Lens Coating Available for Safety Glasses

Some coatings for safety glasses are better for specific jobs than others, and not every coating is for everybody.

A Variety of Lens Coatings for Prescription Safety Glasses

If you’re considering purchasing prescription safety glasses online, it’s a good idea to consider which lens coatings are appropriate for the work you’ll be doing in them. Will you be woodworking, riding the bike, working outdoors, sitting behind a computer? Each of these dictates a different set of coatings.

Some people think that the coatings that they get on their everyday glasses will work just as well on the job. This is true for some, but for most people who need prescription safety glasses this is very wrong. Case and point is anti-reflective coating, which is great for everyday glasses and a bad choice for most environments where safety eyewear is required.

Here’s what you need to know about lens coatings for safety glasses:

• Anti-reflective (AR) coating is not good for situations where your eyewear will be outdoors in dirty environments, or indoors in dusty or dirty environments. Having to clean off the particles that accumulate on your glasses in situations like this, day after day, will wear out the coating must faster than it should, causing your glasses to become hazy and seem like they’ve been rubbed with sandpaper. AR coating is best for work behind a computer or work in a clean room where safety eyewear is still required.
• Mirror coatings are only a good choice if you’re getting a dark tint. These include Dark Gray, Brown, Polarized Gray, and Polarized Brown lens tints. Mirrors are not good for clear or Transitions lenses, and they will wear out like anti-reflective coating if they are cleaned repeatedly throughout the day. The coating’s life can be extended if you rinse your glasses underwater before each cleaning, and only use a microfiber cloth to clean them.
• Scratch coating is always a good choice for safety glasses. It is an inexpensive way to extend the life of your glasses, and while it doesn’t prevent scratches, it helps prevent them.
• Anti-fog coating helps with fog, though it is not as good as our Cat Crap anti-fog paste. If you are looking for the best anti-fog coating, order Fog Free coating from its specific page on our site.
• UV coating is useful to protect your eyes from the sun, but it is not necessary on polycarbonate lenses as the polycarbonate blocks harmful UV without the coating. It is also not necessary if the glasses are only to be used indoors.

Most of our customers order scratch coating without any other coatings. Others order more or less depending on their application and needs. The important thing is to make sure that your coating is appropriate for your application. If you order a coating that will wear out before the glasses do, you are going to regret it.

A few more things to consider regarding coatings: saltwater is hard on coatings, scratch coating is unnecessary on glass lenses, and mirrors will look much different on light lenses than they will on dark ones. If you are not sure whether a coating is right for the glasses you need, just give us a call and we’ll talk about it. Generally speaking, we can tell you exactly what’s best for your work after a brief explanation of what it is that you do.

What lens coatings have you used on your safety frames, and how did they fare? Please let us know in the comments below!