6 Ways to prevent your glasses from fogging up

Glasses. A simple yet ingenious invention designed to help us visually deficient people to see. It isn’t rocket science, you pop them on and go about your day, enjoying the lack of blurriness. And then Covid-19 hit, which anyone who wears glasses will tell you, has made the process a minefield of inconvenience. For now, be it inside or outdoors, we all spend a large portion of time with a mask covering half of our face. Inevitably heat, the cold or your own breath gets caught between the mask and your glasses, rendering them useless. Though it isn’t a definitive fix and you more than likely will have moments where you want to fling your glasses to the ground in frustration, the following is a list of some of the ways you can prevent your glasses from fogging up.

Position

Anyone who wears glasses will tell you, it is extremely annoying when they are loose and you keep having to push them up. This, however, could be your saving grace. By allowing the glasses to sit lower on your nose, slightly over the top of the mask, the air circulates better, preventing that aggravating fogginess. It can take some getting used to as every nerve in your body will tell you to push your glasses back up. But if you persevere it really does work and will eventually become second nature.

Fit

The majority of us are fairly new to wearing masks in our day-to-day lives, as such the masks available are of a consistently standard style and size. For this reason, most people will notice that there is a gap and that the mask does not fit snugly around the top of the nose. When this happens, warm air escapes, getting trapped behind the glass and impairing vision. There are a number of options to circumvent this. The first thing you can do, if it is within your skill-set, is tailoring your own mask to your measurements. If, like me, you think it would be easier to learn Greek than to learn how to sew, you can commission a mask from a seamstress or a talented friend. The second option involves surgical tape and the willingness to look a little silly. To close the gap you can buy tape designed for contact with the skin and apply it to the top of the mask. Most pharmacies will have some variant of this and it can also be purchased online.

Soap and Water

This trick is something everyone can try. It simply involves washing your lenses in a soap and water solution and drying them with a microfiber cloth. The idea is that the soapy mixture provides an extra layer on the surface of the glasses and will therefore prevent condensation or fog from sticking. This supposedly works with a number of other items including shaving cream, washing up liquid and toothpaste.

A Tissue

Take a thin strip of folded tissue paper and position it between the mask and the bridge of your nose. Hopefully this will attract extra moisture and keep your vision 2020. It can look bumpy and you may be the person walking around with paper hanging out of their mask, but if it works it’s probably worth a try. At least now you can see how silly you look.

Adjust Breathing

Adjusting the way you breath is probably one of the more effective ways to reduce fogging on glasses, though it takes some getting used to. Glasses fog from a combination of condensation, trapped air and upward breathing. By actively breathing downwards, achieved by pushing your top lip over the bottom lip, you’ll find there to be considerably less misting. It does take a bit of focus as you may forget and go back to familiar breathing patterns. But much like repositioning the glasses over the mask, this trick definitely gets results and whether this is a pro or a con, it does feel like you are secretly making weird faces at strangers.

De-misting sprays

There are a number of de-misting sprays out there and they work much like the soap and water trick. By spraying a thin layer over the lenses they reduce surface tension and prevent the build-up of fogginess. They are widely available in pharmacies and online, however, it is worth noting that some are better than others. At the end of the day, you are still spraying a chemical on an item near your eyes. So take the time to shop around and purchase a reliable product.

For other articles related to face masks, check out these links.

Everything you need to know about reusable masks

The environmental impact of single use masks