Wireframes are for thinking
A wireframe is not a deliverable. It is the cheapest possible place to be wrong — use it to be wrong quickly.
Somewhere along the way wireframes became a deliverable — annotated, presented, signed off. That ceremony misses what they are for. A wireframe is a thinking tool, and thinking tools should be fast, disposable, and slightly embarrassing.
Be wrong at pencil speed
The value of a wireframe is the number of bad layouts it lets you discard per hour. I sketch ten screens in the time a polished gray-box mock takes, and eight of the ten deserve the bin. That ratio is the process working, not failing.
The moment a wireframe starts getting fonts and real spacing, it has quietly become design — and design deserves real type, real content, and real color, where the actual decisions live.
What to show clients
Almost never the wireframes. Show the thinking they produced: the two structures worth debating, rendered just far enough that the debate is about the idea. Clients are better at reacting to nearly-real than to boxes — and so are we.