Minimally invasive restorative treatment implements need-, damage-, and risk-balanced dental care while ensuring that the ends and means are reconciled. Using examples from initial treatment of carious lesions, maintenance and correction of existing restorations, treatment of traumatic damage, and direct color and form correction of teeth, a preventively offensive and restoratively defensive treatment concept is presented. Such a concept demands of the dentist greater diagnostic efforts and more highly differentiated employment of invasive treatment methods. Demands on the patients are greater as well: they must be willing to comply with regular post-treatment examinations. In return, one receives the option of minimizing the sacrifice of maintainable hard tooth structures and avoiding extensive, large-scale dental procedures.