They block the sun. They block blue light. They protect against fog, glare, and even making eye contact with people you don’t want to talk to. We’re talking about eyeglass lens coatings, and nowadays, it seems like they’re so powerful they can do practically anything.
We love a good eyewear add-on, but when we started seeing eyeglass lens coatings that could deliver X-ray vision, we had questions. Just kidding, the Stoggles team never saw those, but we do like to envision the possibility.
In this little bathroom break read, we’ll cover everything you need to know about the specialized coatings available for your eyewear, including which are worth the extra cash at your optician’s office and which are mostly good for supporting your bragging purposes only.
Of course, we’ll also tell you how every pair of Stoggles is made with its own lens-coated superpowers to keep your eyes safe (and effortlessly stylish).
What Are Lens Coatings
Your eyewear can have a lot of different features. What started out as a basic magnifying tool has evolved into specs that can literally correct and transform the way you see the world. Lens coatings play a huge role in the way your eyewear shows up to help you see better.
Lens coatings are applied to the lenses of eyewear (both glass and plastics) and are sealed on, usually using heat. These coatings can change specifics like the amount of light that enters your eyes, the way condensation forms on the lenses, and even help you deal with glare.
Here, we’ll cover some of the most popular lens coatings.
1. Anti-Reflective
AR lenses (also referred to as anti-glare) are designed with a coating on both sides of the lens. The sole purpose of this type of coating is to reduce the amount of light reflected off the lenses of your eyewear. In other words, you’re getting the most light from your environment but without any weird reflection off of your lenses.
This coating can be especially helpful if you’re wearing sunglasses on a bright summer day. Lenses without an AR coating allow the light entering from the sides of the glasses to light up the inside of the lenses, sometimes causing you to see your own eyes in the reflection of your lenses — and it goes without saying that this can be pretty disorienting. It’s also useful for helping reduce light reflected off your lenses while you’re reading on a tablet or sitting in front of a computer.
Because AR lenses reduce light reflected off your lenses, they can also help you appear more photogenic in pictures, which means you can keep your glasses on for those selfies.
The term “anti-glare” is a bit misleading because experts agree that glare is more effectively addressed with polarized lenses. Polarized lenses are, technically, coatings, but they’re usually sandwiched between two layers of lens material and not on the external part of the lens.
Scratch Resistant
There’s nothing like shelling out half your savings for your new eyewear only to drop them on the pavement the first week and get a nice, long scratch right across your line of vision. Should you have paid the additional fee for a scratch-resistant coating? Maybe.
Thankfully, most eyewear today comes standard with some type of scratch-resistant coating. Many eyewear materials are soft and subject to scratching, so manufacturers will naturally include them in the price of the eyewear, so you don’t even have to make the decision on your own.
UV Protection
The sun can damage your eyes just like it can damage your skin. While you’re worrying about wrinkles and skin cancer, don’t forget that your eyes are subject to premature aging and cancer also, as well as the thin skin on your eyelids.
The American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends lenses with 100% UV protection when you’re exposed to the sun. Don’t be fooled into thinking that your uber-dark sunglasses automatically have this level of protection: they might not.
The shading on your eyewear doesn’t equate to UV protection. In fact, some cheaply manufactured sunglasses may not have much actual UV protection at all. Many types of eyewear, including Stoggles, are made from lightweight, ultra-durable polycarbonate, which is naturally UV-blocking, with no coating required.
Anti-Fog
It happens every summer when you exit the coolness of your car and step onto the asphalt. Your lenses immediately fog, rendering you completely blind until you remove them, wipe them, and subject yourself to sun-sneezing at least four times — running or exerting yourself can also make you run hot, causing normal lenses to fog up, too.
Fogging lenses can become more of a nuisance if your work involves wearing PPE like face masks. It can be virtually impossible to keep those lenses clean. Eyewear fogs because of the way water behaves with itself and on surfaces.
The only way to prevent fog is to change the way the surface reacts to the water droplets that condense on it. Anti-fog coatings are a better solution than wipes or drops because they last a lot longer than those methods. No anti-fog coating is permanent, and will usually need replacing in a few years or months, depending on how much you clean them. The harsher the cleaning agents, the quicker the anti-fog coating will erode. However, anti-fog coating, like the kind every pair of Stoggles come standard with, are better for keeping the fog away longer.
Blue Light Blocking
If you aren’t familiar with blue light, you’re looking at it right now. Blue light is emitted from the sun and is a high-energy light source, like UV rays. The sun is the largest source of blue light, but blue light is also emitted from devices like tablets, LED televisions, lightbulbs, smartphones, and computers. That means our exposure to blue light is basically constant.
Blue light can penetrate your cornea and reach the retina, where your vision cells are located. Researchers aren’t 100% sure how much damage blue light can do to your eyes. Some theorize that it could lead to early onset macular degeneration or cataracts. What we do know is that blue light can interfere with your circadian rhythm, cause eye strain and fatigue, and even lead to Computer Vision Syndrome.
Blue light blocking lens coatings are a good solution for reducing the amount of blue light that enters your eyes, but at Stoggles, we took it a step further. Instead of coating our lenses with blue light diffusing material, we injected it directly into the raw material of the lens. This means it lasts longer and gives you better protection.
Tinted Lenses
If you’re just looking for something cool to say you have, tinted lenses are for you (and we are not judging). Tinted lenses may be marketed as reducing the amount of visible light that passes through them, but the type of light they reduce may not be harmful.
If you have sensitivity to really bright light, tinted lenses may help you see more comfortably, but mostly, tinted lenses will just make you look/feel really stylish, and that’s something we can get behind. If looking great in your eyewear is your thing, too, check out Stoggles Monochrome, our limited edition eyewear that features frames and lenses in matching colors.
If anyone has a comment about your monochromatic style, you can go ahead and run down the list of Stoggles eyewear benefits so they know you’re no novice to eye safety.
Not familiar with Stoggles benefits? Get ready to be blown away (or at least very impressed).
Stoggles: Styles, Serious Coatings, and Safety in One
Most people come to us having only worn safety eyewear that was either issued by their employer or found in the bottom of a toolbox. We’ve been rehabbing these types of unfortunate safety eyewear users one by one.
Our eyewear is different. It’s designed to offer the safety standards and protection you need, but with one key difference: it doesn’t make you cringe.
Style
Safety eyewear was initially created for men and has retained its hyper-masculine look for decades. We decided to combine the stylistic features we loved about our favorite eyeglasses with the protective benefits we needed from safety glasses to create a new, hybrid type of eyewear that protects well and looks good. Thus, Stoggles was born.
We offer our Stoggles in numerous different frame shapes, multiple colors, and two distinct fits so that you not only love the way you look in your eyewear you love the way you feel.
Safety
We take two things seriously: style and safety. Everything else is fair game for frivolity. In terms of safety specs, we load our eyewear with industry-leading features you’d expect in safety glasses and some features that are just seriously cool bonuses.
Stoggles: Anything But Standard
You need eyewear that protects, and that’s just what we created. Every pair of Stoggles come preloaded with these game-changing safety features.
- ANSI Z87.1-2020 certification. You want shatterproof? We’ve got shatterproof. We’ve got ANSI Z87.1-2020 certification to prove our eyewear can take a hit without hitting your eyes with shards of eyewear material.
- UV protection. All Stoggles are crafted from polycarbonate material, which is naturally UV-blocking without any coating necessary.
- Blue light blocking. Our lenses are injected with blue-light blocking compounds to filter away intrusive blue light.
- Anti-fog. Every pair of Stoggles comes with a long-lasting anti-fog coating, so you don’t have to wipe (and sneeze) for a really long time.
- Side and top shields. For all-around protection, we opted to create Stoggles with side and top shields, which are more low-profile than wraparound lenses and never interfere with prescription lenses if you need them. Plus, they also look a whole lot better.
Speaking of prescriptions, we do those too. Simply upload your prescription to our website, and we’ll customize a pair of Stoggles for you. No more stuffing your glasses under goggles.
If you want to cut down on glare, we can help you with that, too. Our Sun/Polarized option offers polarized lenses that help reduce glare so you can see more clearly.
Coatings You Care About
Did you just hit the jackpot? No, you just found Stoggles. Our eyewear might make you feel like you’ve won the eyewear lottery, and we’d agree our eyewear is out of sight. Change the way you look through your glasses. Stoggles gives you the options you need, the styles you want, and the ability to customize a look you’ll love.
Sources:
What You Need to Know About Eyeglass Lens Coatings | Consumer Reports
Is the UV coating on prescription lenses enough protection? | American Academy of Ophthalmology