Should You Wear Glasses with Your Ski Goggles?

You've always wanted to take up skiing, but you've been wondering: Is it okay to wear ski goggles over glasses? While it might be okay to throw on a pair of borrowed ski goggles for a quick trip to the peak, this isn't the best long-term solution as you get into your new hobby. Generally, wearing ski goggles over your glasses is going to lead to the following:

Pinched Glasses With Ski Goggles

Goggles are designed to seal to the contour of your face, but the side arms of glasses disrupt the flush fit of your goggles. Besides not getting the facial seal, the ski goggles will pinch and bend your glasses onto your face, causing discomfort.

Foggy Ski Goggles

As you perspire, the moisture released from your skin can condense as fog on goggles and sometimes even freeze. Good ski goggles are treated with an anti-fog coating on the inside to prevent this, but this isn't the case for your glasses. Glasses also sit very close to your facial moisture source. As a result, your glasses will fog quickly and it will be difficult to keep them clear throughout your winter activities.

Incomplete Ski Goggle seal

Hey, it's cold out there! The main reason for wearing ski goggles in the first place is to keep that cold air and snow from getting too close to your eyes. Without a complete goggle seal, you're going to be very aware of that sub-zero temperature. When you wear ski goggles over glasses, cold air and even snow can enter through the gap caused by the arms of your glasses, making your eyes water and vision blurred.

Options for Vision Correction And Ski Goggles

So what are your options? If contacts don't work for you, then your best bet is to get a prescription lens insert that can fit inside of your ski goggles. Prescription lens inserts fit entirely inside the goggle, allowing for a complete, comfortable ski goggle seal. Lens inserts have added distance from your face over regular glasses, which helps prevent fog build up on the lenses. Much more affordable and versatile than expensive prescription ski goggles, ski goggle inserts can be adapted for any goggle type. All that's needed is to measure the lens height at the center of your goggles to determine the best type of insert to purchase. If measurements aren't your thing, you can also download real size templates of each insert style to test out, or just match an insert by compatible ski goggle brands. They're also adaptable to a variety of prescription lens types and coatings, and can be assembled by the company you are buying the insert from or even from your regular optometrist. An added bonus of prescription lens inserts is their compatibility with many goggle types, including snow board, motorcycle and motocross goggles, safety goggles, and even Paintball skirmish goggles, so you can use them year round.

Whatever choice you make for adapting glasses to your ski goggles, we wish you good runs and lots of white powder with some great, clear vision.