My husband and I had an interesting time this week, unravelling the mysteries of online optician ordering. We thought we were fairly savvy shoppers, but we realised we needed some advice when it came to buying glasses. After a few mails back and forth to the IGC’s customer service dept, and we’re now sorted, so we thought we’d share our new found knowledge.

My prescription is quite different to my husbands, a fact we’ve always been aware of as we can’t share glasses! I’m minus 4 ish in each eye, he is plus 3.5 and 4.75. Love really must be blind! Apparently, short and long sighted people have different issues when it comes to choosing spec frames, so this was a learning curve for us.

My husband wanted semi-rimless glasses, but this flagged up a potential problem with his lenses. We were told that if you’re long sighted the edges of your lenses are very thin – and if they make them thicker it makes the middle of the lens thick, and husband hates that magnified eye look he gets if his lenses are thick. A semi-rimless exposes the edges of the lenses, so this could make them prone to chipping. He also picked quite a wide frame, and the bigger shape increases the eye magnification.

I chose a big shape because I wanted a dark lens to wear as sunglasses. This was flagged up because with my lens power the lenses are thick on the edge, and the bigger my lens shape the more thickness I get. We were disappointed that we couldn’t have our choices, but pleased that there were explanations and advice for this.

I decided that even if the edges were thicker it wouldn’t bother me, as the tint would disguise it. The IGC agreed with me, and now that I’ve got them, I’m glad I was warned, and I’m happy with them. My husband decided to get a smaller frame with a full rim. We tried some at home first, and picked a pretty funky pair!! We’re pleased with those too, they’re cool and the lenses look really good. The advice helped us to make informed choices, and I was really glad that the orders weren’t just done, as we had the chance to pick products that were better for us.