When it comes to preventing your glasses from fogging up one of the most important factors is to make sure humid air from your mouth can not rise to your glasses. If you already tried and it did not help check out our additional tips.
- Use the right anti-fog coating
- Use the right mask
- Use anti-fog sprays
- use anti-fog microfibers
- Soaps and cleaning agents
The Right Coating To Prevent Your Glasses From Fogging Up
The right coating on your lenses can prevent your glasses very effectively from fogging up. We tried all the variants described here by ourselves. Some of them require an activator. Usually, this is an agent on a cloth. But this is not always the case. So let us talk about what the lens industry has to offer for you.
SHAMIR GLACIER™ANTI-FOG
This is a coating that is extremely effective to prevent your glasses from fogging up. This coating is permanent and you need to order your lenses directly with it. The Shamir Glacier Anti Fog is only applied on the back surface of your lenses. This way you can have an anti-reflective coating on the front.
The small water droplets from the warm humid air that usually accumulate on the surface of your glasses will not compromise your vision for days with this coating. All you have to do every other day if the coatings come to their limits is to rub them with a dry cloth. That is it. For a lot of wearers of spectacles, this was a great way to solve this problem.
Please make sure you are not using glasses that are not too wide on the side. otherwise, you will end up with more glare on the back surface with this coating. Our recommendation is to order the Shamir Glacier Anti Fog coating with a very curved lens design.
This way you get both. You prevent your glasses from fogging up and you will not have the nerving glare on the back surface. Because the back surface has no anti-reflective coating in combination with the Shamir Glacier Anti Fog option.
Essilor Optifog
Essilor’s Optifog is also a very effective way to get the fo out of your way. The upside in comparison to the option from Shamir is the anti-reflective coating on the front and back surface with this coating. This way you do not have to deal with more glare compared to your normal glasses.
But there is a little downside. You need to use a little cloth to activate the Opti Fog coating from Essilor. You can use the little cloth up to 450 times to prevent your glasses from fogging up.
After you activated the coating the lenses will not fog up for one week. However, this is the ideal case in which you will not rub the lenses to clean them during the day.
Usually, you need to do this every two to three days because if you rubbed the lenses with a normal microfiber cloth the activation of the coating disappears until you activate it again with the special cloth.
Anti Fog Cloths
Depending on the clean coat you have on your glasses some of the anti-fog solutions will work better or worse. We tested a bunch of them and for glasses, with very good coatings (Lotus) the Foogy microfibre worked best for us. You can have it handy in your pocket. It prevents your glasses from fogging up in most conditions for about 8 hours.
I like this cloth very much because it does not produce those grease elements on the lens surface as most of the other fibers do. Use it and no or way less fogging up for 8 hours. That is what I like.
If you have less price intense lenses with an HMC coating that have a less effective clean coat you can try the old school mate. It is a microfibre cloth that greases a little more. So after using it I recommend polishing your lenses a little bit again with a normal microfiber to get off the grease on your glasses.
Sponge Bridges for Your Nose
Right now there are also some additional products available to reduce fog on your glasses. As I described above the main reason for your glasses fogging up in the humid air that ascends from your mouth. If you close the gap from your mask to your face the humid air can not reach your glasses anymore. This is exactly what the nose bridges do.
To me personally, this is not an option because I am getting off my facemask whenever I can. And I do not want to reposition the sponge with my mask as soon I want to put it back on.
But if you need to wear this for a couple of hours straight this can be an option. But be aware of how your glasses sit on your face after you applied the sponge. In a lot of cases, it can impact how your glasses sit in your face. If they sit differently centration will be off and you might run into problems like headaches.
A Similar approach is silicone bridges but they are applied on top of the face mask. Also, this is not my ideal choice but it might be an option for you.
Anti Fog Sprays
If you spray something on your glasses you should be aware of chemicals that can damage your glasses. In a lot of cases, alcohol is an ingredient of those sprays. It is generally not recommended to use alcohol over a longer period over and over on your glasses. This is why you should have an eye on the ingredients. The Zeiss anti-fog Spray is something I had good experiences with in the past.
However, I do not want to rub my lenses again with a microfiber to distribute the liquid from the spray evenly on the lens’ surface. And especially when you are outside just to have an anti-fog cloth with me was better in the past than having to think about an additional item.
However, if you are into anti-fog sprays you should get Zeiss Anti Fog Spray. If you want to have a closer look at the ingredients of the spray here is a PDF attached.
Every time you apply something to your lenses you will probably end up with a slight rainbow effect on your lenses. In most cases, already existing products show less of this effect compared to a DIY approach when using soaps for example. This brings us to the next point.
Soaps & Shower Gel To Prevent Your Glasses From Fogging Up
We also tried to soap to prevent our glasses from fogging up. And it can work too. The problem with soap is depending on the soap you use and the ingredients of the soap the effectiveness of this solution is sometimes good and oftentimes not so great. As you need to applied it as a solution on your lenses the concentration of the right ingredients can vary.
We have customers that tried it. Very few love it. Most of them that tried it switched to other solutions described above.
In this video above you can see how long it takes to apply the soap to your glasses. Dish soap seems to work best. But the time it takes to prevent your glasses from fogging up with soap is just a little too long to me.
Products Not To Use
On the web, it is oftentimes recommended to use shaving foam for your glasses as an anti-fog solution. However, I can not recommend it because it oftentimes contains stearic acid which can damage your anti-reflective coating over time. Too many times in my optical shop I saw damaged coatings because of cleaning agents or anti-fog solutions which should not be used with your lenses.
I wish you a great day.
