Ordering prescription eyewear online shouldn’t be difficult, but understanding your prescription sometimes can be. We’re here to educate and provide information where we can, to help make it easier to understand. You may well still have questions to ask, please free to contact us, and we will be more than happy to help.

PRESCRIPTION GUIDE

A simple guide to help you order prescription eyewear online.

Your prescription may look slightly different depending on where it was produced, but they all contain the same information. However we’ve broken down the key areas for you below, to give you a better understanding of what the figures on your prescription mean.

SPHERE (SPH)

Corrects the power of your eye. A positive (+) figure means long sighted, negative (-) means short sighted. If you do not require any corrections your prescription can have either infinity symbol for zero or “plano”.

CYLINDER (CYL)

Relates to the amount of astigmatism in your eye. Figure can be a positive or negative number. If your prescription states “DS”, this simply means you do not have one.

AXIS

This indicates the orientation of your the cylinder (if applicable). It will be recorded as a number between 0-180. It holds no relation with power or how good/ bad your eyes are.

PRISM

A measurement that is incorporated into a lens to help compensate for eye alignment problems. These will be written as a number, along with a direction.

ADD

Simply relates to any additional help that may be needed for reading. Not usually present in under 40s. This may be written as a full reading/ near prescription with the cyl and axis instead.

V/As

This figure simply shows how well you’ll see when wearing your prescription eyewear. It’s most likely not even on your prescription so don’t worry if it’s not on yours.

PUPILLARY DISTANCE (PD)

Your PD or Pupillary Distance is the distance in millimetres between the centre of your pupils.

This isn’t a major factor for lower prescription ranges but it’s a very important number for higher prescriptions. Having the correct PD on your prescription insures that you are looking through the ideal spot in your lenses. To get your PD measurement we often use one of the following three methods: