PRESCRIPTIONS - GLASSSES

• General
• SPH (sphere)
• CYL (cylinder)
• AXIS
• Near ADD
• Int ADD
• PD

All we need to make your glasses is your prescription. Therefore, before you place your spectacles' order you will need to know the prescription details for your glasses. Your optician has a legal obligation to provide you with a legible copy of your prescription.

It is important that you give us all the information contained on your prescription form. Below are several examples of what you prescription may look like; Some boxes may be left blank or there may be additional information not shown in these examples, whatever format your prescription comes in you must forward all the information to us in order for us to complete your glasses.

The above and below examples have a distance prescription of Right +3.00 +0.50 90 and Left +2.75 +1.75 25. If you look at the "NEAR" part you can see that it has + 1.50 this is the ADDITION for your reading prescription and is sometimes abbreviated to " ADD" also it is sometimes entered in both the left eye and right eye although the value should be the same. The example below alo includes the PD.

SPH (sphere) - the amount of long (+) or short (-) sight. The higher the number, the stronger the prescription lens required.

CYL (cylinder) - the amount of astigmatism, or visual distortion, caused by an irregularly shaped cornea.

AXIS - the direction of the astigmatism, measured in degrees.

PRISM - correction needed to balance the eyes.

Near ADD (Nr. ADD)- the amount of additional correction needed to focus at close distances. If you have a measurement shown in this section it means that you have different prescription requirements for distance and reading. This can be solved by having different spectacles, or bifocal or varifocal lenses.

Int. ADD (intermediate) - the amount of correction needed to cope with intermediate distances, such as working at a PC or reading music. In many cases, rather than having separate spectacles for this, customers are prescribed varifocal lenses

Your Pupillary Distance (PD)

This is simply the distance between the middle of the pupil in one eye to the middle of the pupil in your other eye.

Ask your optician to note this on your prescription when you have your eye-test. If this hasn't been done though, you can take this measurement yourself by using a ruler that shows millimetres.

• Sit or stand in front of a mirror.
• Place the ruler across the top (bridge) of your nose.
• Put number 0 on the centre of a pupil of one eye, and then look at the centre of the pupil of the other eye, read the number above on the ruler. This is the number of your PD.

As a guide, an average PD can vary form 65mm to 75mm. The national average is PD 63mm, so if you have difficulty taking this measurement yourself or do not provide it, we will automatically make up your glasses to this average.