Dentists in Memphis, TN: Local Guide

Quick answer: Memphis, TN has 515 dental practices in the Dental.me directory. 248 are rated on Google, averaging 4.38★ across 42,040 reviews. Top by independent Dental.me Score: M. WADE CLAYTON, DDS, PA, INC., Quail Hollow Family Dentistry, AVERY AND MEADOWS, DDS, PC. Compare them below and shortlist two or three near you to call.

Memphis is not a market where you can pick a dentist at random and expect an even result. Of the 515 dental practices Dental.me tracks across the city, 248 carry enough Google review data to rate — and those 248 split into two very different worlds. More than half (127 practices) sit at a near-flawless 4.8 stars or higher, while 56 — almost a quarter of the rated field — land below 4.0. That is one of the widest quality gaps of any large U.S. city we cover. The upside is real: Memphis genuinely has some of the most reviewed, most loved dental offices in the South. The catch is that the floor is low, so the difference between a great choice and a regrettable one is unusually stark here.

This guide is built for that reality. Rather than a generic “how to pick a dentist” checklist, it is a map of this city’s dental landscape — where the strength is concentrated, where the signal is hard to find, and how to read 42,040 real Memphis Google reviews to land in the top half rather than the bottom quarter.

The hidden problem: two out of three Memphis dentists are hard to find online

Here is the number that trips up newcomers and long-time residents alike. Of those 515 practices, only 162 — just under a third — have a working website on file. That is a lower web-presence rate than almost any comparable city, and it changes how you should search. A quick Google of “dentist near me” in Memphis will surface the same handful of marketing-savvy offices over and over, while dozens of highly rated practices — some with a thousand-plus five-star reviews — barely register because they never built a modern site. Plenty of the best dentists in this city are, in effect, invisible to a casual online search.

The practical takeaway: do not treat “shows up first on Google” as a proxy for quality in Memphis. Start instead from the rating and review record. Our Memphis dentist directory is organized around exactly that gap — it surfaces the practices patients actually rate highly, whether or not they have a slick website.

Notice the shape. In most cities the ratings pile up in the middle. In Memphis they cluster at the extremes — a big block of excellent offices and a stubborn block of poorly rated ones, with relatively little in between. That is the single most important fact for a Memphis patient: there is very little “safe mediocre middle” to fall back on. You are choosing between the top tier and the bottom tier far more often than you would in a city with a fatter middle band.

What produces a barbell like this? Usually it is a market with a core of practices carrying deep review records alongside a larger group that has not accumulated enough public feedback to score. The lesson is not to panic — it is to filter. Once you screen out the bottom band, Memphis actually offers an above-average density of highly rated dentists. The work is in the screening, and that work pays off more here than in a city where nearly everyone lands at a forgettable 4.2.

The top of the Memphis market

The city’s most trusted offices are not subtle about it — they have earned enormous review volumes at ratings almost no practice sustains at scale. M. Wade Clayton, DDS, PA, Inc. holds a perfect 5.0 across 1,437 reviews, a rare combination of near-unanimous satisfaction and real volume. Timothy W. Kutas D.D.S. has drawn the most feedback of any single Memphis dentist we track — 1,899 reviews at 4.9 stars — which is a strong signal of a high-throughput practice that keeps its ratings up even under heavy patient load.

For families and for surgical or specialist needs, three names stand out. Quail Hollow Family Dentistry (5.0, 844 reviews) and Avery and Meadows, DDS, PC (5.0, 626 reviews) anchor the general and family side. On the specialist side, Periodontal Associates of Memphis (4.9, 1,326 reviews) and Pediatric Dental Care of Memphis (4.9, 1,320 reviews) carry the kind of sustained, high-volume record that is hard to accumulate — and their strength is telling, because it mirrors where Memphis’s whole dental economy leans.

A restorative city, not a cosmetic one

Look at what Memphis dentists actually do and a clear character emerges. The largest specialty pools are dental implants (73 practices) and, notably, pediatric dentistry (53 practices) — more than the 42 offices offering cosmetic dentistry. That inversion is unusual. Many cities lead with cosmetic and whitening; Memphis leads with rebuilding and restoring teeth and with caring for kids. Surgical and gum care is deep too, with 38 periodontists and 34 oral surgeons, which is why the specialist practices dominate the review leaderboard above.

One gap worth planning around: emergency coverage is thin. Only 24 practices flag themselves for emergency dental care — the smallest specialty pool in the city relative to its size. If you are prone to dental emergencies or have kids in sports, it is worth identifying an emergency-capable office before you need one rather than scrambling on a Saturday.

This restorative-and-family character should also shape how you read reviews. When you scan the feedback for an implant, gum, or pediatric practice here, you are reading a large and mature body of experience — the specialist leaders each carry well over a thousand reviews, so patterns in wait times, insurance handling, and chairside manner are statistically meaningful rather than anecdotal. For cosmetic and orthodontic work, where the pools are smaller, put extra weight on before-and-after specifics and on whether the reviewer’s goals matched yours. Cost is the other variable worth researching up front; our national dental cost guide gives you realistic ranges to bring into any Memphis consultation so you can tell a fair quote from an inflated one.

How to choose well in a barbell market

Because Memphis rewards diligence more than most cities, the method matters. The wide spread means a single decision rule — “pick the closest office” or “pick the one that comes up first” — is genuinely risky here. Use the sequence below, which is tuned to this market’s specific quirks: low website adoption, a low quality floor, and specialist strength.

Step one, weight the rating over the search rank. Given that only 162 of 515 offices maintain a website, the practices Google shows you are a biased sample. Step two, insist on review volume. With so many practices below 4.0, a 5.0 rating built on eight reviews tells you far less than a 4.9 built on 1,300. The Memphis leaders all clear a thousand reviews for a reason. Step three, match the specialty pool — this is a strong implant, pediatric, and periodontal city, so you have real depth of choice for those needs, and slightly less for cosmetic and orthodontics. Step four, solve emergencies before they happen, because the 24-office emergency pool is the one place Memphis is genuinely short-staffed. If you want the reasoning behind how these ratings are compiled and weighted, our ranking methodology lays it out.

Beyond the city line

Memphis blends into a ring of suburbs where quality is often just as high and wait times can be shorter. Heading east, Germantown and Collierville are affluent, well-served suburbs with strong family and specialist options; Bartlett and Cordova sit closer in and are easy commutes for many Memphians; and Lakeland rounds out the eastern corridor. If you live or work near a county line, widening your search a few miles frequently opens up top-tier practices that a Memphis-only search would miss.

Ready to start? Browse the full, rating-first Memphis dentist directory to compare every rated practice side by side, or jump straight to the specialty you need. In a market this uneven, a few minutes of research is the difference between the top half and the bottom quarter.

Dental.me organizes dental directory data so patients can compare offices with confidence. Use each practice profile and its available website, map, and phone details for current appointment, payment, and care decisions.