Spending any time outdoors can harm your vision. That’s why it’s always important to wear sunglasses when outdoors. But how do you know which type of sun protection is right for your eyes?
Let’s look at the reasons why polarized lenses are the best choice for glare and UV protection.
What Are Polarized Lenses?
Polarized lenses are designed to eliminate bright horizontal glare, as well as offering UV protection. This not only provides sun protection but makes enjoying activities like golf, boating, driving, and hiking more comfortable.
Horizontal glare occurs when sunlight reflects off flat surfaces like roads, water, and snow. It can lead to eye strain, squinting, fatigue, and even being temporarily blinded by bright light. This can create hazardous conditions when driving and can make doing your favourite activities difficult and painful as your eyes try to adjust to the light.
Polarized Sunglasses Vs Non-Polarized Sunglasses
For sunglasses wearers, the two most common types of lenses are regular and polarized. While normal sunglasses do provide effective UV protection, polarized lenses offer that additional glare protection with the special polarized coating.
What Are The Benefits Of Polarized Lenses?
Polarized lenses offer exceptional UV protection, but by reducing glare too, polarized lenses create a more comfortable vision experience, reducing painful eye strain in bright conditions outdoors.
In addition to these more well-known benefits, polarized lenses also offer more visual clarity than traditional sunglasses. Polarized lenses are designed to give wearers the highest level of color contrast and improved depth perception while performing outdoor activities during the day. This gives wearers enhanced visual precision, making it easier to complete tasks from driving, to spotting a golf ball in the rough.
Cons of Polarized Lenses
There are a few situations where polarized lenses may not be the right choice for wearers. If you spend a lot of time in front of digital screens, then polarized lenses may not be right for you.
Polarized lenses can cause distortion when looking at LCD displays so in this case, it’s better to stick to traditional plano lenses or prescription lenses.
Due to the high contrast and glare risk when flying, it is not recommended to wear polarized lenses. This is because the lenses can distort the look of dials and screens on a plane.
Your windshield has a special coating on it to reduce glare already. So, you shouldn’t wear polarized lenses at night as they can create distortion, especially in the rain. They’re perfect to wear while driving during the day, though as they really eliminate that low lying glare from the sun that gets to our eyes in the early morning and evenings.
Who Can Benefit From Wearing Polarized Lenses?
Specific people can really enjoy the added benefits of polarized lenses in Canada while performing day-to-day activities including:
Golfers – you could potentially take a few strokes off your game with the help of polarized lenses, as they offer exceptional glare protection when on the greens, sharpened depth perception and contrast the golf course, making it easier to spot the ball on even the sunniest days.
Boaters/fishers - whether you are on your boat or on the dock, polarized lenses can help reduce the glare reflected off the water, and help you see your catch clearly.
Hikers - if you enjoy exploring the great outdoors then polarized lenses are the perfect go-to for glare and UV protection, allowing you to enjoy the scenery with enhanced color contrast.
Find an Optometrist near Me for Polarized Sunglasses
If you’re looking for ‘the best optometrist near me’ to discover how polarized lenses can improve your vision, look no further than our optical stores in Ottawa and the surrounding areas of Ontario. Find your closest location here and look forward to glare free vision soon!