Wearing a Mask Making Your Glasses Foggy?

Currently, New Zealand’s response to COVID-19 includes encouraging the use of masks. At this stage, masks are still required on public transport in Auckland, but it’s a good idea to wear a mask no matter where you are, especially if you’re attending a larger indoor gathering. For some, however, wearing a mask isn’t so simple! Masks can cause fogging for those of us who need to wear glasses regularly, as vapour is pushed up under the lenses.

This poses an issue; if you need to keep reaching up to defog your glasses, you’re undoing at least some of the gains made by wearing the mask in the first place by touching your face with your hands! Short of Lasik, what else can you do? We’ve put together a short list of tips that can help you improve your hazy outlook, based on what we’ve found effective here at Re:Vision.

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1. Make sure the mask fits properly

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A poor fitting mask is probably the single biggest cause of foggy glasses. If your mask is nice and tight, less vapour will reach the lenses. Besides, a mask that isn’t tight enough will be less effective curtailing the spread of the virus.

There are a few things you can do to help fit a mask securely. First, try to get one that’s the right size. It’s relatively easy to accidentally buy a mask that’s a bit too big. Second, if the mask has a metal strip along the top, use it! These metal strips are meant to help mould the top of the mask across the bridge of your nose, to provide a better seal. If your mask doesn’t have one, taping it down across the top might be a good alternative. You can also tie a knot in the straps to shorten them.

On the other hand, you can always use your glasses to secure the top of your mask. Just pinch the top of your mask against your nose with the bottom of your glasses and you have a secure seal ready to go. Glasses with nose pads work especially well for this. For nose pads to work well, you may need to wear your glasses slightly further down the bridge of your nose than usual. This has the added effect of leaving more space between the lenses and your eyes, so any vapour that does escape can pass through without fogging the glasses as much.

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2. Clean, Clean, Clean!

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Glasses fog up much worse when dirty, so keeping the lenses free from oily fingerprints and other grime will help keep those lenses crystal clear. Vapour tends to stick to oils, so cleaning your glasses will help mitigate the problem.

There are also some soaps that can help deflect vapour—allegedly, dish soap can work! If you’d rather not try to clean your glasses with dish soap, you can always invest in some spray-on lens cleaner, which often helps provide an anti-fog layer too.

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Consider getting rid of the glasses altogether

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We mentioned Lasik at the start of this blog, but it’s worth mentioning again as it’s also a practical option. For those who may already have been considering laser eye surgery, foggy glasses might just be the final straw! Getting rid of your need for glasses entirely is certainly one way to solve the problem.

Talk to us about vision correction today

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Here at Re:Vision, we can operate safely under the current restrictions. If you’d like to ditch the glasses and start seeing clearly, contact us to find out if you qualify for one of our vision correction procedures.