If you’re picking out your next pair of cool, fashionable glasses, you might be more concerned with the colour and shape of the frame rather than which coating you need. But additional factors such as anti-reflective, scratch-resistant, anti-fog and UV are all important things to consider in the decision making process.
While style, fashion and looking good are all important factors when selecting your new pair of specs (after all, you want to be happy with your new purchase), lens coatings are important when buying your glasses, too. For example, an anti-reflective coating is a great addition to your glasses if you’re going to wear your new frames when driving or looking at a screen all day.
Lens coatings can enhance you glasses and increase the levels of durability, performance and even the appearance of your eyeglass lenses. Coatings can be applied to single vision, bifocal or progressive lenses.
If you are thinking about purchasing new eyeglasses, we’ve rounded up some lens coatings and treatments you should consider.
Anti-reflective
Anti-reflective coating eliminates reflections from the front and back surface of eyeglass lenses through using a microscopically thin multilayer coating.
In doing so, the coating makes your lenses nearly invisible so people can focus on your eyes, not distracting reflections from your eyeglasses.
Anti-reflective coating also eliminates glare caused by light reflecting from your lenses. With reflections eliminated, lenses with an anti-reflective coating provide better vision for night driving and better vision when reading and using the computer.
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Anti-Fog Coating
If you live in a cold climate, nothing is more frustrating than having your eyeglasses fog up when you come in from the cold. This also can be a safety issue, since it limits your ability to see until the fog clears. Lens fogging can be especially dangerous for police officers and other first responders to emergency situations.
Some companies have created a permanent coating designed to eliminate this problem. The factory-applied coating eliminates the condensation of moisture on lenses that causes fogging.
With this coating, you lenses and vision stay clear when you make the transition from a cold environment to a warm one. It’s also particularly useful during sports as the coating prevents lenses from fogging up during exercise and other times when you are hot and perspiring.
The Adidas a168 Evil Eye Halfrim sports sunglasses not only look great but include an anti-fog coating.
Scratch-resistant
While we can’t say that adding a scratch-resistant coating will guarantee that your lenses become scratch-proof (no eyeglass lenses are), adding this coating will certainly reduce the risk of minor scratching.
Lenses that are treated front and back with a clear, scratch-resistant coating have a much harder surface. Therefore, the treated lens will become more resistant to scratching, and will certainly help to protect them if you drop your glasses on the floor or catch them while cleaning the lens.
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Ultraviolet Treatment
Overexposure to ultraviolet light is thought to be a cause of cataracts, retinal damage and other eye problems. It’s important to combat this and to protect the health of your eyes – and you can with a lens treatment.
By using an invisible dye that blocks UV light you can combat those dangerous rays from reaching your eyes. Just as sun cream keeps the sun’s UV rays from harming your skin, UV-protective treatments for eyeglass lenses block the sun’s rays from damaging your eyes.
Regular plastic eyeglass lenses block most UV light, but adding a UV-blocking dye boosts UV protection to 100 %. When choosing your lens look out for built in UV protection, which can be found in lens materials polycarbonate and most high-index plastics. In this case, an extra lens treatment is not required.
Photochromic lenses also block 100 % of the sun’s UV rays, which means you don’t need add a UV treatment.
The Savannah S8122 includes a high level of UV protection.
All SelectSpecs lenses come with free anti-reflective and scratch-resistant coating as standard, even on our free lenses!
Find out why your eye health matters here.
