How to Fit Bifocals

If you suffer from presbyopia, you have trouble adjusting your vision from distant objects to near ones. This condition affects most people over 40 and makes daily tasks like reading more difficult. Fortunately, presbyopia is easily corrected with a pair of bifocals.



Whether you've been wearing glasses or contacts for years or you've never needed them before, it's important to choose your bifocals with care. If your bifocals don't fit you, the lenses will slide down and inhibit your ability to see clearly. Your eye doctor can help you fit your bifocals to your face.

Instructions

• 1

  Choose a pair of frames for your lenses. Once you have the frames, your eye doctor, or another optical professional, can make the necessary measurements to fit the bifocal lenses to your face.

  Not all frames can accommodate bifocal lenses, so make sure you pick the right kind. The frames must have a height of at least 30 mm.

• 2

  Fit the frames to your face. Make sure the frames are not too large or too small. Frames that are too big for your face can slip, and frames that are too small may cause eye strain. Too-small frames will also be uncomfortable, since they may pinch the sides of your head or cause discomfort around the ears and nose.

  Make sure the frames fit snugly around the bridge of your nose and will stay in place without slipping down.

• 3

  Measure the "seg height" of your lenses with your doctor. Your doctor or optical professional will make two dots on each lens of the frame you select, one level with the bottom of the pupil and one level with the intersection of the lower eyelid and the eye. The seg height is the measurement in millimeters of the distance from the bottom of the lens to the height of the dot.

  Once you have the seg height, your custom bifocal lenses can be made to fit your frames.