All your life you have heard about the importance of sunglasses. You are probably aware that they are used to protect your eyes, blocking them from sunlight and preserving your vision. But do you know how sunglasses actually do all that? Apart from complementing your look, they work in four different ways. You should learn what these are and make sure that your sunglasses are actually doing the work they are meant to.



Ultraviolet rays are present in sunlight and these can cause damage the corneas. Sunglasses help give your eyes protection from the dangerous UV rays, and good ones give your eyes 100% protection. A coating is put outside the lenses of the sunglasses which acts as a UV filter. It allows light to pass through, so you can see, but blocks out the UV light which can harm your eyes.

The most common reason people wear sunglasses is to get protection from the glare of sunlight. Powerful sunlight can make you close your eyes or narrow them, thus causing a squint. This is a natural reaction which protects the corneas. It is not just bright sunlight which can cause damage, but also glare from the snow, because snow reflects the sunlight highly intensified and magnified, so it can be even more dangerous.

Sunglasses are tinted according to your requirements, based on how much light protection is needed. Just as there are different types of light, the various shades of the lenses of sunglasses also protect your eyes in their differing ways. Among the good lens colors are gray and almost black which give the most protection from powerful light, at the same time not distorting colors.

Of utmost importance is the fact the sunglasses safeguard your eyes from glare. The sunlight reflects off water and shiny surfaces which amplify the light and cause glare, which can be blinding if you don't wear sunglasses and can even cause accidents. Good sunglasses shield eyes from this kind of glare.

Just as sound waves vibrate so do light waves and when a group comes together, the result is a glare. If you get blinded by glare off water or glass (like the windshield of a car), you see a combination of light waves. There are polarization filters which are used in the lenses of sunglasses which realign the waves and thus get rid of the glare.

Sunglasses can eradicate particular light frequencies which can cause vision to blur or change colors. Therefore selecting the correct color of the lenses of the sunglasses helps them protect your eyes in different conditions.

If you want to block out blue light, then you ought to be wearing sunglasses whose lenses are yellow, gold, amber or brown. Blue light is the major color which causes blurred vision. Even though yellow lenses have a tendency to distort other colors, their benefits far outweigh their disadvantages.