Seattle Cosmetic Dentist

Planning to upgrade your smile? Just make an appointment with any “cosmetic” dentist. Right? Not so fast.

A wonderful smile doctor can be hard to find—particularly when looking for a seasoned professional who provides sophisticated planning for appearance-related treatments. “Cosmetic dentistry is as much about developing an ‘eye for esthetics’ as it is about using intricate high-tech materials,” says Dr. Daniel J. Deutsch, of the Washington Center for Dentistry, in Washington, DC. “The trick is to learn about and apply artistic principles to smile design and keeping up with advanced-grade porcelains.”

That means knowing your materials and making choices based on physical traits—height, shape of the face, lips, skin color, bone structure—as well as personality traits of patients. “A smile does not exist in a vacuum,” says Dr. Deutsch. “It needs to complement someone’s overall look and naturally reflect the person inside.”

Most dental consumers would be surprised to learn that “cosmetics” is not even considered a specialty in the practice of dentistry. Any dentist can claim to be a cosmetic dentist with or without years of additional training or experience.

So, how do dentists hold themselves to a high standard and rise to the top of their game in the cosmetic arena? The answer is a lot of education—with the right teachers. “To go for that high level of excellence, it takes a lot of effort to seek out the few, extraordinary practitioners offering comprehensive teaching programs,” says Dr. Marc Doctors, also of the Washington Center for Dentistry, who travels far away for lectures and intense hands-on workshop sessions. “And any dentist will tell you it’s hard to leave a practice and take time to improve their level of expertise.”

And after all that education—experience matters most. It is one thing to know it, and it is another to master it and apply it in the right way.

“There’s a steep learning curve with cosmetic procedures,” says Dr. Deutsch, who has traveled as far as Seattle, Washington for courses. “It takes time to learn how to apply techniques to different people, to bring out the best in each person. That’s the true art of being a cosmetic dentist.”

And here’s a tip for patients looking for the ultimate cosmetic dentist: “A highly regarded cosmetic dentist is a dentist who has done hundreds and hundreds of cases,” says Dr. Deutsch. “He should be able to display photos of many, many of his own patients—showing their smiles before and after. That’s what really matters.”