Blog

Overcoming Dental Anxiety Part 2: Comfort by Design

Many Australians experience dental anxiety or fear in some form or another. At Whitehorse Dental, we aspire to change this perception around to make your dentist visit a much better experience.

We love dental care and healthy teeth. But we can totally understand where this deep seated fear of the dentist may come from.

Dental clinics aren’t the first places you think of when referring to pleasant, happy spaces. We usually envisage sterile white spaces with fluorescent lighting, scary posters of decaying teeth and dental drills.

In our experience, we’ve also really noticed that the astringent smell of a dentist clinic can really trigger these emotional fears of dental anxiety.

That’s why we’ve gone the extra mile at Whitehorse Dental to not look or smell like a dentist when you walk in!

We want to make your experience comfortable and pleasant by designing our dental clinic in Blackburn a welcoming and warm environment.

Not only have we found aesthetic design to be important to adults, but also to young children. Making a gentle and positive introduction to dentist visits, we find, is a great way to set kids up for a healthy future of effective dental care.

 

Comfort by Design

It’s the small details that really count to creating a dental space with a difference.

So when building the clinic, we enlisted the help of our amazing friends at Antony Poate Design, a leading dental interior designer.

Down to what colours to use, the design team fulfilled our dental philosophy of empathy and warmth.

Take a virtual tour of Whitehorse Dental here.

 

Sensory Reload

By talking to our patients, we’ve really noticed that much of the anxiety of dentist visits are triggered from sensory memories. Remembering the smells, lights and sounds of previous bad experiences can bring about dental anxiety.

Therefore, we’ve removed the sterile things that make dental practices a terrible place to walk into.

We’ve swapped out the flouro lighting for warm lights. Placing diffusers and candles around the practice helps to replace the astringent smells with pleasant ones.

The office and waiting room is designed to be open and welcoming, rather than intimidating.

 

Relaxation in the Chair

In the dental chair, we’ve set up easy distractions for you while we do our work.

Music is a great source of relaxation for people. It’s also a great way to make people feel more comfortable in the dental space.

We’ve got the tunes connected to Spotify and find that our patients love selecting the music to listen to!

Lying back in the dental chair, we’ve installed a TV on the ceiling. This gives your eyes and mind something to focus on.

 

Goodies bag

After your dental procedure is complete, we make sure you don’t leave without all the tools you need to care for your teeth between visits.

We give you with a Tooth Friendly care package to help you take the best care of your teeth.

Dental visits aren’t necessarily fun, but they definitely don’t need to be a terrible, painful experience.

We hope that we can promote healthy dental care through regular preventative visits. The last thing we want is patients having fearful occasional visits when the damage has already been done to teeth.

We aspire to change the perception of visiting the dentist into a positive one, by making the Whitehorse Dental practice an inviting space.

If you have any questions about dental anxiety, please don’t hesitate to contact us at Whitehorse Dental in Blackburn for an obligation free chat.