Occupational lenses for computer and desk work

If you are somewhere past forty and your desk has started to feel like an obstacle course — leaning in to read the screen, tipping your head back to find focus, taking your glasses off altogether for something on paper — the problem is usually the lens, not your eyes.

What an occupational lens is

An occupational lens is a progressive lens designed for arm's length instead of for the horizon. An ordinary progressive gives most of its area to distance vision, a narrow corridor to the middle distance, and a small window at the bottom for reading. That is a sensible compromise for walking around. At a desk it is the wrong one, because the intermediate zone where your monitor sits is the narrowest part of the lens, and you end up moving your head to find it.

An occupational lens reverses the priority. It gives the widest and most comfortable area to the distances you actually work at — the screen, the keyboard, the page, the person across the desk — and gives up some distance vision in exchange. You will see them called office lenses, computer glasses, or near-variable-focus lenses. ZEISS calls its version Officelens.

They are a second pair, not a replacement

This is the part people are often not told. Occupational lenses are not for driving and not for walking down the street. The distance vision has been deliberately traded away, and that trade is the whole point. They are a dedicated pair for the hours you spend at a desk, worn alongside your everyday glasses.

That sounds like a nuisance until you have worn them for a week.

The working distances are the whole job

A lens made for a large monitor at arm's length is not the same lens as one made for a laptop on your knees, and a lens for someone running two screens at different depths is different again. What matters is how far your eyes sit from the screen, how high the screen is relative to your eyes, and what else you need to see sharply without moving — paper on the desk, a second monitor, a colleague opposite you.

The easiest way to get this right is to measure your own desk before you come in. A tape measure from the bridge of your nose to the middle of the screen is enough. If you would rather not, describe how you work and we will get there together.

Made where they are sold

Both our shops have a lens laboratory on the premises, on First Avenue in Manhattan and on South Bedford Road in Mount Kisco. If a finished pair does not sit right, the bench that made the lenses and the person adjusting the frame are in the same building, which is the difference between an alteration and a two-week wait.

Prescription, and what it costs

You will need a current prescription. Dr. Emily Crane examines at our First Avenue showroom in Manhattan, and a comprehensive eye examination is the place to raise how you actually use your eyes at work. A prescription from your own doctor is equally welcome.

Clairmont Nichols is out of network with every vision plan. We accept FSA and HSA cards, and the receipt you leave with is fully itemized for out-of-network reimbursement.