Family & cosmetic dentistry
Lumen Dental
Gentle, unhurried dentistry in Almaden Valley.
We explain every step before we take it, we hand you the price in writing before we start, and we will never make you feel bad about how long it has been since your last visit.
- Accepting new patients
- In-network with most PPO plans
- Evening hours Tuesday & Thursday until 7pm
What we do
Everyday dentistry, and the cosmetic work people come here for
Six things make up almost everything we do. Under each one is what the appointment is actually like, because for most people the worry is the procedure, not the bill.
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Cleanings & exams
A full exam, a digital X-ray series, and a cleaning with a hygienist who is not being rushed out of the room. We chart every gum pocket, check your bite, and screen for oral cancer at every single visit — not just the first one.
What the visit is like About 60 minutes. Scaling and polish, then you sit up and Dr. Raman walks through your images on the monitor beside the chair while you watch.
$135 cleaning · $95 exam · usually $0 with a PPO plan
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Fillings
Tooth-coloured composite, shade-matched to the tooth beside it. No silver amalgam, no grey line creeping along the gum in five years. If a cavity is small enough to watch rather than fill, we will tell you that and put it in your chart.
What the visit is like Topical numbing gel goes on first and sits for two minutes, so the injection itself is usually a pressure feeling. 30–45 minutes for a single tooth, and you can eat right after.
$215–$345 depending on how many surfaces
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Crowns & bridges
When a tooth is cracked or has lost too much structure for a filling, a crown caps it and holds the whole thing together. A bridge replaces a missing tooth using the two either side of the gap as anchors.
What the visit is like Same-day crowns are milled here in the operatory. You leave with the finished tooth rather than a temporary that pops off over the weekend. Two hours, one appointment.
$1,290 lab crown · $1,390 same-day · most PPO plans cover 50%
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Teeth whitening
In-office whitening takes about 75 minutes and gets most people four to six shades lighter in one sitting. Custom take-home trays go slower and are gentler if your teeth are sensitive, which is genuinely the more common outcome.
What the visit is like We photograph a shade reading before and after against the same guide, so the change is something you can measure rather than something we describe.
$495 in-office · $295 take-home trays · $150 refill gel
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Veneers
Thin porcelain shells bonded to the front of the teeth that actually show when you smile. For chips, uneven edges, small gaps, and staining that has gone past what any whitening gel can reach.
What the visit is like We start with a digital design and a trial smile you wear home for a week and live with before a single tooth is prepared. If you do not love it, we redesign it.
$1,450 per tooth · most cases are six to eight teeth
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Emergency care
Cracked a tooth, lost a crown, or woke up with a swollen jaw — call us. We hold two openings every weekday for emergencies and we answer our own phone during office hours. There is no call tree and no triage queue.
What the visit is like A focused exam and one X-ray of the tooth that hurts. We get you out of pain first and plan the permanent fix afterwards, when you can think straight.
$95 emergency exam, credited toward treatment booked that week
Meet the team
The three people you will actually see
It is a small office on purpose. The same hygienist cleans your teeth every time, the same dentist does your work, and the same person handles your insurance.
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Dr. Priya Raman, DDS
Dentist and owner
Cascade Vista University School of Dentistry · Fellowship-trained in general dentistry · 15 years in practice
Priya opened Lumen in 2016 after eight years at a high-volume practice where she never got more than twenty minutes with anybody. She books longer appointments here on purpose, and she will stop mid-procedure and answer the same question three times without ever making it sound like a third time.
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Elena Castillo, RDH
Registered dental hygienist
Oakmeadow Community College dental hygiene program · Licensed in local anesthesia · 14 years chairside
Elena is the person most patients see the most, and she is the reason a lot of them stopped dreading this. If your gums bleed when you brush, ask her about it — she will put the camera on the exact spot and show you why, and there is no lecture attached.
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Tomás Herrera
Practice manager
Dental benefits, billing and scheduling · 11 years · Speaks English and Spanish
Tomás runs the insurance side, which means he is the one who tells you what something will cost before you agree to it. He has a standing rule here that he will recite to anyone who asks: nobody at this office finds out the price afterwards.
How we hold the standard
- 60+ hours of continuing education a year per clinician, roughly double what the state requires for licence renewal.
- Weekly spore testing of every autoclave by an outside lab, with the results filed and available to any patient who asks to see them.
- Same day release of your full records and images if you move or want a second opinion. No fee, no form, no waiting period.
Technology
The equipment, and what it changes for you
Every practice lists its equipment. What matters is what each piece removes from your appointment — a dose, a guess, a goopy tray, a second visit, or an hour of dread.
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Digital X-rays
Digital sensors instead of film cut the radiation of a full-mouth series by around 80%. A complete 18-image set here is roughly the dose you absorb on a cross-country flight, and the images are on the screen in under two seconds instead of five minutes in a darkroom.
Approximate effective dose for a full-mouth series. Lead apron and thyroid collar used on every exposure. -
Intraoral cameras
A pen-sized camera puts the inside of your mouth on the monitor at about 25× life size. You see the crack we are describing instead of taking our word for it. Every image goes into your chart, gets attached to the insurance claim, and is yours to take to any second opinion you want.
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Same-day crowns
We scan the prepared tooth, design the crown on screen while you watch, and mill it out of a solid porcelain block in the operatory next door. About two hours start to finish. No impression tray, no temporary crown, no third visit three weeks later to cement something that no longer fits the way your bite has settled.
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Sedation options
Nitrous oxide is $85, takes about three minutes to work, and wears off completely before you leave the parking lot. Oral sedation is $295 and is for longer appointments or for people who have not managed to sit through a cleaning in a decade; you will need somebody to drive you home. Both are optional, both are discussed before the day, and neither one is ever quietly added to your bill.
Insurance & financing
What it costs, before you are in the chair
We are in-network with most major PPO plans and we file every claim for you, so you pay your share at the desk and nothing arrives in the post six weeks later. Here is the rest of it, written down.
Plans we are in-network with
- Cascade Dental PPO
- Almaden Mutual Dental
- Redwood Ridge Dental
- Bayline Dental Benefits
- Summit Grove PPO
- Harborlight Dental
- Civic Union Dental
- Vantage Care Dental PPO
Not on the list? Call (555) 212-0147 with your member ID and Tomás will run a full benefits breakdown in about ten minutes and tell you what you would pay here either way. We do not accept HMO or DHMO plans, and we are not a Medi-Cal Dental provider.
What a typical PPO plan covers here
| Category | Typical PPO coverage | What you usually pay here |
|---|---|---|
| Preventive — exams, cleanings, X-rays | 100% | $0 |
| Basic — fillings, simple extractions | 70–80% | $45–$105 per filling |
| Major — crowns, bridges, root canals | 50% | $645 on a $1,290 crown |
| Periodontal — deep cleaning, maintenance | 50–80% | $120–$240 per quadrant |
| Cosmetic — whitening, veneers | Not covered | Full fee, quoted in writing first |
| Orthodontic referral | Varies by plan | We submit the pre-authorisation for you |
Most PPO plans run a $1,500 to $2,000 annual maximum. If a treatment plan is going to cross it, we will show you how to split the work across two benefit years and what that saves, before you book either half.
If you do not have insurance
About a third of our patients do not, and they are not paying a penalty for it. The Lumen Membership is an in-house plan, not insurance: no deductible, no annual maximum, no waiting period, and no claim to file.
- Adult membership $349 / year
- Child membership (under 14) $249 / year
- Additional family member $299 / year
Each membership includes two cleanings, two exams, one full X-ray series, one emergency visit with the focused X-ray, and 20% off everything else we do — including crowns, veneers and whitening. It renews only if you tell us to.
Paying over time
Nobody should put off a cracked tooth because of a single invoice date. Two options, both explained at the desk before you commit to anything.
- Third-party financing, treatment over $600 0% for 12 months
- In-house split, treatment up to $1,500 3 payments, no interest
- Paid in full at the visit 5% off the fee
Third-party financing runs a soft credit check and approval is not guaranteed. The in-house split needs no check at all — it is a handshake and a card on file.
Every treatment plan over $300 comes with a printed estimate carrying your own plan's numbers, handed to you before anything is booked. If the final bill comes back higher than that estimate because we read your benefits wrong, we absorb the difference.
New patient offer
Your first visit — exam, full X-ray series and a cleaning — is $89
$89 normally $312
It is the same appointment we give everybody, not a shortened version of it. Here are the conditions in full, in the same size type as the offer.
The conditions, written out
- It applies to patients without active gum disease. If Elena charts periodontal pockets during the exam, we stop, show you the numbers on the screen, and quote the deeper cleaning before touching anything. You are never billed for a treatment you did not agree to first.
- It cannot be combined with insurance benefits. If you carry a PPO plan, your preventive visit is usually $0 anyway — Tomás will check and tell you which route is genuinely cheaper for you, even when that is the one that pays us less.
- One per person, and it is good for 90 days from the day you first call or submit the form. We do not run a countdown timer on it.
- It includes the complete 18-image digital X-ray series, and those images belong to you. Ask and we will send them anywhere the same day, at no charge.
- No membership, no auto-enrolment, no card kept on file, and nothing recurring. It is one visit at one price.
Book a visit
Request an appointment
Tell us when suits and we will call you back within one business day to confirm an exact time. If you are in pain today, please call (555) 212-0147 instead — we hold two emergency slots every weekday.
Questions
Questions people actually ask us
These are the six that come up on the phone every week, answered the way we answer them on the phone.
About 75 minutes, and a surprising amount of it is us listening. We take the full digital X-ray series and a set of camera photos, Dr. Raman does a complete exam including a gum-pocket chart and an oral cancer screening, and then you sit up and she goes through the images with you on the monitor.
If everything is healthy, Elena cleans your teeth the same day. If there is work to do, Tomás prints an estimate with your insurance already applied before you leave, and nothing is scheduled until you have had time to sit with it at home.
First and most importantly: nobody here will comment on how long it has been. That is a rule, not a courtesy.
Tell the front desk when you book and we put you in the quiet room at the back of the office, first thing in the morning, with double the usual appointment time. Numbing gel goes on before any injection. We agree a stop signal — you raise your left hand and everything stops, no questions, no sighing. Nitrous oxide is $85 and works in about three minutes; oral sedation is $295 for people who have not managed a cleaning in years.
Plenty of our regulars started with an appointment where we did nothing at all except talk and take photographs. That is a legitimate first visit and you can book it.
We are in-network with most major PPO plans and we file every claim on your behalf, so you pay your share at the desk and there is no reimbursement paperwork on your end. Preventive visits are covered at 100% under most PPOs, which in practice means $0 for your cleaning, exam and X-rays.
If your plan is not in the list above, call (555) 212-0147 with your member ID. Tomás will run a full benefits breakdown in about ten minutes and tell you the number either way. We do not accept HMO or DHMO plans, and we are not a Medi-Cal Dental provider — if that is your coverage we will point you to a practice that is, rather than sell you a membership you do not need.
Pain that wakes you up, swelling anywhere in the face or jaw, a knocked-out or cracked tooth, a crown that has come off, or bleeding that will not stop. Any of those, call us.
We keep two openings every weekday for emergencies and we answer our own phone during office hours. Call before 2pm on a weekday and we can nearly always see you the same day. After hours the outgoing message gives you Dr. Raman's on-call number, and it is a real number that rings a real phone.
One genuine race against the clock: a knocked-out adult tooth. Put it in milk or in your own saliva, do not scrub the root, and call immediately — inside the first hour the odds of saving it are good.
First visit by the first birthday, or within six months of the first tooth arriving, whichever comes first. That early appointment is short and mostly a knee-to-knee exam with you holding them — it is about habits, bottles and fluoride, not drilling.
Proper cleanings usually start around age three. We never separate children from parents: you are in the room the whole time unless your child would genuinely rather you were not. Children under 14 without coverage pay $65 for the exam-and-cleaning visit.
For most healthy mouths, yes. Six months is roughly the interval at which we catch a small cavity while it is still a $265 filling rather than a $1,290 crown, and that is the entire argument.
If you have gum disease, a history of heavy tartar, diabetes, or you smoke, three or four months is genuinely better and most PPO plans will cover four cleanings a year in those cases. And if your gums are healthy, you do not smoke, and your X-rays have been clean for years, Dr. Raman will tell you that nine months is fine. We would rather say that out loud than sell you a visit you do not need.