Different Types of Lenses for Prescription Safety Glasses

Instead of risking your eyesight while performing any activity or playing sports, it is much better to use safety glasses that prevent eye injuries. These glasses would provide protection to your eyes for a lifetime. There are plenty of eye injury cases coming up due to carelessness at work or while playing different sports.

With the use of right prescription safety glasses, up to 90% of eye injuries could be prevented. Safety glasses are different from the regular glasses, so you cannot use regular glasses at the places where you must be using the safety glasses.

There are plenty of things to take into consideration while purchasing prescription safety glasses. Some of the major factors are:

• Eye hazards at your workplace
• Type of safety eyeglasses
• Type of lens
• Coating of lens
• Design and Comfort

Among all the factors, if you wish to purchase the best prescription safety glasses, the most important factor is the type of lens being used in the safety glasses. The quality and everything would matter a lot on the type of lens that has been used in the glasses.

How does Lens Type impact your Safety Glasses?

There is a huge impact on the type of lens on your choices of the lens as well as various traits of the lens. If you wish to purchase your safety glasses online, you must stay aware of several things like the different types of materials available, their advantages and disadvantages, and even their availability in different colors.

The material of the lens has to be decided before you think about purchasing prescription safety glasses as that would make it easy for you to choose the right one. It will narrow down your choice of prescription glasses.

Types of Prescription Glass Lenses

There are different types of lenses used in prescription glasses based on the materials used in them. Every material has its own strength as well as weakness. So, you must choose the type of lens that fulfills all your requirements, and turns out to be beneficial for you.

The index of the lens would relate to its capability of bending the light. As the index increases, the lens becomes thinner, and it could be accommodated in the same prescription. Other than that, the lenses with higher indexes are less optically clear and scratch-resistant. To sum up, you would have to sacrifice some optical clarity for getting your lenses to be lighter and thinner.

1. Standard Plastic

The first type of lens used in the prescription glasses is the standard plastic, which is of pretty low-index. It is easy to make and fairly scratch resistant. It is considered to be one of the cheapest lenses available in the market in different colors like tinted, polarized, clear, and transitions. If you require low-power prescriptions like -2.00 to +2.00, then this is the perfect choice for you. You can even put in various upgrades after purchasing the standard plastic lenses for your prescription glasses.

2. High index Plastic

This type of lens is thinner and more scratch resistant as compared to the standard plastic. Some of the significant advantages of high index plastic lenses are lightweight, lack of eye distortion, and thinness. On the other hand, the major downsides are relatively high optical distortion, expensiveness, and very less availability of different lens colors. Tinted high index plastic is easy to find as compared to polarized and lined bifocal ones.

3. Polycarbonate

Polycarbonate possesses medium-index that comes between the standard and the high-index plastic materials. This lens could be easily scratched, but on the other hand, it is pretty much impact resistant. The most amazing thing about this lens is that it is available in almost every prescription and lens color. The optical distortion of a polycarbonate lens is more than standard plastic and less or equal to high index plastic. Usually, these types of lenses are used for medium to low power prescriptions like -5.00 to +4.00. This is the most preferred lens type as compared to all the other types of lenses due to its impact resistance.

4. Trivex

This material is a common synthetic polymer made with the use of standard plastic and polycarbonate and this is the reason why it shares the characteristics of both these materials. You get better optical clarity and scratch resistance along with impact resistance similar to polycarbonate lenses. This material has turned out to be very popular in the market, and it is carving its way by being as customizable as possible. It is not yet available in all colors and prescriptions though.

5. High index Glass

This type of glass is similar to the standard glass, but the advantages tagged along are lightness and thinness. This type of lens is very brittle in nature, which makes it easy to break and offers the worst amount of clarity. This type of lens is suitable only for a few people who can handle glass with carefulness.

These were the different types of lenses for prescription safety glasses that you can find in the market. Purchase the one that suits your needs and is beneficial for your use.