Dental office construction runs $165 to $330 per square foot depending on finish level, before equipment. That's the range you'll hit whether you're building a lean, function-first practice or a design-forward flagship — the difference is entirely in what's behind that number.

Contractors and denta...

A new dental office runs somewhere between $150 and $300 per square foot for construction alone in most U.S. markets in 2026 — and once you add equipment, technology, and the soft costs nobody budgets for, that number climbs to $300 to $500+ per square foot all-in. For a typical six-operatory practi...

By Dental Strategy Institute | June 2026 | 6-Minute Read

Most dental practice owners think about their equipment the same way they think about their waiting room furniture: it is there, it is functional, it has a cost, and it does not need much more attention than that.

This is a mistake — and it i...

By Dental Strategy Institute | June 2026 | 8-Minute Read | For DSO Operators and Group Practice Leaders

The DSO model had a run in the early 2020s that looked, in retrospect, like a period where almost anything worked. Low interest rates made debt cheap. Private equity was aggressive. Multiples exp...

By Dental Strategy Institute | June 2026 | 8-Minute Read

When you search for the value of a used car, you go to Kelley Blue Book. There is a universally accepted reference point. The market has a number. Everyone — buyer, seller, insurer, lender — consults the same source, and transactions happen...

Every equipment manufacturer ships their product with a recommended maintenance schedule. It's in the manual. The manual lives in the filing cabinet. The filing cabinet hasn't been opened in three years.

That's not unusual. It's the default state of dental practice maintenance management — and it's...

At some point in almost every dental practice sale, someone asks: can you give us a list of all the equipment?

The seller goes to the office manager. The office manager pulls up whatever they have — maybe a list from the last equipment finance application, maybe a service contract from a few years ...

Let me tell you how most used dental equipment pricing works in a practice sale.

The buyer's team walks through the operatories. They take notes. They go back to the office and apply rough age-based estimates to the equipment list — numbers drawn from a dealer rep's memory and whatever feels right ...

Here's how equipment capital planning works in most dental groups: a chair breaks at Location 7. Someone calls the service company. The service company comes out and says the pump motor is gone. The office manager calls the regional director. The regional director calls the CFO. The CFO asks why thi...

Walk into almost any dental practice transaction and you'll find the same blind spot. The seller has a number in mind — usually based on collections and EBITDA — and the equipment is essentially an afterthought. The buyer's due diligence team walks through the operatories, notes that the chairs are ...

The Question That Costs Practices Thousands — Answered Wrong

The service tech just told you the repair is $2,200. The chair is 9 years old. Should you fix it or replace it?

Most practice owners answer this question by feel. Below is the actual framework — so the answer is a calculation, not a guess....

There's a piece of equipment in almost every dental practice that's older than it should be. Sometimes it's the compressor, running warm and loud in the utility room. Sometimes it's a delivery unit that the rep keeps telling you is "totally fine" even though the chair-side assistant is holding the h...