Which safety glasses or goggles do I need?

Eye protection is the cheapest piece of protective equipment and the one most often not worn, because the job was going to take a moment. The vulnerable moments are exactly those: the first cut, the last screw, a look under something, a quick tap with a hammer. What you need depends on what is coming at your eye, and there are only three categories.

Safety

Step by step

1. Work out what is coming at your eye.Solid fragments at speed means impact — glasses or a shield. Dust and airborne particles means a seal — goggles. Liquid, splashes, chemicals or anything overhead means a seal too. Most jobs are one of these three and the answer follows immediately.
2. Look for the impact marking.Impact-rated eyewear carries a letter marking indicating the energy it has been tested against — the higher grades correspond to higher-velocity impacts. The lens and the frame are marked separately, and the protection you get is the lower of the two.
3. Choose wraparound over flat lenses.Fragments arrive from the sides far more often than people expect, particularly when drilling into masonry or working overhead. A wraparound frame or one with integral side shields covers the direction the injuries actually come from.
4. Use goggles for anything dusty or wet.Safety glasses have a gap all round. Plaster dust, brick dust, cement, paint stripper and cleaning chemicals all get in through it, and cement and stripper cause chemical injury rather than just irritation.
5. Add a face shield for grinding and cutting.An angle grinder throws hot metal and abrasive fragments across a room and can shatter a disc. Wear glasses under the shield, because the shield does not seal at the bottom and fragments bounce upwards.
6. Deal with fogging, because fogging is why people take them off.Buy anti-fog coated lenses, use an anti-fog wipe or spray, choose indirectly vented goggles rather than unvented, and wear a valved dust mask or fit the mask so your breath is directed downwards. A pair of glasses in your pocket protects nothing.
7. Keep them clean and unscratched.Rinse dust off before wiping — wiping dry grit across a lens scratches it, and a scratched lens is both harder to see through and weakened. Store them in a case or a pouch, not loose in a toolbox.
8. Replace them after any impact.A lens that has taken a hit has done its job and may be compromised. They cost very little; replace rather than inspect.
9. Keep a pair where the work happens.One in the toolbox, one in the garage, one in the kitchen drawer. The reason people work unprotected is almost always that the glasses were somewhere else.

Tips

• Clear lenses for indoor work, and consider a tinted or mirrored pair for bright outdoor work — otherwise you will take them off in the sun or wear sunglasses that are not impact rated.
• Amber or yellow lenses improve contrast in poor light, which is genuinely useful in a dim garage.
• Anti-fog and anti-scratch are different coatings and both are worth having. Cheap uncoated lenses fog and scratch quickly, which is why they end up unused.
• If you wear prescription glasses regularly, prescription safety glasses are a much better answer than over-specs and are not expensive from an optician.

Common mistakes

• Wearing ordinary glasses and assuming they will do — The lens is not impact tested and can shatter into the eye, and there is no side protection at all. This is the most common eye-protection mistake there is.
• Wearing safety glasses for a dusty or chemical job — The gap around the frame is exactly where dust and splashes reach the eye. Goggles seal; glasses do not.
• Taking them off because they fog — Fogging is a solvable equipment problem — coated lenses, vented goggles, a valved mask. Working without protection because of it is trading a permanent injury against a minor inconvenience.
• Not wearing anything for a quick job — The overwhelming majority of DIY eye injuries happen during short tasks, in the first few seconds, before anyone has settled into the job.

Alternatives

• Safety glasses: Impact-rated lenses in a wraparound frame with integral side protection. Comfortable enough to wear all day, and the right default for drilling, sawing, hammering, screwing and general work. Not sealed, so dust and liquid get in around the edges.
• Over-spectacle safety glasses: Designed to fit over prescription glasses without pushing them into your face. Bulkier but genuinely usable, and much better than balancing safety glasses on top of spectacles. Prescription safety glasses are also available if you do a lot.
• Sealed goggles: A soft sealing rim with an elastic strap, either indirectly vented or unvented. What you need for anything dusty, anything liquid, and anything chemical — plaster, cement, brick dust, paint stripper, cleaning products, working overhead. The seal is the point.
• Face shield: A full clear visor on a headband. Protects the whole face against flying material and is what you want for angle grinding, chainsaw use, strimming and anything shedding fragments. It is not a substitute for glasses underneath, because material bounces up under the shield.
• Welding and cutting filters: A different category — filters rated for radiation as well as impact. Ordinary safety glasses give no protection against arc eye, and looking at welding without the correct filter causes painful corneal injury hours later.
• Ordinary spectacles: Not protection. The lenses are not tested for impact, the frames are not designed to retain a broken lens, and there is nothing at the sides where most fragments arrive from.

Questions people ask