Do you feel uncomfortable with the glasses you are wearing right now?
Are your glasses crooked, too loose, or too tight?
I bet it’s very irritating to have a pair of spectacles that don’t give you the “right” feel. But wait, you can relax!
This article is the right place for you as here we have some methods that can be used to adjust your frames to make them feel right.
Why wait? Carry on and read further.
How To Check The Alignment Of Your Frame?
Before you plunge into action, check if your glasses actually need to be adjusted. You don’t want your glasses broken, do you?
So do a bench alignment test to find out.
- Place your glasses upside down on a flat surface.
- See if all four corners of your glasses touch the surface and when you touch your glasses, see if they wobble.
- Draw an imaginary line between the tips of both temples and see if it forms a perfect rectangle.
- Check if the angle between the temple and face front forms a nice 90°.
If your glasses are not in proper alignment, chances are the angle would not be proper or your glasses would wobble.
Another tip to check if your glasses need adjustment is to put them down and look at the face front from the top. The face front must have a good curve. If it’s straight, then your glasses need to be worked on the bridge part because the bridge might be too flat.
If you have tried all these and feel that your glasses need to be adjusted, then go on and scroll down to find out which problem your glasses have and how to fix it.
Problems That Need Adjustment
- Crooked Glasses
Wear your glasses and look in the mirror to see if the lenses are at the same level. If one lens is higher or closer to the eye than the other, then you need to adjust your frame.
- Tight Glasses
If you feel tightness in the temple or pinching on your nose, your frame needs some fixing.
- Loose and Wide Glasses
Are your glasses sliding down your nose? Then the frame is either too loose or too wide and needs to be tightened.
Having identified the problem, you need to move to the next step of fixing it by adjusting your frame. Listed below are 4 easy methods each meant for a particular problem.
Methods To Adjust Your Frame
Method 1- Bend the Temple’s arms
If you feel your glasses being too tight on the temple that it causes pressure on the part behind your ears, causing pain, you can adjust it by bending the temple arms.
Before Bending:
A metal frame can be bent directly but a plastic frame needs to be heated before bending. You can either use a blow dryer to heat the temple for a few seconds or you could put the frame in hot water for 10-20 seconds at the temple region.
But be careful not to heat it too much or you might end up weakening the plastic frame or even breaking it. All frames have a breaking point so make sure to use the right amount of heat.
How to Bend the Temple Arms?
But are you wondering how to bend the temple arms? Here is the answer.
- Hold the glasses gently in your hand with the thumb on the top and the other four fingers below the arm.
- Bend carefully near the hinge or at the temple bend to the desired extent.
- If your glasses are too loose on the temple, then bend them upwards to straighten the temple angles.
Either way, make sure that you bend the temple arms equally to the same extent on both sides of the frame.
This will ensure that the glasses don’t get crooked when you wear them, giving them a tilted look. Check in the mirror if both lenses are at the same level after this adjustment.
Method 2- Adjusting the Nose Pads
Do your glasses feel so tight at the nose that it leaves a mark and causes pain or skin irritation on your nose? Or are they so loose that your glasses keep slipping down your nose now and then?
In either case, the problem could be with the nose pads. Your nose bridge is where your glasses sit and the nose pads need to be of the right fit to give you a comfortable feel.
Here’s how you adjust the nose pads:
- If you find your glasses too loose, then pinch the nose pads and bring them close together to tighten them up. This will help to keep the glasses from slipping down your nose.
- If the nose pads are too tight, do the opposite by widening the nose pads, increasing the gap between them. Do this according to the tightness you desire and feel comfortable with.
When these steps could be done directly in the case of metal frames, for plastic frames that come without nose pads, you need to warm your frame and adjust them at the end of the temples. You could either push them inwards and downwards to make them tight behind the ear or push them apart to loosen your glasses.
Method 3- Correct the Hinge Angle
You would have noticed that your glasses wobble and the temples don’t cross over properly when you bend them to keep them inside the eyewear case. You would have also seen the temple arms shake at the hinge.
Both these indicate a change in the 90° angle that is supposed to be maintained between the temples and face in front of your glass. But as we frequently remove and wear the glasses or if by accident we had dropped them down, this angle gets disturbed.
- All you need to fix this angle is a small screwdriver.
- Place the screwdriver at the small screw on the hinge of your glasses carefully.
- Now, rotate the screw at the hinge to either tighten or loosen it depending on whether the angle is greater or lesser than 90°.
Method 4- Adjust the Earpieces
Before you do this, check the curvature of the earpiece of your glasses.
- If the earpiece is too tight and digs into the skin behind your ears, then bend the earpiece part of the arms outward to loosen the frame.
- If your glasses are too wide or loose, then bend the earpiece of the arm inward to tighten the frame.
The way you do this depends on the material of your glasses. If you have a metal frame you can use pliers or hands to do it directly.
But if your glasses frame is made of plastic, then you have to warm the temple arms as mentioned previously, before doing it.
Some Precautions
- While adjusting your glasses frame at home sounds easy, you should visit the optician to adjust your frames if the problem is bigger. Else, you might end up damaging your frame if you do it the wrong way. Sounds awful, right?
- Be careful not to make major adjustments. Do only minor fixing and only those that you are confident of.
- Do not snap your glasses by applying too much pressure. Put in mild pressure to correct the problem.
- Be careful not to damage the lenses especially when you use pliers or hot water. Make sure you do not use boiling water to warm the temple arms in the case of plastic frames.
- Know when to stop adjusting. If you feel you haven’t got the right fit even after trying various adjustments, then it’s time for you to give up and go for a new pair of glasses.
- A bonus point from my personal experience is that do not wear your glasses while lying down, especially on the side. This will make your glasses crooked and the hinge angle will get altered frequently.
Conclusion
Having read these, go ahead and identify the problem that causes your glasses to be uncomfortable, and then try the most appropriate method. We hope this article has given you what you were looking for.
Why wait when you can do it on your own? So grab your glasses and make them fit nicely and comfortably!
