Newbury optometrist's tips on how to stop your glasses fogging up when wearing a mask

"If your lenses are fogging up you’ve got a loose mask and you need to make sure it fits your face"

AS mask wearing becomes the norm up and down the country, many of us are struggling with a simple problem – preventing our glasses from fogging up.

Step forward Newbury optometrist Valarie Jerome who has plenty of suggestions to help us keep our lenses clear and frames clean.

Mrs Jerome – who runs Valarie Jerome Optometrists on Northbrook Street – first emphasised the importance of keeping the frames clean from any potential virus.

She said: “We’re all told to wash our hands, but we also need to make sure we wash and disinfect our glasses as well.

“You can use Fairy Liquid and water to disinfect the frame – when you’ve been out to the shops and you come in and wash your hands, make sure you wash your frames as well.

“Also it goes without saying that people often put their frames in their mouths when they’re twiddling their thumbs, or anxious, so remember not to do that.”

Mrs Jerome then explained that the most important factor in preventing glasses from fogging up was ensuring that the lenses are kept clean.

She said: “Clean lenses will fog up less than dirty lenses, that’s the key thing to remember.

“You can use soap and water if you’ve got nothing else but it’s better for your lenses to use specific lens cleaner sprays that are designed for anti-fog purposes which will protect the integrity of your lenses, especially coated lenses like anti-glare lenses.

“It’s best not to use any alcohol-based products or household cleaners – they can breakdown the lenses and damage the plastic or metal frames you have.

“Make sure you polish the lenses with a microfiber cloth.”

Mrs Jerome – who originally moved to the UK in 2009 from the US – said the most common cause of glasses fogging up was an ill-fitting mask, particularly one lacking a seal along the nose, before illustrating some neat hacks to deal with the problem.

She said: “If your lenses are fogging up you’ve got a loose mask and you need to make sure it fits your face. You can take a piece of tissue, fold it up longways and make it like a strip and you can put that over your nose, then you place your mask over that and it just creates an extra seal.

“You can use medical or bandage tape to tape over the top of the mask to your nose to create a better seal.

“Or if you’ve got a cloth mask and it doesn’t have a metal wire on the top, you can unfold a paperclip and you can use some tape to tape it to the top of the face mask and it’ll mould around your nose much better.

“If you’ve got big frames you can rest them on the top of your mask and that helps.

“I never considered myself a face mask expert until about two-and-a-half months ago when I’d got all my PPE and began to notice the problem myself because I had to wear a mask and varifocals all day, and it was quite difficult.

“It would fog up my equipment and lenses and I quickly delved into it to try and make myself an expert.”