What do you do for sunglasses?

For some people, the only thing that matters with their sunglasses is that they look cool – that’ll do just fine.  Whatever your reason, we all should have sunglasses, or some version of. 
Your sunnies are to protect your eyes from both harmful UV radiation and provide comfortable vision by reducing the intense glare.  The other benefits include stopping things going in your eyes like pollens at allergy times, and bugs when riding your bike. 

So when our glasses wearers ask “what about sunglasses?” we can help with the options of

1.      Prescription sunglasses – a separate pair, but does give you the best solution

2.      Photochromic tint changing lenses in your everyday or second alternate pair of glasses

3.      Very clever, light-weight polarised sun-clips that are magnetised onto your usual glasses lenses.

The UV burns concept is well known for skin, and our eyes are vulnerable too.  Skin cancers around the eyelids (a common place) and also damage on the eye pterygium/”surfers eye”, along with inside the eyes developing cataracts younger and UV associated with retinal damage and macula degeneration. 
We talk about UV-A (320-380nm) which ages the eyes with cataracts, and UV-B (290-320nm) the particularly damaging range that will “sun burn” your cornea and give you snow blindness, a very painful experience.  The ancient Tibetans knew about this and wove fine horsehair into a type of sunvisor to protect them in the bright sun and snow.

The UV protection comes from the lens material blocking the UV and often other filters added to the lens surface.  Some of the high index lens materials are 100% UV protection without any additional UV treatments.  Another option from fixed tint sunglasses, is a photochromic lens, commonly referred to as Transitions (a brand name) and this is 100% UV protecting.

Sunglasses as we know them are credited to the US Army Air Corps in the 1920s for high altitude glare protection for their pilots.  The first lenses were a green tint and then in the later 1940s the neutral grey tint was developed and became popular from the 1950s.

The darker the tint doesn’t mean more UV protection, there is just less visible light to your eyes reducing the discomfort of glare, with an 85% tint allowing just 15% of the light through the lens.  Most people will have 65-85% tints and we have samples to choose from your prescription sunglasses.
As well as tint, we can reduce the reflected light through the lens with a polarised filter in the lens.  So your sunglasses will either be just tinted, or tinted and polarised.  The colour of your tint is personal preference, however most people find the grey tint gives them less colour distortion.  In Europe the brown tints are popular, a mix of fashion and the different skies?

If you choose prescription sunglasses, we’ll work though the options with you:

1.      Do you want on-trend Moscot or stylish Kate Syvlester frames?
If you are working with more of a budget our Bill Bass sunglasses are a great option

2.      We carry sunglass ranges that are “prescriptable” making them suitable for optical prescription lenses

3.      We’ll recommend the best lens materials and lens design for your prescription

4.      We’ll ask do you want tinted or polarised lenses?  Which colour and how dark? – let’s show you samples

5.      Water based weekends? – we recommend the Maui Jim polarised tint, you’ll not regret the best polarised lens we’ve seen, and you can have this in your prescription with same tint quality!

6.      And once we’ve worked all of this out, our staff will take the accurate measurements needed for your lenses to these frames.

So, what do you do for sunglasses?  Let us know if we can help – we love hearing the comment “I love my prescription sunnies, don’t know why I didn’t get them sooner!”