Posts Tagged ‘glasses’

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Back to Basics

Saturday, December 25th, 2010

As we live and breathe glasses, in all their exciting shapes and sizes, it’s easy for us to forget that for first time wearers, choosing a frame and the accompanying lenses can be a minefield of exhausting choice and confusing options. After a couple of enquiry e-mails this week, we came back to earth and realised that a little refresher course on making that first important step into clear sight might be useful, so here we go, back to the basics!

Selecting a frame entails you making a series of decisions based on looks alone. Unless you’ve been secretly short sighted for years, walking into oncoming buses and squinting for England every minute of the day, it’s unlikely that as a fist time wearer you’ll have a high prescription that will limit your frame choice. For low power, first prescriptions the choice is entirely down to personal taste.

On the whole, metal frames are less obtrusive than plastic, as they are thinner and less conspicuous. Plastic is bolder, brighter, and literally, more in your face! Metal frames have two nose pads which bear the weight of the frame across your nose, plastic have a moulded bridge which spread the weight across a greater area. Pad bridges on metals are good for uneven noses, slim bridges, or sinus sufferers who need the specs to sit in a specific place. Pads have the flexibility to help you get the frame where you want it. Plastic or metal should be equally durable for everyday wear.

The frame size should be the width of your face, wider and your eyes will look close together, narrower and you’ll be looking around the edges! Fashion at present is not a particular size, so there’s plenty of choice and different looks. Style depends on you – bold, funky and on trend, or classic and chic? Look through fashion magazines, see what your friends are wearing, browse online. Think of this as a fashion item you actually need to purchase, and enjoy the shopping opportunity!

Colour is down to personal choice, to fit in with your colouring or your favourite ‘uniform’ for work or leisure. As a general rule, blondes with fair skins suit delicate metals, dark hair and eyes suit sultry looks in dark colours, dark skins look amazing in bold brights. For the first pair, something that tones with you and your lifestyle will be easier for you and your loved ones to adjust too! Then as your confidence grows you can experiment with the bright and the beautiful. Enjoy your glasses – see them as an accessory to both your looks and your lifestyle.

Varifocal Glasses

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In the Deep Mid Winter……..

Monday, December 20th, 2010

Dazzling headlights on dark roads are a problem for many drivers as we hit the party scene and find ourselves out and about late into the night. If you don’t wear glasses, you won’t appreciate the difficulty caused by light that’s refracted at every shiny surface around the driver. Light hits the front surface of the windscreen, is refracted through it, leaves the back surface of the windscreen, and this happens on each glass surface – your mirrors, your windows, your glasses. At each refraction, interference blocks your vision and can cause confusion and dazzle.

It’s not just spec wearers who suffer at night. Eye disease such as Glaucoma and cataract can cause odd optical effects. Contact lens patients, especially those with multifocal contacts can suffer with poor vision at night, having to drive more slowly, and finding difficulty in recognising road signs. This latter problem can mean slower reaction to oncoming hazards. Multifocal wearers may be more comfortable switching to specs for long journeys after dark.

Patients who have been through laser surgery sometimes find they see haloes around lights at night; this was a particular issue with older surgical techniques. This again can lead to slower reaction times. Sadly this cannot be reversed, so if you’re considering surgery, research your surgeon carefully, check how many operations they have performed, and choose a company who will give you realistic expectations of the outcome.

If you do have issues around night driving, then speak to your optician on your next visit. Even a tiny increase in prescription is worth changing your specs for, to give any improvement in visual acuity. Never wear tints, add an anti-reflection coating, and make sure your frame is large and the lenses are scrupulously clean. Scratches may refract light too, so you may need a replacement lens if there’s a scratch in your line of vision. It’s not worth the risk to drive at night if you’re not safe, so check if your sight is as good as it can be, and at least if you decide it’s not safe for you to drive you can have a drink to toast your designated driver!

Prescription Glasses

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The Gift of Sight

Sunday, December 19th, 2010

If you’re still searching for the elusive perfect present for a loved one, take heart if they are a spectacle wearer – the Internet Glasses Company can be your Father Christmas, so your Christmas prayers are answered!

Glasses as a gift may not sound that exciting, but by giving someone a specific prescription lens, or sunglasses that they always thought were an indulgence, or a bling alternative frame for evenings, you could be filling a niche in their eyewear wardrobe that they never even knew existed!

If your nearest and dearest loves embroidery, reading music, tying flies, hammering at their workbench, knitting…….the list goes on! Then their ordinary reading glasses may not be of the right focal length for these very specific tasks. Even varifocals, due to the angle they have to work at, might not be comfortable. A nice little luxury is the correct power for their favourite hobby. So how do you buy for them? Take a sneaky peek at their present specs and note the size on the side arm. Find an equivalent amongst our extensive range. Tell us their prescription, and the approximate distance they are working at. If you’re not sure, mail us, we can help you with suggested distances. We then calculate the strength they need, pop them in the post, and you get all the thanks! Plus, possibly, a yummy hand knitted sweater from a grateful Great Aunt into the bargain!

Prescription sunglasses are now often seen as a necessity, but for some, they might be a purchase they’ve never got around too. Equally easy- again, check their frame size, and choose any frame a size bigger in the eye size. This is the larger measurement that you read off their frame, usually between 48 and 56 mm. Sizing up means good sun protection. Then add a tint and UV layer to the order, mail us for advice if you’re unsure. You’ll be giving the gift of glamour, safe sight, and fewer wrinkles all in one – who could ask for more!!

For a bling fan who loves some dazzle in their eyewear, a funky frame will be the answer to their every Christmas wish. Pick something suitably snazzy, something a little daring that they won’t wear on a trip to Sainsbury’s, and you won’t go wrong!

So trust the Internet Glasses Company  to do the work of Santa’s little elves for you, and be a cracker this Christmas!

Prescription Glasses

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Party Looks

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

At the moment every magazine is full of exciting clothes and accessories, all with that essential smattering of sparkle to make you shine through the party season. We’re expected to have the essential LBD or sharp suit at the ready, along with dizzily high heels, vampish make up and the perfect bag and jewellery. But if you wear glasses, how do you make sure you still have the perfect look this season?

Wearing specs throws up several issues that you need to address. You’ll fall into one of two categories – the I-want-you-to-see-me-not-my-specs brigade, or the specs-are- hot-and-I-want-you-to-notice-them camp. Whichever describes you and your attitude to eye wear, you still want to co-ordinate, look good on photos, and make sure your efforts with make up and outfits are not wasted.

You should always add an anti-reflection coating to your glasses, which will give you safe vision after dark, and ensure that people see you and not their reflection in your lenses. This means your eye make is not wasted and that on photos your sparkling peepers look fantastic. Then the drive home will be safer too as the coating is the only thing that helps with the dazzle of oncoming headlights.

Experiment with your make up to help you decide if emphasising your lips or eyes will enhance your face and your specs the best. As a general rule, light rimless or metal specs need bolder eye make up, to make sure your eyes are a strong feature, bright chunky plastic frames need luscious lips to bring balance to the face. Depending on your colouring and that of your frames you need to choose the look to suit.

If you rely on your LBD to get you through the party season, then an update on your specs and some fresh accessories may be enough to update your entire party wardrobe. If you’re investing in a new dress, then lace is a hot look this year. A shiny black plastic frame will be the perfect antidote and stop you looking like the bad fairy that fell off the Christmas tree!

Prescription Glasses

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Taking the Plunge

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

Contact lenses today offer more versatility and choice at lower prices than ever before. Once the option of the very rich and brave, nowadays we can all wear them – or are you one of the people who think you’re the exception? Well think again, because contacts will be an option for you, so it might be time to consider taking the plunge.

We’ve fitted lenses for patients age six upwards; you just need a little patience to learn how to handle them, faith in your optician, and the motivation to persevere for a day or two at the beginning. Whatever your age or prescription there will be a lens for you, and you can choose to wear them for a day, a week, a month, with lenses that suit every lifestyle and prescription

As glasses are so economical nowadays it givers people the option to be more flexible about their contact lens wear. You can afford glasses as a back up or to wear for work for example, with contacts for your favourite sport, or holidays, or socialising.

Have you worn lenses in the past and give up on them? The prescription range is bigger today, and even patients with astigmatism who were difficult to fit in the past can now be accommodated. If you need a separate spec power for reading, you can have multifocal or bifocal contacts, or distance contacts with reading glasses over the top. Again, specs are cheap and easy to acquire for a specific reason or task.

If you gave up on lenses because the solution regime was too tiresome, with masses of bottles, you’ll be pleased to know that the present generation of lens cleaners are simple and cheap, with less solutions and faster sterilisation times. Again, because you’ll easily have access to glasses you’ll always have a back up option if you haven’t remembered to clean your lenses.

So take the plunge and speak to your optician about contacts – cheap, easy, and flexible, with the good old IGC helping you out with your back up specs!

Prescription Glasses

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In Favour of Four Eyes

Friday, December 10th, 2010

I’ve always loved a dash of the theatrical, and being told I now need to wear glasses was a joyful day indeed. Any excuse to shop, and the opportunity to buy a Designer item that’s actually a medical necessity was heaven sent as far as I’m concerned! I was beside myself with excitement when I went to meet the girls, showing off my delicious deep purple plastic Diors with glitzy gold logo and stunning white leather case. (Another added bonus was the fact that I could actually see the girls!)

They all congratulated me on the new look, and two insisted on trying the specs on. A couple of the others however went a bit quiet, and I’ve since come to realise that for some, choosing and buying glasses can be at best a bit of a chore, at worst a trauma that reminds them of terrible past experiences with opticians and playground bullies. What a nightmare – you’ve got to wear them, so why not enjoy them? So we had a serious discussion about what can help to these poor souls enjoy an eye opening shopping experience.

The first issue was to get over childhood problems with glasses, which today are cool, fashionable, and desirable. Taking time to pick something you really love, investing in lenses that will look good too, and seeing specs as a fashion item were all deemed to be positive moves. Asking a friend to help you make your mind up, looking at spec adverts in fashion magazines, and speccy role models like Lily Allen all help too. If the worst comes to it there are always contact lenses, but a friend who we’ve now converted back to specs says she found it a huge relief to find something she likes and now she wears them all the time.

The Internet Glasses Company have a try before you buy option, which really helped my optician phobic friend. Age fifty she loathed the pink plastic NHS frames she had as a child, and the bullying she suffered at school as a result. She ordered her frames over the net, took the time to gather opinions at home and work, and finally took the plunge feeling relieved that she didn’t have to be in an opticians to make her decision!

If you’re spec phobic, take heart that changing times and the World Wide Web can help you to overcome the horrendous Deirdre Barlow look of the past and embrace something cool that you’ll love. Me – I’m off to order another couple of pairs, got to do my bit to show that four eyes are much funkier than two!

Glasses Online

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The Short Sighted Story

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Myopia, or short-sightedness is an eye defect that affects 25% of Caucasian people in our population, with higher numbers amongst Asian people. Worldwide, it seems to be increasing, although this assumption may be due to better gathering of facts and figures!

If you’re myopic the world has a pleasantly soft focus look, with sight clear close too, getting progressively more blurry as you move things away from the face. Your degree of myopia governs how far away your sight is sharp. It usually manifests itself in the early teens, with the error increasing as the young person grows, stabilising during the early to mid twenties. There is still no definite conclusion as to the cause, with research still going on to determine if it’s a product of nature or nurture or a combination of both factors. Studies have shown that if you have two short sighted parents then you have a six times greater risk of myopia than if only one parent or no parent is myopic.

If your prescription has a minus sign before the numbers then you are short sighted, and your spec lenses will be thinner in the centre than at the edge. The bigger your frame, the thicker the edges will be. If your lens power is over -4.00, then order thinner material lenses. These will look better, feel lighter and more comfortable to wear, and be more durable. The stronger your prescription, then the thinner you need to order your lenses. This extra investment in lens material will reap dividends every day that you wear your glasses.

You should also order an anti-reflection coating, which will improver your sight and make the lenses look better. Strong prescriptions give white reflecting rings around the lens edges – the very unappealing bottle-bottom effect!

So we can make your glasses look good, making your myopia an inconvenience that you’ll learn to live with. Most patients can also wear contact lenses, in a range of wear regimes to suit you. The good news is that you’ll need reading glasses at a much later stage than your previously-perfect sighted friends, so you’ll appear youthful for much longer!!

Glasses Online

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Winter Coat

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

With the sun getting lower and the nights getting longer, driving can be a worry for some people. If you wear glasses, dazzle and glare during the winter can be more of a problem than bright sun in the summer. The only thing that can help is an anti-reflection coating, which we recommend and offer on our lenses, and many clients enquire about them. It seems timely to talk about them now, as many of you update your glasses for safe driving during the coming months.

An anti-reflection coating is not like a tinted lens, in that it doesn’t add colour to the lens, nor does it cut down the light entering the eye. It’s actually almost invisible, and you can usually only see it on the back surface if you tilt the lens under bright light. Then you see a coloured shimmer, like oil on water, and this residual colour is usually a greeny-blue. The purpose of the coating is to let as much visible light as possible through to the eye. Without the coating, some light gets reflected back when you look around you, and this interferes with your vision.

With an anti-reflection layer added to your lenses, you get many benefits. Sight is clearer and sharper, and under artificial light your eyes feel more comfortable. Computer users always report that their eyes feel less tired, and it’s the only thing that helps with night driving, reducing the dazzle effect of oncoming headlights. Without the coating headlights can seem like a confusion of multiple lights, with it you can see what’s coming towards you and have more sense of the distances involved. It also lets people see you clearly, because you can look straight through them and it almost looks as if there are no lenses there.

On higher lens powers, particularly if you are short sighted, your specs will also look better with the coating. It helps to reduce those unsightly white reflection rings that appear around the edges of your lenses, giving rise to the dreaded bottle bottom effect. A winner all round, the best winter coat you’ll ever choose!

Glasses Online

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Raising the Standard

Friday, November 12th, 2010

As with any other area of our lives, optics and the products we supply have come a long way in recent years. Glasses have gone from a medical device that we all dreaded being prescribed, to a must have accessory that gives us a sliver of the designer lifestyle and enhances our looks. Spectacle lenses are now thinner, lighter, work better and look better thanks to coating technology. Contact lenses are easier to wear, more flexible – both in the lenses themselves and how we wear them! So are you taking advantage of all this innovation and new technology in your eyewear?

Spectacle frames now give you more choice, more comfort, and competitive prices. New materials make frames lighter weight and easier to wear, even in chunky bold fashion frames. Replacement parts are easy to obtain, making mouldy nose pads and broken frames a thing of the past. (RIP Jack Duckworth – we’ll miss you!) You can even choose skin friendly Titanium if you have an allergic reactions to frames, and sinus sufferers can escape the agony of heavy glasses on sensitive faces. If you have problems with your frames, e-mail us and we can offer some practical solutions, and all as cheap as chips nowadays!

Back in the day, high density thin lenses were an expensive luxury for those with sore noses thanks to high lens powers. Now however we recognise the superior strength and better optics of a thinner lens, and as the price has decreased everyone can afford it if they need it. For sports, safety, or just frivolous fashion, the thinner lens can make spec wear and therefore life in general much easier. They are a must for rimless specs, and ultra skinny metals. Hard coatings for scratch resistant are now standard nearly everywhere, and anti-reflection coatings make your lenses look good and work at their optimum.

Contact lenses, once the choice for only the very rich, hardy and desperate, are now a lifestyle choice that everybody can wear. They are high water content, barely there, and new materials are launched with exciting regularity. You can use them for a month, a week, even just a day, with simple cleaning regimes that make the chemistry- lab- bathroom- shelf a thing of the past! Just keep a few one-days for tennis at the weekends, a city break or that special night out.

Technology is all around us, and optics is no exception. Take advantage and make life easier, more comfortable, and certainly clearer!

Glasses Online

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Contact Lens Q&A

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

We are of course online retailers of glasses, and we feel quite strongly that contact lenses are one item that really shouldn’t be sold over the net. Lenses need close monitoring to ensure that wear regimes are being followed correctly, and that the patient’s eyes are healthy. Our role for contact lens wearers is to provide economical, but high quality glasses that you can use as a back up to your contacts, as an alternative for work or socialising, or just for emergency use. In practice, seeing patients face to face, the same queries crop up regularly with regard to new lens wearers. So here are a few answers to those questions, and it may make you think about trying lenses, as an alternative to all the specs we supply you with!

I’m squeamish about eyes! How will I put contacts in and out?

Inserting and removing lenses is a knack, and once you get it, it takes seconds to deal with your lenses. Choose an optician you feel comfortable with, allot plenty of time for the teach session, and approach calmly! It’s rare that anyone doesn’t manage to get the hang of it.

Can contacts fall out?

If you’re wearing them correctly, and attending regular check ups, then your lenses should stay put, whatever the circumstances. But if you rub your eyes, or your eyes are watering on a windy day, then the lens may slide out of place and then become dislodged. Carefully note the circumstances of your lens coming out, and discuss with your optician.

How old do you have to be to wear them?

We’ve fitted children as young as six, and grown-ups as old as eighty-seven! Age is less important than the patient’s motivation and dexterity. Always ask your optician about your individual suitability.

Can contacts damage my eyes?

It’s rare to that contacts cause damage, and if they do it’s usually because the wearer has not followed wear routines correctly, or attended for check ups.

Can a lens get stuck inside my eye?

People often worry about this, but there’s actually a lining called the conjunctiva which creates a seal all around the surface of the eye, stopping anything from sliding around behind it. If a lens is dislodged, a strong blink will usually move it back into place, as lenses are designed to sit on the cornea, at the front of the eye where you need them!

Talking to your optician in person will allay any fears you have about lenses, so if you want to give them a try, have a chat. We’ll see you soon for your back up specs!

Glasses online

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