If your grandparents wore eyeglasses, you might remember seeing one of them with bifocal lenses, but you're not doomed to wearing "granny glasses" if your eyesight is beginning to change. If you're having trouble reading small print using your regular eyeglasses, progressive lenses are a better-looking alternative. At the Eye Center of Virginia, we fit patients with progressive lenses, and they no longer have to live with eyeglasses that make them look older.

Our Williamsburg Optometrist Explains Progressive Lenses

As eyes begin to age, they often lose the ability to focus on small objects up close, like fine print or small tools. This can happen even if you're nearsighted and need vision correction for driving or everyday tasks. This is when your prescription needs to change to a bi-focal or multi-focal lens. Traditional lenses of this type had special layers built into the face of the lens. The lower half of the lens was the prescription for closeup work, while the upper portion helped patients to see farther away. The change between these two portions was a distinctive line, very obviously showing these off as "old people's glasses."

With today's progressive lenses, you don't get that stigmatizing line across the lens. Two or more prescriptions seamlessly merge from one part of the lens to the other, allowing you to read, then check your computer before looking across the room, all with the same pair of glasses. Instead of separate spots on the surface, progressive lenses have prescriptions that flow into each other like a river, with one smooth face and never any lines.

Quality Counts

As with all things eye care, quality counts when it comes to progressive lenses. Not every manufacturer is careful enough to create the best product for your eyesight. Dr. Schultz is always concerned about giving patients the absolute best in vision care, and that means stocking only the highest quality products. We always prescribe the Essilor Varilux lenses, which are the #1 progressive lenses in the country. They'll give you clear vision at every distance, even in low light conditions. With some ordinary progressive lenses, seeing in dimly lit areas can be a problem, but that's never a problem with the Varilux.

The difference is in the way the lens is built. With most progressive lenses, the curvature of the lens surface causes imperfections, which can cause distortions in your vision. Varilux lenses remove those distortions, resulting in less blurriness and sharper vision, even in lower light conditions.