Hard Contact Lenses

You may be familiar with a particular type of contact lens that is smaller and more rigid than “typical” contact lenses. Those “typical” contact lenses that are the current market leaders are generally referred to as soft contact lenses. I, preferring simple nomenclature, call the other lenses hard contact lenses, though they can also be referred to as “rigid gas permeable” lenses, or RGPs. This does not represent the whole landscape of contact lens options, but I am focusing on hard and soft lenses today.

Most modern-day contact lens users have not thought much about anything other than soft contact lenses. There is a good reason for this; soft contact lenses tend to be much more comfortable than hard contact lenses. However, what those users have probably not heard about is that hard contact lenses can often give better vision than other methods of correction (i.e. glasses and soft contacts). This is because the hard lens can correct multiple different kinds of “imperfections” of the surface of the eye, while glasses and soft contact lenses can typically only correct two (namely spherical error and regular astigmatism).

If you are a soft contact lens user and don’t have much discomfort with their use, maybe you should ask to try hard contact lenses! It could be interesting to see what your vision could be with them, even if you end up choosing soft contacts in the long run due to comfort.