Did you know: prescription glasses don’t always need to be purchased at your optician? There are plenty of wonderful frames, styles, makes and models that are available online for a snip of the price; your optician is just another shop. So how do you buy your specs online exactly?

- Buy your glasses online
Nail Your Face Shape
Choose a frame to flatter your face shape. Take a look at our guide to face shapes. This is relatively easy and takes just a little look in the mirror to figure out which frame will bring out your natural good looks. For example, if you have a round face you would look best in a wonderful pair of rectangle glasses, rounded frames will accentuate your face shape so it’s best to avoid them. It’s about balancing your features with your new accessory.
Prescriptions
Make sure you have a copy of your latest prescription before you purchase glasses online. Your Optician is legally bound to give you a copy at the time of your eye test - but can always provide a copy if you no longer have it. Make sure your prescription is in date and that you are having no problems with your vision. If you haven’t had your eyes tested in two years then you will need to have them looked at again. Some people will need their eyes testing more frequently – but the average is two years. Eye tests are more important than just checking if you need glasses too; take a look at our article on the true damage of skipping that eye test.
Online Opticians can perfectly craft your glasses – they will need to know your prescription first. Eye test prescriptions may look complicated but can be simplified quite easily. They may contain numerical numbers for the following categories on the prescription form: Sphere, Cylinder, Axis, Add. All this information is obtained from your optician at your routine eye test. Some prescriptions will only require some of these numbers – not everybody will need all of the information.
Pupillary Distance
Pupillary Distance (PD) is the distance between the centres of your pupils (How far apart the centres of your eyers are.) Low prescriptions are less likely to be affected by the technicians using average PD measurements. For those with a particularly strong prescription, checking your pupillary distance is more important. Most prescriptions will not have this written on them as standard so you can either ask for this to be covered by your optician or you can do it at home. Most opticians leave it out of the test so that you will buy your glasses from them. Don’t be fooled! All you need is a ruler and friend. For those who have average prescriptions, the pupillary distance will be set to average for you automatically.
- Facing the mirror, place the ruler on the bridge of your nose, bringing the 0mm mark of the ruler directly above the center of your eye’s pupil.
- Looking straight into the mirror, at arms length – hold the ruler and mark the location on the ruler of the centre of the other eye’s pupil.
- Measure the distance in millimeters between the two marks. This is your PD.
- Repeat this process to ensure that you have an accurate measurement.

So it’s really not that hard to buy your glasses online at all. Get in contact if you have any questions in regards to our frames, features or services.
Do you have any online spec purchasing tips?