Progressive Eyeglasses Tips

In order to be more effective in the use of progressive eyeglasses, I will show you some tips about driving, hiking mountains, watching TV, sport practising and more with progressives. These tips resulted over time from many questions asked by our customers (varifocal glasses wearers), at our shop.

Choose carefully the frame

The frames used for progressive lenses are usual ones. The only thing to avoid is the narrow frame because is impossible to mount the lens properly in it for a good vision on all the tree parts of the lenses. A frame with the height less than 30 mm is not recommended for normal progressive lenses.

Progressive Eyeglasses frame front height

If you still want a narrow frame, there are currently on the market progressive lenses for such frames, where each side of view is smaller, but that also means narrower field of view for each distance, so you get used with them more difficult.

You can use any kind of frames: frameless, traditional frame, anything you like. You want them to be comfortable because you will wear them all the time.

Be careful when driving cars

First, do not drive with progressive eyeglasses until you get used totally with them. It is best to avoid situations like:

Looking in the mirrors, and you can't correctly appreciate the distance to external objects
You don't know yet in which part of the lenses to look to see the dashboard, the wheel or the road clearly

These are serious problems that you don't want to have when you are speeding on the road.

In the car, need to have the right position on your seat and the glasses properly fixed on your face. To see the dashboard or the street outside, you just move your head and not the glasses to find the right part of the lens which gives you a clear vision.

Hiking on the mountains

The progressive eyeglasses can be used on hiking. The main thing is what kind of coatings you will choose for them:

The hardening is mandatory
Anti-reflective coating is suitable for vision clarity
Photochromic lenses are recommended for the sun protection, same as
UV coating

As material for the mountains, most fitting would be the polycarbonate and trivex lenses because of the high resistance to external factors (strikes, scratches, temperature differences, rain).

About behavior, you use more distance and intermediate portions of the lenses. Be careful when climbing a steep slope. When you look down to walk, try looking through the intermediate and not the bottom of the lens, which is the close vision part, because the picture will be blurry and you become dizzy easily. It only takes a few exercises to accommodate.

Reading with progressive eyeglasses

You will do the reading on the lower portion of the lens, so often you'll be in semi-lying or sitting that you can have a comfortable position to read.

If you want to lie down, you lift your head slightly to see through the lower portion. You can move the glasses on your nose up a little to have at hand the near vision diopters.

Some say that reading with progressive eyeglasses can be tiring. We never had clients with this problem.

Watching TV

In this case, you use the intermediate or distance diopters of the lens, depending on the length to which the TV is from you.

If you stand upright, look through the top part, or move your head slowly up and down, until you find the area of lens you see the clearest image.

After a while, you will not have to do this, you will already know the exact position.

If you want to watch TV lying down (although not recommended to move the progressive glasses on the nose), you can leave the glasses on your nose down a bit so the top of the lens (diopters of distance) to reach the eyes. It is the simplest method and is reliable. In this case, the eye-lens range will increase a little bit, normally the vision should remain as clear.

Sport practicing

My opinion about sport practicing is to choose a high resistance frame, a sport frame if possible and high resistance lenses.

You can practice any sports with progressive eyeglasses, but do not rush to use them, until you are totally accommodated. In some sports, it is dangerous to get dizzy or to have a poor vision.

The excellent news is that after you get used with progressives, you will have no problems, and you can wear them as any other glasses.

In the office

Here, you will use also the intermediate (to screen of computer) and the close diopters(reading, keyboard), so you use more often the lower half of the lens.

Find the position of your head, for easy access to these portions. Once used, you will see the computer clearly.

Outside on open space

Use them outside like any other pair of glasses. Try not move them up and down on the nose, because the lenses were mounted on the frame depending on its position on your nose, so moving them around often you will not see better and will be more difficult to accommodate them.

A fixed position of the frame in the position specified by the optician will help you feel comfortable with them much faster.

Whenever you think they are enlarged, and they slide down on your nose, go to the optician to fix them.

As you can see, in association with progressive eyeglasses most often used term is accommodation. If you manage to get comfortable with them, you can use them in any activity, being careful to watch through the right side of the lens, which becomes a habit over time.