Clear retainers for short periods here. Gold with pink zircon hearts for the piercing, left for three weeks before occasional use of the clear ones for up to 24h at a time. I wont lie that fiddling with therm after just three weeks and using the plastic has probably exasperated the healing process, but i have not suffered from any infections, but i have been cleaning anything going into my ear in alcohol first and some of my healing problems relate to ham fisted attempts to put in dangaly ones.
On the plastic, you need to be careful of the gauge, piercing ear rings are 20g (0.8mm) or smaller, most plastic retainers will be 16g (1.2mm) or 18g (1mm), my first ear irritation was trying to get a 16g retainer in which ended in failure. 18g retainers are ok but sometimes a little harder than others if my ears are being sensitive. Almost all of the plastic retainers say they are not suitable for new piercings with the exception of bioflex/plast but these i could only find in 16g so you would have to get them put in when pierced in a tattoo shop.
The 100 clear plastic retainers (1mm) i brought on amazon for a couple of quid from china took 2.5 months to arrive and look a lot like fishing line with a blob of glue on the end, but i have 100 of them probably 75 usable and don't have the hassle of making them myself, just trimming down to the length i want.
In terms of visibility, they are less obvious, not invisible, nobody in my family has said anything about them though, but then no one or any casual acquaintances out in public has commented on the pink hearts either.