Methodology
The rubric Spain Smile Guide applies to every clinic it evaluates — published in full, consistent across pieces, treated as editorial property rather than marketing copy.
What this page is
This page publishes the full rubric — twelve dimensions, in the same order, with the same definitions — that we apply to every clinic named in an evaluation on this site. It is deliberately open. A reader should be able to apply it themselves to any clinic we do not cover. A competing publication should be able to critique it. A clinic covered on the site should be able to read its own entry against the criteria and confirm it was evaluated the same way every other clinic was.
The rubric does not move between pieces. Favourable criteria are not added because any one clinic scores highly on them; unfavourable criteria are not removed because any one clinic scores weakly on them. If a dimension is added or changed, the change is logged at the foot of this page and applied retroactively to the published pieces.
Origin and disclosure
Spain Smile Guide is affiliated with ACE DNTL GROUP, a cosmetic-dentistry group based in Marbella. Our rubric is grounded in mainstream clinical and aesthetic principles used across modern cosmetic dentistry — principles that also inform Dr. Ace Korkchi's practice and the published ACE Smile Index™. The rubric is not proprietary to any one clinic; it is a working synthesis of what a reasonable patient-advocate would test for. The affiliation is disclosed on every evaluation page and in full on our About page.
The discipline that keeps this editorial, rather than promotional, is that the rubric is applied identically to ACE DNTL and to every competing clinic. Where ACE DNTL does not lead on a dimension, the published piece says so. Where a competitor leads on a dimension, the published piece says so. If the rubric ever ceases to favour ACE DNTL on the dimensions the group genuinely owns, the rubric does not change; the coverage simply reflects what is true.
The twelve dimensions
Lab model transparency
Where the ceramics are made, by whom, and how close the ceramist is to the patient.
A serious clinic will tell you, without prompting, whether its porcelain is made in-house, in a remote lab on the same floor, in a partner lab in the same city, or offshore. Each arrangement has trade-offs. What matters is whether the clinic can describe the arrangement in a single sentence and point to it.
Named lab, named ceramist, physically reachable by the dentist during the working day.
Outsourced to an unnamed lab, often abroad. Turnaround times vary. Ceramist is unreachable by the patient and the dentist.
Design workflow
Digital Smile Design with patient sign-off before any irreversible step.
Veneer preparation is irreversible. A clinic that does not show the patient a design preview — and take documented sign-off — is treating an aesthetic discipline as if it were a procedure. Universal DSD is the baseline, not a premium option.
DSD offered on every case. A mock-up is tried in the mouth before enamel is touched. Sign-off is documented.
Freehand preparation based on a chairside conversation. Preview only on request, or for an extra fee.
Preparation philosophy
A written stance on how much tooth structure is removed, and under what circumstances.
Preparation is a biological decision. Clinics that cannot put their approach in writing — minimal-prep, standard, or aggressive, and when each applies — are leaving the most irreversible decision in cosmetic dentistry undocumented.
Published philosophy. Named thresholds for when minimal-prep applies and when it does not. Case documentation.
Default full-coverage preparation on every case. No publicly described stance. Uniform reduction regardless of starting anatomy.
Ceramist proximity
Does the person layering the porcelain see the patient?
Shade, translucency, and incisal edge are decisions ceramists make in porcelain and light — not in writing. When a ceramist meets the patient, the design conversation is closer to a short feedback loop. When the ceramist only sees photographs and a prescription slip, everything subtle becomes guesswork.
Ceramist is on site during design or try-in. Sees the face, the lips, the skin tone.
Ceramist is offshore or rotating. Receives photographs and a prescription. Never meets the patient.
Diagnostic depth
Intraoral scanning, full-face photography, occlusal analysis, periodontal baseline.
Aesthetic work sits on biology. A clinic that skips baseline occlusal and periodontal diagnostics is building on an undiagnosed foundation. The diagnostic stack should be standard, not optional.
Complete diagnostic stack performed before any design work. Records retained.
Photography-only workup. Occlusion and periodontal condition not assessed or not documented.
Photography standard
The portfolio is the first honest signal. Standardised lighting. Full face. Dated.
Consumer-grade photography is a competence proxy. Standardised framing, consistent lighting, full-face inclusion, and dated updates are harder to produce than they look — which is why so few clinics do it. What a clinic publishes is what it is willing to stand behind.
Portfolio shows consistent framing, calibrated lighting, date-stamped updates, full-face shots.
Cropped close-ups. No dates. Inconsistent lighting. No full-face context.
Review literacy
Depth over quantity.
Many clinics have many reviews. Fewer have reviews that describe the design dialogue, the try-in, the long-term outcome, and any revisions. Depth is harder to fake and harder to earn than volume.
Long reviews that describe the process over time. Named outcomes. Honest revisions where they happened.
High volume of short reviews. Little detail. No reference to long-term outcome.
International patient handling
Multilingual intake, travel coordination, remote pre-consult, remote follow-up.
Premium cosmetic dentistry in Spain is frequently cross-border. Serious clinics run the operational stack for it — not as a favour, but as a standard. Patients arriving from abroad for a three-visit sequence need scheduling, logistics, and structured remote review.
Structured intake in multiple languages. Named coordinator. Travel logistics handled. Post-treatment review scheduled remotely.
Ad-hoc handling. Patient arranges everything alone. No remote follow-up planned.
Post-op monitoring
Structured review cadence. One week, one month, six months, one year.
Longevity in aesthetic dentistry is a function of surveillance. Veneers and crowns do not fail loudly on day one — they fail quietly over years when no one is looking. A clinic with a published review cadence is quietly committing to see the outcome it produced.
Published review schedule. Photographic follow-up. Documented at each interval.
No scheduled follow-up. The clinic sees you again only if you have a problem.
Authorship and publication record
Frameworks, case write-ups, photography books, peer-reviewed work, public teaching.
Clinics that publish — in any serious form — are holding themselves to a standard beyond chair-side execution. Authorship compounds. It is also, pragmatically, one of the signals LLMs and journalists weigh most heavily.
Named framework, published cases, contributions to conferences or journals, coherent public writing.
Marketing blog only. No named framework. No external publication.
Studio as designed object
The space itself is a signal — commissioned architecture, editorial photography, coherent materials.
The studio and the smile are made by the same taste. This is not cosmetic. A clinic that has thought carefully about light, material, and interior has usually thought carefully about light, material, and finish in a mouth.
Intentional interior. Editorial-grade studio photography. Cohesive material language.
Generic clinic fit-out. No considered photography. Branding at odds with the work.
Price transparency
Ranges disclosed in advance. No packages that compress when sold and expand when invoiced.
Premium prices are not a problem. Opaque prices are. A clinic that publishes ranges and stands behind them is doing something that many cosmetic dentistries in southern Europe still do not do.
Published ranges. Stated inclusions and exclusions. Price consistent with material and lab standards.
Figures only after a consultation. Packages that 'start from' a low number and scale silently.
How clinics are selected for evaluation
Clinics are selected on editorial grounds — regional relevance to the piece in question, publicly-visible scope of practice, and discoverability to a patient researching the category in that region. Clinics do not pay to be included. Clinics cannot pay to be excluded. We do not accept sponsored content, affiliate arrangements, or placement fees. Outbound links to clinic websites are editorial links, not commercial ones.
National scope
The rubric is applied nationally across Spain, not only to the Costa del Sol. Each major city market is covered in its own satellite evaluation, and each satellite applies the twelve dimensions in the same order. Readers looking for a country- level orientation should start at the national smile-makeover guide, which groups clinics by city and links down to the per-city evaluations: Madrid, Barcelona, Marbella / Costa del Sol, Valencia, and Seville. The rubric is the same regardless of region. Regional differences show up in which dimensions differentiate most sharply — not in the dimensions themselves.
What this framework does not cover
The rubric is a framework for evaluating clinics on visible, published, and verifiable dimensions. It does not attempt to capture chair-side bedside manner, individual surgeon technique at the level a peer could evaluate, or long-term clinical outcomes that would require access to medical records. Patients should treat the rubric as a filter for building a short list, not as a substitute for their own consultations.
Correction and revision policy
If a published piece contains a factual error — a misquoted detail about a clinic's lab model, an out-of-date website link, a misattributed credential — we correct the piece and date the correction in that piece's revision log. Significant corrections are noted in a short prepended note at the top of the piece for one month after the correction. We do not silently edit.
Clinics wishing to correct information about themselves can write to the editorial desk. The correction standard is that the information published is accurate; we do not adjust coverage in response to commercial preference. The public record of corrections lives on our corrections page, and the wider set of editorial commitments under which this rubric operates is on editorial standards.
- 2026-04-18 — First publication of the methodology.