Indoor/Outdoor and Changing Light Applications: What Kind of Lens Tint is Best for Your Safety Glasses?

Temporary blindness. Have you heard of it? Chances are, you’ve probably experienced it. Think of a time on the job when you’ve gone from inside a building to outside and it’s extremely sunny. The change forces you to squint while you wait for your pupils to constrict and properly adjust to the brightness. During this time, you’re temporarily unable to see. Do this several times in a day and your eyes start to become strained and fatigued. This is a recipe for eye irritability and headaches.

Add in the safety element – the hazard of not being able to see for those few seconds on the job – and things become much more serious.

When you’re wearing safety glasses and need to be both inside and outside at work, what is the best solution? Depending on the situation, you have options.

For example, if you’re working on a construction site, you’re likely in and out of the shade often, going underneath overhangs or stepping inside to grab additional equipment. When you need to read something in these situations, the last thing you want is to have to take off your safety glasses because the tint on them is too dark. When you’re in the middle of the sunshine on the site and need to read something, you also need a solution to help with sun glare.

And no one wants to carry two pairs of safety glasses around and switch back and forth. So, what tint do you choose?

These changing light conditions would benefit from a Silver Mirror 53% lens tint. Silver Mirror keeps pupil change and eye strain to a minimum. A Silver Mirror tint is halfway between a clear and a gray lens and helps with brightness and sun glare, but also allows you to see well in shaded areas. Many workers in the safety industry refer to this as an “indoor/outdoor” lens tint. Its main purpose is to help with clear vision when you’re frequently going between the two.

For situations where you’re primarily indoors, but go outside from time to time or where you’re working before sunrise and into daytime, a Variomatic lens tint is the way to go. Variomatic lenses are nearly clear lenses when they’re not exposed to sunlight and darken when exposed to UV light. If you’re working inside, you can wear Variomatic lenses comfortably all day. When you go outside from the indoors, HexArmor Variomatic lenses progressively darken within 10 seconds to around a 12% light transmission. They then progressively lighten up within 30 seconds when you go back inside (versus other lenses that can take up to two minutes). These fast transition times help lessen the strain on your eyes and allow you to see safely, quickly.

This article was originally published on HexArmor Safety blog, July 27, 2017.

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