10 Tips for Designing Your Dental Practice

It’s normal to feel a huge amount of excitement before opening your own dental practice. But, there are many different elements you need to take care of before you open your doors and start taking on patients. Besides securing the financial assets you need and developing a marketing plan, you also need to choose your dental office design for your practice.

Your dental office layout and overall design have a profound effect on your practice that goes beyond appearance. The right dentist’s office design can improve productivity, encourage collaboration between team members, and help patients feel more comfortable.

Now, choosing the best design for your new dental practice is a gradual process. You need to observe a variety of factors and verify that your design choice gives you the highest chances of success.

In this article, we’ll share 10 dental office design tips that help improve patient comfort, facilitate efficiency, and create a more successful practice.

10 Tips For Designing Your Dental Practice

Every person is different, so dentists and other practitioners need to focus on small details that help create a comfortable atmosphere for all patients. This includes the design of the waiting room as well as all treatment rooms in your practice.

From your visible dental equipment to the decor in your office, all of these elements can impact the patient experience, and thus, the performance of your practice.

It’s important to understand that all dental practices are unique. Every community has distinct standards and preferences, so you need to personalize your practice based on the patients you’re serving.

With the above in mind, here are 10 tips that help improve functionality and efficiency while maintaining a calm environment in your dental practice.

1. Create a Functional Layout

Generally speaking, patients will prefer to spend the least possible amount of time in your new practice. Therefore, your first goal should be to create a functional layout that revolves around functional balance and patient care.

In simple terms, creating a functional layout means positioning all of the rooms, equipment, storage units, and other elements in strategic places in order to help boost efficiency. This even encompasses the distance from the front door to reception and the treatment rooms, so make sure that all of this contributes to a great patient experience.

2. Focus on Improving Patient Satisfaction

When you think of ways to improve patient satisfaction, steps like training your staff and equipping your waiting room with the latest amenities probably come to mind.

The truth is that the overall design of your practice has a huge impact on how patients evaluate it. However, you need to determine which elements help reduce patient anxiety and implement them into your practice.

Again, this varies based on your local audience, so research your community to understand the patient’s expectations you need to meet.

3. Use Space to Your Advantage

Crowded places are more prone to inducing anxiety. Therefore, your practice design should feature enough space for your patients and team members to move freely and comfortably. That said, you should avoid a practice that’s way too big or your office may feel like it’s always empty.

4. Make Sure that You Can Update and Change Equipment

Dental technology advances at an alarming pace, so there’s a big chance you won’t upgrade your devices with every single new version. Nevertheless, with new equipment being developed on a regular basis, you need to ensure that your layout allows you to change or add new devices easily and efficiently.

If you’re looking for dental office design ideas you should consider working with a seasoned interior designer for dentist practices. These specialists will consider elements like the floor space, staff efficiency, waiting area requirements, and additional factors like the need for a sterilization center while developing your plan.

5. Keep Your Decor Simple

The aesthetics of most successful practices are fairly simple and minimalist. This aligns with today’s interior design trends, so make sure to choose neutral colors, include sharp lines, and choose solid surfaces.

Your receptionist should also have a high-end computer as this will give your practice a more advanced and innovative feel.

6. Anticipate the Number of Patients You’ll Treat Daily

Anticipating the number of patients you’ll get if you follow a traditional practice setup is difficult. However, dental care membership plans like Membersy help you create a steady stream of customers that issue payments and book appointments on a monthly basis.

This, in turn, can help you project the average number of patients you’ll treat daily and make the right adjustments to your office design.

7. Establish a Kid-Friendly Atmosphere

Children are an important demographic for family dental practitioners. You need to keep your young patients in mind when choosing your dental practice design and decor elements in order to make them more comfortable.

A child-friendly atmosphere starts with your waiting room. If your budget allows, create a play area with a soft floor and loads of different toys. You need to make sure that there’s enough space for more than one kid at a time, so building a small fort or two adjacent mini-playgrounds is also a good idea.

8. Work with Professional Designers and Builders

Do-it-yourself or DIY projects are a great way to save money around the house, but you should not try to follow the same mentality with your practice. Instead, you should work with a designer that helps ensure that your office layout is sound and with professional builders deliver quality work.

As a practice owner, you’re responsible for all of the functional elements within your dental office. Rather than doing a DIY job and running the risk that it malfunctions, you should always work with a professional builder. This will ensure that all the materials are top-notch and that the techniques used to build your practice follow safety best practices.

9. Involve Your Team Members in the Design Process

No dental care practitioner manages his or her office solo. However, only a small percentage of care professionals take their team into consideration when creating their practice designs.

Each one of your team members will spend up to 40 hours per week inside of your office, so make sure to get their input before choosing the final design. You should host a meeting with your team members and brainstorm changes as well so that you know what type of improvements your team members will like to see.

If you’re establishing a brand new practice and already hired a few team members, don’t be afraid to work with these individuals in order to choose the best layout. These future team members probably have prior experience that you can use to your advantage.

10. Give Patients Enough Privacy to Feel Comfortable

One thing that many practitioners forget when looking up dentist office design ideas is privacy. The reason for this is that creating a private setting is challenging when there are several other patients being escorted by team members.

Regardless, you need to find a way to create a private and cozy environment that allows your patients to relax during your treatment sessions.

You're on your way to refreshed design

Establishing a new successful dental practice is challenging. But, as long as you take the right precautions, create a comprehensive tailored plan, and monitor your first results closely, you’ll hit the ground running.

To learn more about creating a monthly flow of recurring patients through a dental care plan, get in touch with Membersy today. We will be glad to help!