Sunglasses and Face Masks – How Do You Deal with the Discomfort?

Facemask and sunglasses

You need your sunglasses. But you also need to don your face mask when you’re out and about. Admit it, it’s a real pain. And we are not talking about aesthetics here. If you want to look good, it will have to be sans face masks.

Besides feeling and looking all wrapped up like a mummy, we have to content with the dastardly fogging of our shades while wearing a face mask. You might think that we won’t have this problem since we’re living in the tropics – the outside air is warm and the lenses of our shades won’t fog. Actually this can still happen. For example, if you’re on a bus or a taxi and you might be wearing a pair of shades to shield you from the strong sunlight, but you’re required to wear your face masks. So, what can you do?

  1. Get a better fitting face mask – as you breathe, the relatively warmer air that you exhale that escapes through the edges of your face mask will fog up the lenses. One way to get around it is to get a better fitting mask, especially those with a metal nose bridge. Gently press and form the nose bridge of your face mask for a good fit. This will reduce the amount of warm air rising up from your masks.
  2. Breathe through your nose – that might sound like a no-brainer. Fact is, wearing a face mask makes it harder for us to breathe. Subconsciously, we may switch to breathing through our mouths. Besides the medical advantages of breathing through our nose, mouth breathing tends to create more fogging than nasal breathing.
  3. Wear your face mask higher – pull your face mask higher up your nose and sealing it with your sunglasses will definitely help. Alternatively, adjusting your frames a little down the bridge of your nose and away from your face mask helps heaps. Picture a professor peering over his eyeglasses that are perched far down on this nose bridge and you get the picture. Not that far down but far enough as to avoid the warm air that escapes from the top of your masks definitely works wonders.
  4. Wash your sunglasses with soapy water – a study done in 2011 concluded that “Washing the spectacles with soapy water leaves behind a thin surfactant film that reduces this surface tension and causes the water molecules to spread out evenly into a transparent layer. This ‘surfactant effect’ is widely utilised to prevent misting of surfaces in many everyday situations.” Do not use harsh soap. Just use a small drop of neutral PH liquid dish soap. Avoid the orange or lemon-scented ones as they contain acids contained that might damage your lenses. Rinse off with warm water and let it air-dry.

We hope the above suggestions will be helpful to you in avoiding the dreaded fogging of your sunglasses. Since we’re on the topic of sunglasses, do check out the wide range of Sunday Shades here.  Our latest and most popular pair to-date, Ocean Surf, is still in stock. All Sunday Shades have no bounce, offer a good fit and are light weight. Check it out now!