Why do reading glasses get dirty so quickly?

I was near sighted and wore glasses since age 12. Smudges on my glasses never bothered me. I cleaned them each morning after getting dressed. I never touch the lenses with my fingers.

Had cataract surgery and I’m now far sighted and need readers.

The readers constantly get Greasy. It’s like looking through a dirty window. I clean the glasses three or four times a day.

I clean the glasses any time I need to read small print on my phone. I struggle to read text with dirty readers.

I never had this problem with my prescription glasses. They got smudged but it didn’t bother my ability to see.

I assume the oil on my skin is getting on the readers. But why? I can wear the readers for an hour and they’re greasy.

I use disposable optical wipes. I reuse them a few times by wetting them again with eyeglass cleaner. It’s frustrating.

There’s a difference in the lens that I don’t understand.

You’re likely touching them without realizing it. Do you frequently go between reading and then looking at something a distance away(or vice versa)?

I raise them up on my forehead when I’m not reading.

The only explanation that makes sense to me is that they’re possessed by the devil.

Or possibly a different, smudge-attracting plastic.

Do reader lens face inward? That would let them rub my forehead.

Concave = inward

convex outward

Readers are basically a magnifying lens.

The only reading class of mine that got dirty was the one that included The Diary of Anais Nin.

I’ve always had oily skin.

People touch their faces FAR more often than they realise. That, along with the forehead thing, is your problem I am sure.

After 20 years I have found no good solution; if I give them to the optometrist they use the same spray and cloth I do to clean them. What I’d like is some sort of device they could be put into, and washed and dried perfectly in an instant!

I’m going to try half lenses.

I won’t need to manually push the glasses up.

It’s odd that smudges didn’t bother my vision before. We’ve all seen people in public with very dirty lenses.

It’s different with readers. Smudges degrade your ability to see text in focus.

You’re gonna wanna change the thread title. Or not. You’ll get more people in here the way it is! :wink:

When I was working for a defense contractor we has vapor degreasers that were perfect for that. Taking my glasses off, I’d hold them a few moments in the vapor zone, just below the condenser and they were sparkly clean. Alas, they are a bit pricey for home use, to say nothing of the power bill to keep one running.

A key question is - which side of the lenses gets smudged up? I find that sometimes my eyelashes will touch the inside of my lenses and slowly deposit a fine smudge. This seems to depend upon the design and the frames I use. It may be that your generic readers are closer to your eyes than the older glasses.

The surface treatments on the lenses may also make a difference to how much stuff the lenses pick up.

I have the same issue as the op. Just last week I stumbled across these glasses cleaner. Which is basically a miniature set of tongs with wipes on each end.

I love it so much that I actually don’t mind my glasses getting dirty now.

One possibility is that your prescription glasses had a different material or some sort of oleophobic coating, whereas your reading glasses, which are often simple and cheap, have a different material or no coating which makes some inadvertent way you’re getting oil or other contaminants on your glasses affect them more.

It’s usually the inside of the lens that gefs greasy. The frames are a little small and tbey fit tight on my temples. I’ve already had one readers frame break where it attached at the nose piece. $15 gone.

My old prescription glasses fit much better and I always had anti scratch coating. Sometimes I also got anti glare. Maybe the coatings resisted skin oil?

The quality of tbe prescription lens is way,way better. Obviously $15 2.75 readers are cheap.

I’m thinking about asking if I can get fitted with frames and better quality reading lenses.

Frames that actually fit correctly would help.

I have a couple friends who wear those prescription readers that use a magnet at the nose bridge with a loop that runs behind their neck. (I wear bifocals continuously myself.) It is quite surprising exactly how much they fiddle with their glasses. In meetings, for example, they will take those readers off and put them on again about every minute. It appears to be more of a nervous tic than anything else…perhaps comparable to how I stroke my beard. OTOH, the only contact I have with my glasses is the occasional push to the nose bridge to get them back up my nose.

And do I understand that the readers are stored by pushing them up on the top of the head?

There’s your answer.

Pushing tbe readers up is quickest when I need to lbriefly look at something far away.

I remove them if I’m not reading.

I really need to buy half lenses and train myself to look down when I read.

Pushing glasses uo on the forehead is a bad habit.

I tried a neck chain with my prescription glasses a few years ago. The ear piece loop broke within a month.

Hmmm … So, solving one problem created a new one, which means we have to solve problem one without creating problem two. LOL

The recommendation of getting the, for the lack of a better term, “half-lenses” that you can easily see over seems to accomplish that.