There’s a low hum in the lab at DGY Dentistry, a kind of familiar buzz that you can’t quite place. It could be the dental drill—but it’s too rhythmic. And it’s late, the office has been closed for hours. Maybe it’s the x-ray machine powering down? Or maybe it’s Sade, playing softly in the background while Dr. Zerrin Yilmaz works into the night, sculpting a crown—her hands steady, her rhythm synced to “Smooth Operator.”
“I always listen to music when I’m working in the lab,” Yilmaz says. “Something from the ’80s or ’90s. Coldplay, Dave Matthews, Madonna—it helps get me into the right headspace.”
It’s not how most people picture dentistry. But then again, DGY isn’t most dental offices.
Tucked into a handsome brick building in Ann Arbor, DGY Dentistry feels more like a boutique studio than a sterile clinic. There is no mass-produced stock art, no rows of anonymous exam rooms, and no posters trying to upsell you on the latest trend. Instead, you’ll find carefully curated interiors, a team who knows your name, and the feeling that the work being done here matters—both medically and aesthetically.
“We’re kind of a unicorn,” Yilmaz says with a smile. “What we’re doing here is something a lot of medicine has lost—an individual, relationship-based approach that’s not corporate, not cookie cutter.”
She took over DGY in 2016, inheriting not only a respected practice, but a legacy of personal care she had deeply admired since she was a patient here herself. “I remember sitting in this chair as a kid and watching Dr. [Kirk] Donaldson work. He really cared about who you were, and that has always stuck with me. Dentistry wasn’t even on my radar as a profession until Kirk and his team at the time convinced me to give it a try.”
She started shadowing the practice and quickly realized something unexpected: Dentistry could be creative. It could be technical. It could be challenging. And most important—it could be personal. After finishing dental school at the University of Michigan and a residency in Detroit, Yilmaz returned to DGY to train under Dr. Donaldson.
“For the first year I worked here after residency, I didn’t touch a patient,” she says. “I just watched. I respected Kirk and this practice so much, and I wanted to learn as thoroughly as possible. His patients expected a very high-quality product over and over and over again—they have for the last 30 years—and I needed to live up to that expectation.”
Today, she’s kept that same ethos alive. In a profession increasingly shaped by efficiency and corporate takeovers, Yilmaz’s approach is defiantly personal. It begins with trust and time, and it stretches into the evenings, into the lab, where Yilmaz works alone, sometimes for hours, shaping a restoration until it’s exactly right.
“I’m kind of obsessive about it,” she admits. “Sometimes I go back and redo things. I’ll sit with it, look at it under different lighting. I want it to be perfect.”
It’s in these quiet moments—her sculpting tools glinting under the beam of her bedazzled headlamp—that the artistry of her practice comes into focus. This isn’t cosmetic dentistry for vanity’s sake. It’s restoration with meaning.
“It’s such a personal thing,” she says. “You’re rebuilding someone’s smile. It has to feel right for them, and I take that very seriously.”
That work ethic is in her bones. She’s the daughter of Turkish immigrants, raised under high expectations and early discipline. “We didn’t have a normal childhood,” she says. “But it’s in me now. I can’t walk into something and wing it. I have to understand it completely.”
It’s not unusual for Yilmaz to have company during those long hours. Blue, her seven-year-old working dog, often curls up on patients’ laps during procedures and has become something of a local celebrity. “She taught herself how to be a therapy dog,” Yilmaz says. “People actually request her now.”
And then there’s Bebo, the practice’s elder statesman dog—blind, beloved, and pushing fourteen. Their presence isn’t just comforting; it’s part of the practice’s deep sense of care and connection.
It’s tempting to cast Yilmaz as some kind of rebel dentist, an indie darling of Ann Arbor healthcare. But she won’t let you. “I’m not bougie,” she insists. “I wear a Michigan sweatshirt and tennis shoes. I’m a tradesman—a very skilled tradesman. I use my hands and my tools, and I deliver a quality product.”
With such a deep commitment to the craft and her patients, Yilmaz has built a practice where style and substance meet. The physical space is modern and calming, filled with natural light and artwork she’s collected from around the world. The staff is small but deeply trained. Technology is top-notch, but never flashy. There’s no forced branding, no scripted greetings. Instead, there’s something warmer—a sense that this place is here for you, specifically.
And behind it all is Yilmaz, looping Coldplay’s “Fix You” on her speakers well into the night, tweaking one more molar under the sparkling glow of her head lamp, quietly reshaping what dental care can look like.
dgydentistry.com
“You’re rebuilding someone’s smile. It has to feel right for them, and I take that very seriously.”
— Dr. Zerrin Yilmaz