Dr Safa: The Dentist Who Wants You to Actually Enjoy Your Visit
Nervous patient or not, the waiting room of Serene is welcoming and relaxing. Think somewhere between a hotel lobby and a spa with the aroma of fresh coffee, a calming fish tank, and no anxious silence. It’s a world away from what the thought of visiting the dentist usually conjures. This is deliberate, precisely as Dr Safa intended. “You come in, you sit in a chair, you meet a stranger for the first time, you are supposed to completely trust them,” she says. “Something as simple as a routine hygiene appointment can be quite invasive. So, we want the whole journey from beginning to end to feel like it’s absolutely enjoyable.”
Serene opened during the pandemic – a moment that might seem like the worst possible time to launch a private dental practice, but which Dr Safa describes as clarifying. She had spent a decade working within the family practice in Hammersmith alongside her father, Dr Bashar Al-Naher, a dentist who had spent his career trying to solve a problem the profession mostly preferred to ignore: people are frightened. When she came across 56 Knightsbridge, it was an empty premises, abandoned for eighteen months, with a reputation left behind by the previous occupant. “If my patients are happy, I don’t want anybody to have to think about going anywhere else,” she says. “That’s just the place I want it to be.”
The method she uses to get there is the ‘Enjoyable Dentistry Technique’, a combination of nitrous oxide, ‘happy air’, guided meditation, and clinical hypnosis, drawn from a master’s degree her father completed specifically in hypnosis applied to dentistry. The results go further than making anxious patients more comfortable. “We can actually cure dental phobias within one or two sessions.” The patients remain conscious throughout. “They are aware of what’s happening. They’re just really chilled out and learn how to be a better patient.”
The technique extends, unusually, to aesthetics. Serene is the only clinic offering what Dr Safa calls the ‘Enjoyable Aesthetics Technique’ – the same approach applied to facial treatments, for patients who are needle-phobic or simply find the experience uncomfortable. “Phobias come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes,” she says, “and there is an origin behind every one.”
Underpinning all of it is a conviction that dentistry has consistently undersold itself as a health discipline. “Everything that happens in the mouth is a gateway to what happens in the body,” Dr Safa says. “There are many papers and studies on the link between bacteria in the mouth, oral health and systemic diseases.” It is a case she makes not as a sales pitch but as a source of frustration with how patients have historically thought about dental care. “In Britain, we’re very good at just getting on with it. I think we’re starting to appreciate that it can and should be a more enjoyable experience.”
The same integrated thinking shapes her approach to cosmetic work. Dr Safa specialises in Invisalign and smile design, but she describes the treatment as inseparable from the face as a whole. The example she gives is a patient who comes in with a chipped tooth. “There’s a reason your tooth keeps chipping – it’s probably your bite, or a grinding habit. So we restructure the teeth so that doesn’t happen anymore. And then we can make it look beautiful.”
On aesthetics more broadly, Dr Safa is direct about where the industry is heading and where she stands within it. The trend, she says, has moved decisively away from volumisation. “It’s more about regenerative treatments – turning back the clock rather than changing your appearance so you don’t recognise yourself anymore. Natural is best,” she says. “And that is the type of patient I want to attract.”
The practice is still growing and welcomes new patients, with people coming from across the country, and from abroad to see the team at Serene. “Knightsbridge is not necessarily a destination for wellness yet, but it should be.” Harley Street, she notes, still holds a certain authority in patients’ minds when it comes to clinical dentistry. “We need to focus on clinical excellence and the fact that having your treatment done in Knightsbridge can be just as good. I don’t want anybody to think about going anywhere else.”
We’ll be back in a few weeks to experience treatments at Serene firsthand.
