Tips for Buying Affordable and Fashionable Glasses

The good news: Buying eyeglasses online are easy and cheap, and there are hundreds of styles you can choose from. The bad news: It's not for everybody.

Buying eyeglasses online are one of those wonders of the internet age. You can find every style of frame imaginable, software that allows you to upload a picture of yourself and get a virtual representation of what you'd look like, and prices for frames that start as low as $6.95. Online is the way to go if all you want is reading glasses or you have an uncomplicated prescription. You could easily lose a couple of hours shopping websites like Zenni Optical, Eye Buy Direct and Warby Parker. I know because I did.

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But buyer beware. Going the online route is not for people who are severely myopic or who have quirky prescriptions (like for astigmatism in my right eye), or who need bifocals or progressive lenses. Shopping online, I fell in love with some oversize demure-librarian frames. They cost $39, and even with a few add-ons and shipping, I ended up spending about $50, which I considered really cheap. (The last pair of glasses I bought in my pre-cataract-surgery days cost me $650.)

My new glasses came in the mail two weeks later, exactly as I'd ordered, and that's when I found out that large lenses do something really wonky when combined with a prescription for progressive lenses and astigmatism in one eye. I can wear them, and the frames look great, but I look a bit like an inquisitive Lassie, cocking my head to one side to get things in focus.

What went wrong? "It's because of the way the lens is measured," explains John Seegers, an optician and director of education at Laramy -K Optical, a website for sellers and buyers of eyeglasses. Online sites ask buyers to measure their own PD (pupillary distance, or the width between the center of each pupil), which is easy enough to do. "But when you get into the vertical measurement of where the progressive part of the lens begins, that takes a little more expertise." Live and learn.