Why Should You Choose Personalized Progressive Lenses?

Progressive lenses have come a long way in the last 20 years. With today’s digital manufacturing technologies, you can get your progressive lenses fine‑tuned to suit your lifestyle and feel as comfortable as possible, no matter where your day takes you.

What are progressive lenses?

Progressive lenses are designed for people with presbyopia. Almost everyone experiences this condition when they get into their 40s as their lenses lose their elasticity.

Progressive lenses give you clear vision at any distance when you start experiencing presbyopia. You can do everything you need to do in a day with a single pair of glasses fitted with progressive lenses. As your eye travels from the top of your progressive lenses to the bottom, your vision transitions fluidly through different near and far visual areas. In the centre of the lens is an intermediate visual area, which you’ll need for most of your daily activities (working on the computer, cooking, having conversations, looking at your car’s dashboard, etc.).

Personalized progressive lenses

Personalized progressive lenses are designed to adapt to you—not the other way around. In addition to correcting your vision, there are many other factors that influence your visual comfort. 

To determine these factors, your optician will take personalized measurements using a digital camera or a tablet with special software. Major manufacturers of corrective lenses such as Essilor, Zeiss, Hoya, and Nikon are constantly improving their technologies to take more accurate measurements so they can manufacture even more effective lenses.

Personalized to your face and eye shape

Every face is unique and every person wears their glasses differently. Lenses that are personalized to fit your face and your frames will give you the best possible vision. To create your personalized progressive lenses, your optician will take a number of measurements, including:

• The vertex distance (the distance between your eye and the lens)
• The pantoscopic tilt (the frame’s angle in relation to your face)
• The curve of the frame
• Your head position
• The movement of your eyes or head when reading

Personalized to suit your habits and lifestyle

We all have our own little quirks and habits that affect how we use our lenses. For example, if you work at a computer all week or if you do detailed, close-range work, the visual area for near-range vision on your lenses could be enlarged. Teachers who need to quickly switch between near (writing on the board) and far (looking at students) ranges may opt for personalized lenses that ease the transition between the two visual areas.

Your posture and hobbies can also affect how you see with progressive lenses. If you spend a lot of time on your phone (near vision), play golf (far vision), or are on your feet a lot at work, it will affect your visual needs and should be taken into account when adjusting your lenses.

The importance of personalized adjustments

Your dispensing optician is trained to advise you on the wide range of products developed by the world’s largest manufacturers of corrective lenses. After asking you about your daily activities, they’ll be able to offer you a lens that’s well suited to your needs and that will be as comfortable as possible. The goal is for your lenses to give you the most natural vision possible at all working distances.

Personalized progressive lenses let you instantly focus at all distances, provide image stability when moving your head from side to side, and reduce blurred areas—you’ll probably forget you’re wearing them! All this means it’s easier to get used to wearing your progressive lenses.

Visit the Opto-Réseau clinic nearest you and talk to one of our professionals. They’ll know what questions to ask to find the best progressive lenses for you. We wish to thank Mélissane Bourque, optician and owner of Opto-Réseau Pointe-aux-Trembles for her precious collaboration.