goes back to formal study to learn a new discipline. Matt Golightly, the principal at Atrium Dental in Camberley, did exactly that — completing the IAS Academy Advanced Year in orthodontics, with the full diploma in his sights. The reason is one of the more telling stories he tells about how he practises.

The reason was his son

Matt’s path into orthodontics was not driven by a market opportunity. It was driven by a problem he ran into as a parent.

“That’s a random reason why I got into it, actually. My son needed ortho. And I couldn’t find anyone suitable to do his ortho, so I trained in ortho myself.” — Matt Golightly

It is worth sitting with that for a moment. Matt is a principal dentist with three decades of clinical experience across hospital surgery, general practice, implants and aesthetic dentistry. He could refer his own son to any orthodontist in the region. He looked at the available options, decided none of them met the standard he wanted for his own family, and went and did the training himself.

That is unusually high evidence of personal standards. Patients booking into Atrium for orthodontic care are not booking a side service. They are booking a service Matt added to the practice because nothing else he could find was good enough for his own child.

Continual learning, by design

The ortho training is part of a broader pattern. Matt has gone back to formal study repeatedly across his career, not because he has had to, but because he likes to.

“Ever since the BDS — the BDS gives you the basics — every few years I keep getting pulled into formal training. I did my implant training, I did my IAS, and then a diploma in aesthetic dentistry at the University of Portsmouth. If you just do basic fillings all day, every day, some people are fine with that. But I like to push myself and be current.” — Matt Golightly

That is a particular sort of dentist. It is the dentist who reads the journals, attends the courses, and updates the workflow when the evidence moves. It is also the kind of dentist who tends to attract a long-term patient base, because patients can tell — sometimes without being able to name it — when their clinician is actually keeping up with the field.

What adult orthodontics actually looks like today

The orthodontic options available to an adult patient in 2026 are unrecognisable from the metal-train-track braces of the 1990s. Most adults at Atrium are choosing between two broad categories: clear aligners (such as SureSmile or Invisalign) and discreet fixed appliances. Aligners are by far the more popular route for adults.

Clear aligners are removable, near-invisible trays made from a thin medical-grade plastic. You wear them for around 22 hours a day, taking them out only to eat and to brush your teeth. Every couple of weeks you move to the next tray in the series, and your teeth move with them — a millimetre or so at a time — towards their final position. Treatment for most adult cases takes somewhere between six and eighteen months. There are no wires, no brackets, no metal against the gums.

Discreet fixed appliances still exist for cases where aligners aren’t the right tool — usually more complex tooth movements where the precision of brackets and wires is genuinely needed. Modern fixed appliances are far smaller and far less visible than the braces most adults remember from school.

Why adults choose to do this now

Adults who book orthodontic consultations tend to come in for one of a handful of reasons. They were never offered orthodontic treatment as a child, and have lived with crowding, crossbite or rotation since. They had orthodontic treatment as a teenager, didn’t wear the retainer as instructed, and have watched their teeth shift back over the years. They are about to get married, or photographed, or interviewed, and they want their smile to look the way they want it to look. They have a tooth that is sitting in a position that is wearing badly, or that is making cleaning difficult, and they want to fix the underlying issue rather than mask it.

All of these are good reasons. None of them are vain — they are quality-of-life decisions, and they tend to deliver a lot more confidence than people expect.

What a consultation involves

An orthodontic consultation at Atrium is typically a single, unhurried appointment. The dentist takes a look at the teeth, the bite and the gums, asks what the patient is hoping to change, and runs a digital scan of the mouth — a small wand-shaped camera rather than the putty impressions of old. From that scan, the dentist can show on screen what the teeth currently look like, what they could look like after treatment, and roughly how long it would take.

The patient leaves the consultation with a clear sense of three things: whether they are a good candidate, what the options realistically are, and what the cost looks like. There is no pressure to start treatment that day. Most adult patients take a few weeks to think it over before committing.

What this means for choosing a practice

For adults considering orthodontics in Camberley or the wider Surrey Heath area, the choice of practice matters. A general practice that does the occasional aligner case is one thing. A practice where the principal has gone back to formal training in orthodontics on top of his existing implant and aesthetic credentials, and where ortho sits alongside CEREC same-day crowns, in-house CT scans and a long-standing local team, is another.

If you are thinking about straightening your teeth, or you have a teenager whose ortho needs aren’t being properly addressed elsewhere, the Atrium team would be glad to take a look. You can read more about the practice’s adult and teen orthodontics options in Camberley, or contact the team to book a consultation.

MEET

Matt Golightly

Principal Dentist · BDS Lond 1993 · GDC 69698

Matt qualified from King's College London in 1993 and spent his first two years in the dental departments at King's College Hospital and St George's, gaining the surgical grounding that still underpins his clinical work today. He has since practised as a general dentist in and around Surrey, eventually founding Atrium Dental in Camberley.

Matt has a particular interest in dental implants and orthodontics alongside general dentistry. He trained in implants at the Royal College of Surgeons and has been placing them for over twenty years. More recently he completed the IAS Academy Advanced Year course in orthodontics and is working toward the full diploma. He was also an early adopter of digital dentistry, including the CEREC same-day crown system that Atrium still uses today.

His calm, down-to-earth manner makes him a natural with anxious patients and children. Outside of clinical hours, Matt donates his time and the practice facilities to The Hope Hub, providing emergency dental care for people experiencing homelessness in Surrey Heath and surrounding areas. That community work, combined with his commitment to accessible, high-quality dentistry for the whole community, earned him the Camberley Hero Award in 2022.