Anti-Reflective Coating (AR)

The most common lens feature prescribed by your doctor will be anti-reflective coating (AR). Anti-reflective coating block reflections and glare from overhead lights or camera flashes so that other people can see your eyes. It also assists with nighttime driving because it helps block headlight glare from oncoming traffic and streetlights.

What is Anti-Reflective Coating?

Anti-Reflective coating (AR) or sometimes called anti-glare coating are lens coatings designed to decrease or eliminate the amount of light that is reflected from your lenses. AR coating can be applied to the back, front or both sides of your lenses to help reduce the amount of glare or mirror effect you get when looking into your lenses. About 4% of light will be refracted at each surface of an uncoated lens. When AR is applied, it should reduce the refraction to less than .1%. This means that instead of only 91% of the lights that enter your lenses reaching your retina, 99.9% reaches your retina. You will definitely see better with antireflective coating on your lenses than without.

How is Anti-Reflective Coating applied?

Anti-Reflective coating (AR) is a layered combination of materials of metals or oxides. These metals and oxides are put into a vacuum deposition coating machine in a powder form. As the materials and lenses rise in temperature, the oxide powder coats the lenses in a specific order depending on the type of coating being applied.

If you’re interested in how glasses are made, check out this cool video we’ve created of our lab and how the glasses are made from start to finish <<>>

Do I need Anti-Reflective coating?

Anti-reflective coatings will help you see better – and it will enhance the clarity of your lenses and virtually eliminate reflections you (and others) see in your lenses. AR coating helps to reduce eye strain by allowing virtually 100 of available light to reach your eyes.

Are there different types of AR?

Yes! With anything, there are name brands of AR available, as well as at LensFactory, we offer our house brand of AR which designed and formulated in house to be a great replacement at more than half the cost of a name brand. 

Is AR expensive?

Adding any feature to your lenses increases the cost. After all, there is more work and materials going into your custom lens. We offer complete lens replacement for well less than half the cost of a retail store, so an add on for a nominal fee that helps you have better clarity and vision, for something you use daily – to us, is not expensive. Anti-Reflective is the most popular add-on at LensFactory with roughly 65% of our orders containing it.