Sir, it was interesting to read the paper by Cooper et al.1 about patient perceptions of aesthetics as it took me back to work we did here in Manchester many years ago on the same topic.2 We were surprised to find that patients did not necessarily prefer the restorations that they thought looked most natural, and tended to choose the restorations which had a lighter shade. With the more recent emphasis on tooth whitening, I should imagine that this trend would probably be even stronger today.