Blue Light Blocking Glasses – Kids Series
Which percentage you want, and when
Blue light glasses come in two useful strengths and one useless one. The useless one is the clear lens with a faint blue sheen and no published filtering figure, which is most of what sells online. If a listing won't tell you what percentage of which wavelengths it blocks, assume the answer is embarrassing.
A 50% lens is the daytime lens. It takes the edge off a monitor across an eight-hour working day while leaving colours close enough to accurate for design work, photo editing and video calls where you'd like your own face to look normal. It is faintly warm and you stop noticing it within minutes.
A 99% lens is the evening lens. It is visibly amber, it will make a screen look strange, and that is the trade you are making deliberately in the last couple of hours before bed. Bright light late in the evening shifts your body clock later — that part is well established — and cutting the short wavelengths is the cheapest way to blunt it without turning off the television.
The Versa exists because most people want both and nobody wants to own and lose two pairs of glasses. The lenses clip on magnetically and swap in a second.
Against a cheap clear-lens pair
There is nothing wrong with spending little on glasses. There is something wrong with spending anything on a lens that doesn't say what it filters.
| Zaremora | Unmarked clear lenses | |
|---|---|---|
Filtering percentage published |
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A daytime lens that keeps colour usable |
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A night lens for the hours before bed |
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Version that fits over prescription glasses |
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Frames sized for children, not shrunk adult frames |
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Scratch-resistant coating and a case |
Screens aren't going anywhere
The average working day now involves staring at a lit rectangle from about an arm's length for most of the hours you are awake. Your eyes were not built for that, you are not going to stop doing it, and most advice on the subject amounts to telling you to do less of your job.
A lens that filters part of the spectrum is a small, cheap intervention that costs you nothing to try. It is not a cure for a working day and it is not a substitute for an eye test. Blinking, distance breaks and getting the screen below eye level all do more than any lens. But a pair of glasses you'll actually wear beats advice you won't follow.
Questions
Which percentage should I get?
If you're buying one pair for a working day, take 50% — colours stay usable and you'll forget you're wearing them. If the problem is specifically the evening and getting to sleep, take 99%. If it's both, the Versa swaps between the two with magnetic clip-ons rather than making you own two pairs.
Will everything look yellow?
At 50%, barely — a slight warmth you stop registering after a few minutes, and close enough to neutral for most colour work. At 99%, yes, distinctly amber. That is unavoidable: blocking nearly all of the blue wavelengths is what makes the rest look warm. It's the reason the 99% lens is an evening lens.
Can I wear them over my prescription glasses?
That's what the Universal Fitover series is for. The frames are wider and deeper than normal so they sit over glasses or readers without pressing on them. The other models are standalone frames and won't fit over anything.
Are any of these prescription lenses?
No. These are non-prescription filtering lenses. If you need vision correction, either wear the Fitover pair over your own glasses or ask your optician about a blue light coating on your prescription lenses.
Do kids need a different pair?
Children's faces are a different shape, not just smaller, so a shrunken adult frame sits badly and gets abandoned. The Kids Series is built on a narrower bridge and shorter temples. Fit is most of whether a child actually wears them.
Will these help me sleep?
The honest version: bright light in the evening — especially short, blue wavelengths — delays your body clock, and that is well established. Reducing it before bed is sensible. Whether a particular pair of glasses makes a difference you'd notice depends on how much screen time you have late, how bright it is, and everything else going on in your evening. They are a reasonable thing to try, not a treatment for insomnia.
Can I drive in them?
Not in the 99% lens. Heavy amber tint distorts colour and cuts light transmission, which is a genuinely bad idea at night with traffic signals involved. The 50% lens is fine for daytime driving but it isn't what it's for.
How do I clean them?
The microfibre cloth in the case, dry or with a little water. Skip paper towel, shirt hems and glass cleaner — all three scratch coatings, and ammonia strips them. Scratches on the coating are what finish a pair of glasses, not the frames breaking.