The Clario Method
A process as considered as the result
Four deliberate stages, no shortcuts. Bespoke smile design takes patience, and that patience is exactly what makes the outcome look inevitable. What follows is each stage, and what happens in the gaps between them.
The Four Stages
- 01
Consultation & smile analysis
We begin unhurried: listening to what you want, studying facial proportion, lip dynamics and tooth character, and photographing your smile in detail.
The bulk of this appointment is conversation, because the useful information is rarely clinical. What is it you notice, and when? Which photographs do you dislike? Is the concern shape, tone, position or something you have never quite put a word to? Alongside that we record the smile properly — at rest, speaking and in a genuine unforced smile — and assess the health of what is underneath, since no cosmetic plan is built on an unsound foundation.
Between stages
Afterwards the case is studied away from the chair. Nothing is committed to at this stage; you leave with an understanding of what is possible, not a plan you are expected to accept on the spot.
- 02
Digital smile design & mock-up
Your future smile is designed digitally, then previewed as a wearable trial mock-up, so you can see and feel the direction before anything is permanent.
The design is drawn over photographs and video of your own face rather than onto an ideal template, so every proportion is judged against your lip line, your midline and the way your smile actually moves. It is then converted into a physical trial version you can wear out of the studio. This is the stage people find most surprising: a shape can look convincing on a screen and feel wrong the moment you speak. Wearing it is how that is discovered while it still costs nothing to change.
Between stages
Revision happens here, and it is expected rather than tolerated. Length, edge shape and how much tooth shows when you talk are all adjusted at this point. Approval of the mock-up is what moves the case forward — until then nothing irreversible has happened.
- 03
Crafting & placement
Working with a master ceramist, each restoration is hand-finished for shade and translucency, then placed with meticulous care and attention to fit.
The approved design goes to the ceramist as a brief, not a shade number, and where the case warrants it the shade is matched with you present rather than by correspondence. Any preparation of the teeth is kept to the minimum the approved design allows. Placement itself is slow work: fit, contact, bite and margin are each checked before anything is finally seated.
Between stages
Where a stage needs settling time — gum tissue maturing, an alignment phase completing — it gets that time. This is the point at which a schedule most often stretches, and we would rather it stretched than that a result were seated early.
- 04
Reveal & refinement
We perfect the small details together, confirm your comfort and bite, and ensure the result feels effortless long after you leave the studio.
The reveal is a beginning rather than an ending. You live with the smile for a short while, and we then review it: how it photographs, how it feels when you eat and speak, whether anything catches. Minor refinement at this stage is normal and planned for, not a sign that something went wrong.
Between stages
After that, ongoing care is the same care any smile needs — regular review, attention to the bite, and honesty about habits such as grinding that shorten the life of any cosmetic work.
Stage two: the proportions are drawn over your own photograph, judged against your lip line and midline rather than an ideal template.
Stage Two, In Plain Terms
What digital smile design actually means
The phrase is used loosely across the profession, so here is the version that matters to the person in the chair. It is four steps, and the order of them is the entire point.
- 01
Your face is recorded, moving
Photographs at rest, speaking and in a genuine smile, and video as well as stills. A still frame cannot show how much tooth appears when you talk or where the edges sit against the lower lip, and those are the measurements the whole design hangs on.
- 02
The smile is drawn on the photograph
The new proportions are designed over your own face rather than in isolation, against your lip line, your midline and the shape of your jaw. Which is why the same request from two people produces two different designs, and why neither is a template.
- 03
You wear it before it is real
The approved drawing is turned into a physical trial version fitted over your own teeth. You see it in your own mirror and your own light, speak with it, and photograph it. Nothing has been altered to get to this point.
- 04
Only then is it translated
The design you approved becomes the brief for the ceramic work, so what is built matches what you agreed rather than what was assumed. Change is expected at stage three and cheap there; after this point it stops being either.
What it does not mean is that software designs your smile. The tools record a face accurately, hold a design steady while it is argued about, and carry it to the mouth without the proportions drifting. Every judgement in between is a person’s, and it is the same person from the first appointment to the last.
On Timing
Why we will not quote you a date here
The honest answer is that it depends, and any page that tells you otherwise is guessing.
Whitening or bonding can be a single visit. A full makeover that includes an alignment phase is a different order of commitment altogether, and healing does not consult the calendar. What each of the six treatments actually involves is set out in full on its own page.
What we will do is map your particular sequence at the consultation, tell you where the waiting periods fall and why, and flag early if something is likely to move. If you are working toward a specific occasion, say so at the first appointment rather than the third: it changes what we would recommend, and occasionally it changes whether we would recommend starting at all.
Begin Your Smile Design
Stage one is a conversation
Nothing is committed to at the first appointment, and nothing irreversible happens before you have worn and approved the design. That is the whole point of doing it in this order.
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