Eyeglasses have long upgraded their role from being vision correction to a fashionable eye accessory. Their primary role is to help correct impaired vision, especially for those with hyperopia, myopia or astigmatism.

Thanks to the influence of movies and social media, glasses are also taking on an aesthetic role by enhancing your looks and fashion statement. With so many choices when it comes to lenses, frames and frame colour, choosing the perfect eyeglasses can be an overwhelming experience.

However, as long as you know your own physiology and what your eyes need, you can still arrive at the best choice when choosing your pair of glasses.

Fashion or Reading Eyeglasses

Nowadays, you have two choices when choosing a pair of eyeglasses – for fashion or for correcting your reading vision. Eyeglasses are no longer solely for reading, they have become in the same league as other types of eyewear such as sunglasses and contact lenses.

If you want to wear eyeglasses for fashion purposes only, there are a lot of options you can choose from. Fashion eyeglasses are great for evening as well as morning activities that need visual accuracy such as driving and working with computers.

Choose an eyeglass that has polarised and anti-UV lenses to protect you from the glare and irritation caused by exposure to the sun, strong headlights and computer screen.

For reading eyeglasses, you need to have prior consultation and prescription from your ophthalmologist before buying a reading glass. Depending on the prescription from your ophthalmologist, you’ll need to consider the size and shape of the lens, the composition of the lens and their durability.

Also, make sure to follow the prescribed lens power, and categories such as single vision, bifocal lenses, trifocal lenses and progressive lenses.

Consider Your Facial Features

Your face shape and features can determine how comfortable and how good you’ll look with your glasses. Comfort and attractiveness are subjective terms when it comes to eyeglasses. The bottom line should be the user is not feeling any discomfort while wearing the glasses and would like to wear it with them at all times.

A word of caution should be kept in mind when it comes to internet websites giving advice about face shape and eyeglass frame compatibility: not all of these sites have helpful advice and guidelines.

If you find yourself overwhelmed by the information about facial features and the right frame, you can always find comfort in this simple rule of thumb – choose an opposing frame shape to your facial features.

Achieving balance and harmony between your physical features and your eyewear is what works well all the time. One example of this balance is to use round frames for square or angular face shapes. A few simple tips can be useful for other face shapes below:

• Oval – if your face is a proportional oval with hints of curves and angles, go for rectangular, square or browline frames. Aviator frames also go well with this face shape as it goes nearly as wide as the broadest part of the face.
• Square – if your face is characterised by having well-defined cheekbones, broad forehead, wide brows and prominent jaw lines, it belongs to this general category. Round, browline with rounded bottom, and oval frames make good balancing effect to your features. Women with square face shape can go for aviator and cat-eye frame glasses.
• Heart – a heart-shaped feature is characterise by a wide forehead, slightly receding hairlines on both sides of the face, and a narrow chin. To make a good contrast to this feature, choose frames that are wider at the bottom such as aviator, round, rectangle or oval.
• Round – a round face shape is a circle with soft curves and the width and length are in the same proportions and have no angles. Use square, rectangular and narrow browline frames to offset the circular shape and give it a bit of length and angle.
• Pear – a pear shaped face is characterised by a narrow forehead and a wide cheek, jawline and chin. Cat-eye, browline and aviator frames bring back emphasis to the upper portion of your face.

Consider Your Skin Tone

Skin tone can be one thing you can consider when it comes to choosing your eyeglasses, especially on the frame colour.

The tone gives more emphasis here rather than colour because it can broadly encompass the colours under two tones: cool and warm. Cool complexion is characterised by blue or pink undertones and a warm complexion has a yellow or “peaches and cream” undertone. When choosing your frame colour, you have the freedom to make it contrast or complement your skin tone.

Take Note of Your Hair Colour

Your natural or artificial hair colour can be essential factors when considering your eyeglass frame colour and tone. Hair colour can also be broadly categorised into two tones – warm and cool. Warm hair colours include golden blond, red, pink, brown and “dirty gray” among others.

Platinum, strawberry blond, blue-black, auburn and ash brown are just a few examples of cool tones. You can then choose frame colours than contrast or complement your hair colour and skin tone once you are able to determine them.

Choose Between Custom and Ready-made Glasses

Now that we’ve mostly covered the physical aspects when choosing our ideal eyeglasses, it’s time to consider the manufacture side of things. Fashion glasses and those with low lens prescriptions can be best bought as ready-made.

The good thing about going for ready-made glasses is the wide and easy availability of these glasses. You can go to mall stalls, boutiques, shops or online stores to find a large selection of wholesale reading glasses. You are given a wide range of choices for eyeglass frame colour, frame type and lens shape.

Also, you are given the personal freedom to choose and fit the glasses yourself and immediately check out how you look. Ready-made glasses are comparatively cheaper and you can also wear acclaimed eyewear brands like Hang Ten, VertX, RealTree, Dazey Shades, Locs and many more.

Custom glasses are recommended for high lens prescriptions, especially for reading eyeglasses. Also, if you have eye conditions like hyperopia (far-sightedness), myopia (near-sightedness) and astigmatism (blurred vision), especially if each eye has a variable condition and come with different prescriptions, it is best to have your glasses custom made as ready-made ones cannot meet your proper vision needs.

Custom made glasses are made by an optician based on your ophthalmologist’s prescription. They make corresponding lenses and also take note of the distance between your pupils to make them properly aligned to the optical centre of the lenses for your best vision correction and specification.

If you are worried about customisation and appearance, opticians are more than happy to help you choose the right frame type and colour for you and they can also give you the best fit for your eyeglasses based on your facial dimensions.

When it comes to finding the perfect eyeglasses, choose the pair that gives you the highest level of comfort. The color and tone should be a good match for your skin tone, hair colour and even your eye colour.

Also, choose glasses that fit perfectly, which means they don’t slip from your nose and give you more freedom of movement by staying with you no matter how you move your face.

Frames that are lightweight and durable make the eyeglasses great to wear as they evenly distribute the frame weight across your face. Factoring all of these considerations into your eyeglasses will let you wear your glasses as if they’re an extension of your body and yourself – that is the perfection you will achieve.