Luxury waiting

When is a waiting room more than a waiting room?

When it’s a place in which you actually don’t mind waiting.

That’s how Hayden Lake, Idaho, resident Bobbie Manis feels about Associated Dentists of Coeur d’Alene, where she has been a patient for more than 15 years.

“It’s a soothing atmosphere,” says Manis, of the soft green and plum color scheme. “It’s nice to have wonderful surroundings because you are captive there … If you have to wait somewhere, that’s the place to wait.”

Used to be, nobody expected more of a doctor- or dental-office waiting room than some stiff chairs and months-old magazines.

But many practices are upping the ante, either to attract new patients, retain current ones, or simply create a nicer environment.

“What has happened is over the last 25 years, our profession has focused a lot more on the patient that’s attached to the teeth than just the teeth themselves,” says Dr. Kimberly Harms, a Minnesota dentist who’s a consumer advisor for the American Dental Association.

Harms, in practice for 25 years, admits she’s a “big chicken” when she has to go to the dentist. So, she designed her office in a way that makes her most comfortable and at ease. And, she hopes, patients feel the same way.

“Your décor reflects your personality,” says Harms, whose office mirrors her love of classical style. “If you have a décor that says, ‘I care about you, patient, and I want you to be comfortable,’ patients are going to feel that.”

The Spokesman-Review asked readers to tell us about their favorite waiting rooms in the Inland Northwest.

Nearly all of the responses highlighted dental offices, but a few deemed the waiting rooms of other specialties to be particularly posh.

Cecile Morin of Spokane wrote in to rave about Marycliff Allergy Specialists, where she sees Dr. Richard Gower.

“They’ve got windows, they’ve got couches, they’ve got current magazines,” Morin says. “It’s just fabulous … It’s just gorgeous.”

Designing and renovating a medical waiting room can take months and months of planning, says Karen Silva, an interior designer with Design Works in the Spokane Valley.

Silva was the designer behind one of the most impressive area waiting rooms, the undersea adventure world at the Children’s Dental Village in the Spokane Valley.

“It’s like Disneyland, isn’t?” Silva says of the finished product, which was the result of some eight months of planning.

Step inside and it’s easy to see why it can be tough to get kids to stop playing in the waiting room and head back for their appointments.

There’s a tiki hut stocked with toys and video games. A wooden boat juts from one wall. Monkeys climb palm trees and “torches” flicker. Every wall is painted with an elaborate undersea mural. And three-dimensional dolphins and a diver burst from the ceiling.

“For children, going to the dentist can be a frightening experience,” Silva says. “(Dr. Jay Enzler) wanted them somewhat distracted by all the colors so they actually look forward to going to the dentist.”

Bright colors may be a good fit for kids, but some spaces call for a more-subdued feel.

An earth-toned color palette welcomes patients to the newly remodeled and redecorated Northwest OB-GYN offices in the Sacred Heart Doctors Building. The major project took some three years from planning to completion, says Ann Gannon, chief operating officer for the practice.

One of the things that stands out in the new waiting room is the flooring, which is made of cork.

“We wanted the acoustics to be such that it wasn’t noisy,” Gannon says. The brown of the cork blends with the long bamboo wall behind the reception desk.

“The entire wall is storage behind those doors,” Gannon says. “We didn’t want to lose any space.”

She has heard many positive comments from patients about the decorating project, she says.

“Honestly, I wouldn’t say it makes a big difference either in drawing new patients or retaining established patients,” Gannon says. “It just makes the patients that do choose to see us more comfortable.”

Silva didn’t work on the Northwest OB-GYN office, but said she has designed 20 to 30 medical waiting rooms in recent years. And while they’re not all as over-the-top as the Children’s Dental Village, all of her designs have one goal: Putting patients at ease.

“I try to stick to a warm and comfortable palette,” she says. “I try not to use red. I love red, but I feel like it’s the color of blood and we don’t want to remind patients of blood.”