Dental anxiety is not mostly about pain. It is about the loss of control that comes from lying down, being unable to speak, and being surrounded by instruments arranged for someone else's convenience.
Very little of that is solved by a nicer waiting room. But some of it is solved by a building that does not announce what it is at every turn.
What we changed
Daylight on every side, so that no room depends on overhead lighting. Lime plaster and oak instead of vinyl and laminate, because the acoustics of a hard room are part of what makes a clinic feel like one.
Instrument trays out of the patient's sightline until the moment they are needed. Nothing hidden, but nothing arranged as a display either.
What we did not
We kept the equipment visible where it needs to be. A studio that hides its instruments to seem gentle is telling a different kind of lie, and patients notice that faster than they notice the plaster.