Obviously you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and we do get glasses returned to us because clients aren’t happy with them. Fortunately it’s a really tiny percentage, and often with a bit of adjustment or explanation the specs go back home and give many years of happy sight! The main problem that we have to contend with is the unrealistic expectations of the client. We wish we could perform miracles of Physics but sadly we can’t! So what are the main problems that we would solve if we were granted Super-Powers?!

The No-Effort Varifocal – Varifocals are wonderful lenses that give you back vision at all distances. They let you see near, far, and everywhere in between without swapping specs. The only drawback is that you so have to work with them, and compromise. You have to turn your head a little more to look to the side, you have to drop your chin slightly to see in the distance, and you have to get used to them when you first get them! Persevere, buy the best you can afford, and be grateful you don’t have to change glasses every time you try to focus at a different distance!

Wafer Thin Lenses – You can get lenses in thin material nowadays, but the higher your prescription, the more substance you have to your lens. You also get visible rings around the edges of the lens, which increase with stronger lenses. Brutal though it sounds, you have to be realistic. If your prescription is higher than minus 10 or plus 8, the strength is tricky to disguise. We can use the thinnest material possible, we can add coatings to reduce the rings, but your specs will never look as if there is no power there. Any optician who tells you otherwise is raising false hopes! So be thankful that you can reduce thickness by up to 60%, and be happy with the knowledge that lens materials are improving all the time, and we’ll do everything we can to make them look as good as possible for you.

Reading Specs That Focus Far Away – The magnifying power of your reading glasses is in inverse proportion to the focal length – in plain English, the more they magnify, the closer to your eye you’ll have to hold things! So for very fine detail you have to hold things close too, for bigger print you can have a weaker lens that focuses further away. If you need to see detail at near and far, you need to move yourself closer!

So there are our three wishes, if our Fairy-Godmother pops up any time soon, we’ll be as happy as our clients to get this little lot sorted!