Alan Clarke sits down with Andrea Clegg to talk smile design, patient communication and share vital advice.
Alan Clarke: It is my privilege to start this new interview series with a great friend and expert cosmetic dentist, Dr Andrea Clegg. I’m so excited for this, so I want to jump right in… How do you find the world of cosmetic dentistry in 2025, particularly as a woman, someone who is making great leaps in the industry, and someone who has learned a lot during her career so far?
Andrea Clegg: I think 2025 is a great year to be a cosmetic dentist. Truly. I feel like the trends are going towards a more natural look. I think it’s very approachable. Being a female in the cosmetic dentistry market initially can be a little bit difficult, but as you blossom into that role, I feel like a lot of women – who are a primary driver of the marketplace – seek that kind of woman-to-woman attention and attention to detail. So, I actually feel like it’s an advantage at this point to be a female in the marketplace.
Designing smiles
Alan: Tell me about the more natural look that’s coming in, which is still really refined in the way that it’s done, but a different expression, rather than that brassy, shiny white aesthetic that was very much present.
Andrea: I think that women – and men too – are seeing themselves more in photos, videos, in high resolution. They’re realising that they want something refined and elegant, but that isn’t going to be the first thing people notice. There’s definitely a shift in the marketplace, and it’s going to be more about levels of translucency. Patients are becoming more educated about not wanting their teeth cut away, so minimally invasive dentistry is a big trend. They understand the collective effect a smile can bring, but they don’t want that to be something that enters a room before them.
Alan: I think the key is that every smile has to be unique to the individual. As dentists, you have to have that skill set to be able to design that really appropriately for that person; it can’t be an out of the box solution.
Andrea: No. One thing that I was trained to do at Beam was to address each patient individually and to look at their smile within their face, within the frames of what their natural teeth look like, and try to keep some of that DNA in there.
There’s a big design element that comes in cosmetic dentistry, that’s something that we specialise in, and it’s about setting the mark, putting it on the teeth, and letting the patients experience that, so that they can provide feedback. It’s not as much of a lab driven process, it is a dentist driven process to communicate with the lab for a better outcome.
Taking the next step
Alan: What would be your advice to a young dentist who wants to take that next step, maybe starting cosmetic dentistry for the first time? What would you advise them now, at this stage, if they’re scared?
Andrea: So when I was just starting out as a cosmetic dentist, there wasn’t a lot of really approachable classes that I felt like I could take that were a comprehensive approach where I would feel confident in doing this by myself. I sought mentorship from many accredited American cosmetic dentistry dentists, and it allowed me to really understand this
bespoke process.
Alan: I think for us, it’s been really important to have mentors, to have people that you can trust, that you can ask silly questions to and not feel that you’re being judged. Because it is complex and cosmetic dentistry takes time. It’s really important to have the skills and the training, but also to be super relevant to understand what the trends are and actually how the market is moving, and how you brand and market yourself within the whole ecosystem that is dentistry.
Andrea: Understanding your ideal patient, understanding the marketplace, understanding the trends – all of these things are incredibly important when you’re looking at this type of industry. Experience is wonderful, but also relevancy is huge and key. Well, I guess now would be a good time to talk about something that we’re doing together. Alan and I are creating a curriculum called The First Veneer to help other dentists jump into that type of marketplace. It is something that we want to help dentists to try to integrate into their practice with predictability.
Telling a story
Alan: You treat a lot of high net worth and celebrity clients. You’re in Nashville, country music city, and you’ve had to understand that relevancy from the get go. What do you feel has been a barrier within dentistry that we can help people overcome?
Andrea: The ability to tell your story; each person has an individual story that they’re trying to communicate. Not everybody is the same. Every dentist has an individual technique, an identity, a practice identity, an ideal patient base. I think that there’s no wrong answer in that, but it’s really just about finding the narrative and how to create the expression in the marketplace where you can share how you feel on the inside with the outside world.
Alan: If we can communicate that to patients, telling our stories so they can understand who we are is vital. You’re great at that.
Andrea: Thank you. I think it actually makes your life a lot easier when you put yourself out there, as scary as that sounds. These patients are consumers, and they’re viewing you and they’re understanding who you are. When people approach me for a consult or to do their veneers, they’ve vetted me. They know that I am who I am. They understand my style, and they want to be a part of what we’re creating. I feel like that’s really important.
Creating value
Alan: How do you find UK dentistry? In terms of the traditional view, UK dentistry gets a bad rep and we were always taught that US dentistry is
10 years ahead, how do you find things are shifting now?
Andrea: I’ve observed there’s a lot of composite bonding in UK dentistry. However, there’s a mentality that I hear over and over from my colleagues that there’s no place in the marketplace to do high end cosmetic dentistry like this because people can’t afford it. But we all know that it’s about creating your own market. For example, if I were to say to some of the dentists I talk to in Nashville: ‘Oh, I’m going to charge this for a veneer’ or ‘I’m going to do these high dollar cases’, they would say: ‘Well, I’ve talked to my patients about it, and they just won’t do it.’ The reality is it’s all about redefining what you’re putting out there and putting the value behind it.
Alan: I was going to say the word value is key. It’s not expensive. It’s understanding how to attribute value to something.
Andrea: You want something that’s going to last. You want something that will look great, and you want something that feels like you at the end of the day. I think that it’s really important to look in the mirror and feel like yourself.
I think the techniques that we use in the US might be a little bit different than the UK. We definitely use some types of porcelain here in the US that are a lot thinner and a lot stronger than what we’ve previously been taught.
Bringing these concepts to the marketplace and making them mainstream is really important for the community of dentistry as a whole, so that all of us can improve the patient experience together. I think that we’ve always looked at it as UK dentistry or American dentistry or Irish dentistry, or however you want to approach it, but I think the world is getting smaller. We’re all watching each other’s social medias. We’re all seeing what each other is doing and we’re seeing how we’re influencing the marketplace. And I feel like the future is together.
Alan, you created a really good forum in Paste Presents for people that are doing different things and have different superpowers, if you will, to come together and build a community. I’m really excited for next year.
Advice to young dentists
Alan: Many young dentists who are starting out in cosmetic dentistry see a lot of things on Instagram, and sometimes they feel overwhelmed or they’re scared that their work isn’t good enough to post. What advice would you give try to dispel any fears?
Andrea: Well, I think posting your work is actually important, just even from an internal checkpoint, I’m seeing my work progress over time, and I’m being accountable for how my work is improving.
Alan: And just to wrap up, would you have any advice to a young dentist in the UK?
Andrea: I do think finding a great programme that teaches you smile design basics from the beginning to the end is important because there’s a lot of things that we can learn. We all need bespoke techniques that are going to work. Dentists are often scared to try things because they’re worried that they’re going to fail – I think that it’s really important to find reliable, repeatable systems that don’t fail so that you can feel confident to do what you do.
Alan: Andrea, thank you so much.
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