Guides · written and reviewed by our optometrists
Guides — plain answers from the people who’ll see you
Every guide answers one question in the first paragraph, tells you when you don’t need us, and ends with the one thing to do next. Written by a named optometrist, reviewed by another.
Glasses and lenses
- The honest guide to varifocal lenses: what nobody tells you before you buy.Most people who struggle with varifocals were never told how they work, which one suits them, or how to get used to them. This guide tells y
- Single vision, varifocal, occupational: which lens do I need?Three questions decide it: how old you are, what you do all day, and whether you want one pair or two. Here’s the version we give across the
- Thin lenses: what the index numbers mean and what you pay forOver about plus or minus three, the standard lens gets thick at the edges or the middle. Thinner materials fix that, at a price — and the fr
- Anti-reflection, blue light, photochromic: which lens coatings are worth it?One coating helps nearly everyone. Some help particular people. And one or two are less useful than they sound. Here they are, in that order
- Why do my new glasses feel wrong?The floor slopes, the edges swim, there’s a headache by lunchtime. Some of that settles in a week. Some of it never will, and shouldn’t be t
Contact lenses
- Varifocal contact lenses: do they work, and could they work for you?If you are over forty, reaching for reading glasses, and wondering whether contact lenses can still work for you, they very likely can. This
- Why do my contact lenses dry out? And how to fix it.If your lenses feel lovely in the morning and dry, scratchy or blurry by the afternoon, you are not doing anything wrong, and you do not hav
- Why do my contact lenses hurt when I blink, especially at the end of the day?A lens that scratches or stings every time you blink is telling you something. It is usually simple to put right, and you should not have to
- Keratoconus: what it is, and what scleral lenses doKeratoconus is the cornea thinning and bulging into a cone. Glasses stop working because the surface is no longer smooth. A scleral lens mak
Eye tests
- How much is an eye test? Every price, honestlyAnywhere between nothing and £195, depending on what you’d like looked at. Here’s what each level includes, so you can choose the right one.
- NHS eye test vs private: what the £55 actually buysThe NHS test isn’t a cut-down version. At an independent it’s the same optometrist, the same room and most of the same checks. The differenc
- What is an OCT scan, and do I need one?A photograph of the back of your eye shows the surface. An OCT scan shows what’s underneath, layer by layer. That’s where glaucoma and macul
- How often should I have an eye test?Every two years is the standard answer and it’s right for most people. The exceptions matter more than the rule.
- What happens at an eye test — forty-five minutes, step by stepIf it’s been years, or you’ve only ever had a short one, here’s the whole forty-five minutes — so nothing’s a surprise.
- Free eye tests: who qualifies in 2026About half of adults qualify and a good few don’t know it. The list, in one place, for this year.
- Glaucoma: the test that finds it years earlyGlaucoma is the one that has no symptoms. By the time you notice anything, the sight that’s gone doesn’t come back. It’s found at eye tests,
- Macular degeneration: what you can actually do this yearThere are two kinds and they need opposite responses. The dry kind is slow, and there are things that slow it further. The wet kind is fast
- Cataracts: when to have surgery, and what to expect afterNearly everyone who lives long enough gets a cataract. The operation is one of the safest and commonest in medicine. The only real question
- Diabetes and your eyes: what the yearly check looks forDiabetes damages the small vessels at the back of the eye without any symptoms until late. You’re entitled to two checks a year — the screen
Urgent problems
- Red eye: when it’s nothing, and when it’s todayMost red eyes settle on their own. A few are the kind that damage sight if left a week. The difference is four signs, and none of them is “h
- Flashes and floaters: the ones that need seeing the same dayA retinal tear caught the same day is a ten-minute laser. Left a week, it can be a detachment and an operation. The signs are specific, and
- Stye or chalazion? What to do tonightA lump on the eyelid is nearly always one of two things, both harmless, both fixable at home most of the time. Here’s how to tell them apart
- Something in my eye: what to do, and what not to doMost things wash out. The ones that don’t — and the ones you should never try to get out yourself — are the reason to know this before it ha
Choosing and finding us
- Choosing an optician: the questions worth askingEvery optician is registered and every optometrist is qualified. The differences are about time, continuity and how much is explained — and
- Eye tests in Cheshire without the drive to ManchesterFor a lot of Cheshire, the specialist things — the OCT scan explained properly, a dry eye clinic, myopia control for a child — have meant a
- Independent opticians: what is actually different?People search for an independent optician when they want to feel looked after rather than processed. Here is what that should mean in practi
Children
- Screen time and children’s eyes: what the evidence actually saysScreens don’t damage a child’s eyes. What they do is take the place of the one thing that protects them. That’s a different problem, and an
- Back to school: the eye test that catches what the school check missesThe school check is a sight screen: can the child read the chart. It isn’t an eye test, and the children it misses are exactly the ones who
Dry eye
- Why do my eyes water when they’re dry?It sounds like a contradiction and it’s the commonest dry eye story we hear: eyes that stream in the wind and feel like sand the rest of the
- Dry eyes and the menopauseDry eyes are one of the commonest menopause symptoms and almost nobody mentions them — not the GP, not the leaflets. The hormones that chang
- CPAP and dry eyesSore, gritty, red eyes every morning since the machine arrived: it’s the air. A little of it leaks up over the mask all night and dries the
- Blepharitis: what helps tonight, and what actually fixes itBlepharitis will not clear overnight. You can make tonight and tomorrow morning a great deal more comfortable, and you can stop it coming ba
- Blepharitis or dry eye? How to tell, and why most people have bothBlepharitis is the lids. Dry eye is the tears. They feel different, but in most people we see they are two ends of the same problem, and tre
- Which eye drops for dry eyes? An optometrist’s honest guideThere is no single best drop. There is a best drop for your kind of dry eye, and most people are using the wrong kind. Here is how to choose
- MGD eye drops: what they do, and why clearing the glands comes firstMGD, meibomian gland dysfunction, means the oil glands in your eyelids have blocked. Drops can stand in for the oil for a while. Only cleari
- Can blepharitis cause blurry vision, double vision, or worse?Blurry vision that clears when you blink is one of the most common things blepharitis does. It is unsettling, and it is almost always fixabl
Eye health
- JF Rey glasses: our honest view as a JF Rey stockistWe stock JF Rey in Middleton, Cheadle and Heald Green, and we fit them every week. Here is what the frames are actually like to wear, who th