High prescription glasses help!

GlasweJen

I've not been about so I've missed this, hope you catch this reply OP as opticians have been closed so you shouldn't have been buying glasses since you posted.

The essential thing here is frame fit, you can throw mega money away on thin lenses but if you choose the wrong frame then you'll end up with irn-bru bottles regardless.

When you try on glasses make sure that you are looking through the centre of the lens. You can calculate this mathematically but I find that the best thing to do is put the glasses on and look at them on your face (in your case I'd ask the optician to pop in a sample contact lens for glasses browsing even if you don't normally wear lenses, most will be happy to do this as you literally won't be able to see what you're trying on, don't worry we get it).

Now when you're looking through the centre of the lenses make sure the glasses don't touch your cheek bones, don't go above your eyebrows and don't gap at your temples. 

Ask the person dispensing the glasses if they can calculate the predicted lens edge thickness for you, they might not be able to but the dispensing optician should be able to. Lenses are round and then cut to shape, they will always look better if they're sort of round so don't go for square shapes unless you're really confident that they'll look good.

Sometimes some prescriptions actually look better in a slightly thicker material than in the thinnest material depending on the frame choice and measurements, lens optics are strange. In your case I would ask for the dispensing optician and if they're not in make an appointment. 

catherinekate

Our local eye hospital has an opticians in house which takes both NHS and private patients. They are used to advising on suitable frames for high or unusual prescriptions. Do you have something similar you could try?

tehone

So I have a prescription not dissimilar to yours. Its not going to be cheap to do what you want. I'm assuming single vision, not varifocal.
1) My lenses are 1.9 glass ones, basically as thin as is possible
2) As other have said, the frames do make a difference, you're only essentially using a small part of the lens, so a good optician will help you choose one that minimises the "wastage" of the frame you're not really using
3) Boots, offer a money back trial, so you can get used to them without ending up without something useless

Competsoph

Hi all,

Thanks for all your great suggestions. I managed to get my current glasses tightened just as lockdown began and they seem to be fine at the moment. This Is always the case at first and then over time, the plastic weakens. You can already see where the frame has started to change shape and buckle. I’m only 25 (26 this week!) and I wear lenses and have done since the age of 13. It’s just so frustrating having such a limited choice of frames and although I don’t mind wearing glasses, I want them to be relatively stylish. Sometimes the optician shows me styles and I’m like, come on!

Anyway, I’m happy with these at present, when I consider a new pair I’m going to shop around instead of just sticking with Specsavers. Martin would be proud of me! 😂
Stay safe everyone.