Eyeshield glasses, also referred to as glareshields, can help relieve eye strain, reduce glare and enhance contrast – making them extremely useful to anyone with a sight condition. Here are four reasons they might be right for you:
1. They help to protect your eyes
Eyeshield glasses are designed to exclude harmful ultraviolet (UV) and blue light, which can damage the retina. They generally come with one of five coloured filter lenses – yellow, orange, amber (or brown), grey, or green – that will block different percentages of visible light from around 20 percent to around 80 percent.
It is not possible to predict which colour filter will best suit an individual (there is no correlation between eye conditions and most suitable colour filters), so people should try different colours in the environment where they get the glare symptoms to find the best one for them.
Our yellow and orange lenses are category 1 filters, while the amber, green and grey lenses are category 2. (Filters are categorised from 1 to 4, with category 1 being the lightest, and 4 being super dark.)
All our eyeshield glasses block 100 percent of UVA and UVB light, and the yellow, orange, amber and green lenses also absorb blue light.
The green and grey lenses provide standard contrast, while the yellow, orange and amber lenses provide high contrast.
2. They're useful all year round
It's natural to consider eyeshield glasses for the long, bright, sunny days of summer, but they can also be useful indoors under artificial lighting and outdoors on overcast but glary days. If you've ever felt personally attacked by the winter sun, low in the sky, then you'll know why beating glare is a year-round issue. Please note that most eyeshield glasses are not suitable for use while driving.
3. They're more comfortable than ever
Eyeshield glasses are light and easy to wear, and some styles can be worn over existing prescription glasses – known as fitover glasses. RNIB eyeshield glasses are available in three styles: Fitover (two sizes – medium and large), wraparound (small to medium-sized, fit close to your face to keep out glare), and 'medium' (look like regular sunglasses but deep arms provide more side protection from glare).
Both our fitover and wraparound styles are made of a lighter, more flexible, and durable material called TR90 (commonly used in high-end, branded fashion sunglasses) with a matt, rubberised finish.
You can adjust the fitover and medium eyeshield glasses for a better fit, thanks to adjustable rubber tips on the arms.
4. Better protection from glare
Unlike sunglasses, eyeshield glasses are specifically designed to provide effective, all-round glare protection. While the wraparound style is designed to be close-fitting to keep out glare, our fitover and medium styles have deep arms with side window lenses made from the same tinted nylon as the main lenses to block glare.
And to maximise visual comfort, all our eyeshield glasses also have scratch-resistant nylon lenses with a high-quality multi-layer anti-reflection coating to eliminate unwanted reflections off the back of the lens.
