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Interdental consonants are produced by placing the blade of the tongue against the upper incisors. The underside of the tongue may also articulate with the lower incisors.

Although this articulatory configuration is by no means exotic in the sense that it involves the tongue blade and the upper incisors, both frequently employed in the formation of other consonants, interdental realisations of consonants are rare cross-linguistically. Interdental realisations of otherwise dental consonants do appear to be more frequent as idiosyncrasies or due to coarticulatory effects of a neighbouring interdental sound. The most commonly occurring interdental consonants appear to be interdental non-sibilant fricatives. Interdental consonants do not appear to contrast with dental consonants.

Voiced and voiceless non-sibilant interdental fricatives appear as realisations of the initial sounds in American English in words like 'then' and 'thin'. In British English, these sounds are more likely to be dental.

An interdental /l/ occurs in some varieties of Italian, and may also occur in some varieties of English, though the distribution and usage of interdental /l/ in English are not clear.