What Are Progressive Lenses, and Should You Be Wearing Them?

As you age, your eyes age too. They’ve put in a lot of hard work over the years, and now they may need a bit of assistance when it comes to seeing things clearly at different distances.

For example, you may have noticed that your close vision isn’t what it used to be. Reading a book might require reading glasses, and you may be taking off your normal prescription glasses for certain tasks. It’s a lot of switching around and feeling out what’s comfortable—and that’s where progressives come in.

What Are Progressive Lenses?

Progressive lenses look like any other prescription lens you might have in your glasses. But, they have a hidden talent: each one contains multiple prescriptions, or “powers.”

If you need separate eye prescriptions to see clearly at different distances, progressive lenses can likely accommodate all of them with a single pair of glasses. They enable you to do tasks that require close-up vision, intermediate vision, and distance vision without swapping frames or taking glasses off.

Progressive glasses go by a few names. You may hear them referred to as “no-line” bifocals, trifocals, or multifocals, or even as varifocals. Some people call them progressive addition lenses, which can be shortened to the (very cute) acronym PAL.