Whether you enjoy wearing your glasses or not, the vast majority of adults (specifically 72% of women, and 66% of men) rely on glasses to give us the best vision but how many times have you been left disappointed at the choice of glasses frames available at your opticians? Or perhaps the opposite is the case and you feel overwhelmed with the various frames on offer!
Choosing a new pair of glasses can be a difficult process, frames can be expensive too, so you want to make sure you choose the right ones to fit your face shape and your personality. So, with this in mind, Huw Owens, Optician and owner of A1 Eyeware in Wrexham shares his tips on choosing the right glasses.
1. Choose glasses to fit your face shape
This is perhaps the biggest consideration when choosing a pair of frames for your glasses. The right pair of frames will often be the opposite of what you think will suit your facial features. For example, if your face is round you might be thinking about smaller frames but this might actually bring too much roundness to your face. Square frames often create a better balance on a round face. Meanwhile if your face is square having boxy shaped glasses will only add to the squareness of the face. Round or oval glasses should provide more balance to someone with square features.
2. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Your glasses say a lot about you and finding the glasses to suit your personality is another important consideration. Coloured frames and even the transparent frames worn by Liverpool FC’s Jurgen Klopp suit an extrovert’s personality well. If you don’t want to draw too much attention to yourself, then rimless or plain black frames frames might be the way to go.
3. Colour should match your skin tone
Exploring colour in your frames in more detail, the colour of your frames should complement your skin tone. For people with a warm skin tone, brown, beige or olive are the best colours. For people with cool skin tones black and other dark colours such as grey and purple tend to work better.
4. Consider the width and height of your glasses
The dimensions of your glasses is another important consideration when choosing glasses. A lot will depend of course on how you are using your glasses. If you want a good field of vision then naturally the width and height should allow for this. If glasses are just for reading then you should be able to get away with a more narrow style of frames.
5. Will the glasses suit your lifestyle?
Closely connected to the above, your choice of glasses will to a large extent be determined by your lifestyle. If you are a sporty outdoors type of person, then you will require a sturdy pair of frames that will survive the worst that an action-packed life can throw at them, the type of frames that will bend and not break.
Owner, and Optician Huw Owens commented “We aim to transform how patients feel about wearing glasses, and the process of choosing glasses. For some, glasses are purely a necessity of being able to see better, and how they look does not matter – and that’s fine! For others, wearing glasses all day, in the middle of your face, it’s important that they look good, feel comfortable, and say something about your personality!”
“We have recently been focusing on more miche, independent brands of eyewear, from all over the world. For example SALT. from California. Maui Jim sunglasses from Hawaii, Vanni from Italy, and Dutz from the Netherlands. We even have glasses made from recycled sea-waste plastic – and they look great!!
“Our simple aim is for our patients to enjoy the process of choosing glasses, which can often be frustrating, and to leave in glasses that feel good and look good”
