[nunez]

Use a clean microfiber cloth. ANYTHING ELSE will scratch your lenses up. (This is probably the most common no-no I see. People will clean their glasses with anything on them and smudge/scratch them instead.)

Two cloths are ideal: one for cleaning and another for polishing.

If you're using soap and water, apply a tiny amount of soap onto both sides of the lens --- less than a grain of rice --- then apply water and rub with your fingers until clean. Skip to polish step.

If using cleaner, spray cleaner onto the cloth, NOT onto the lens. Spray onto one side of the cloth so that you have a wet side and a dry side.

(You can use water instead of cleaner in a pinch.)

Three passes.

First pass: with wet side, wipe lens in lines from top of frame to bottom. NOT in circles. (You'll spread the dirt around this way, making the cleaning process take way longer and potentially introducing scratches.)

Second pass: Repeat first pass with dry side of cloth.

Repeat first and second passes until lenses look mostly clear.

Third pass, if you have a polishing cloth: Wipe polishing clothes in circles until lenses are clear.

Your lenses will last forever if cleaned this way.

The cleaner steps above also work on any glass surface, like laptop screens or car windows.

[coldtea]

>Use a clean microfiber cloth. ANYTHING ELSE will scratch your lenses up.

No, it wont. I'm cleaning mine for decades with anything at hand (cotton shirts, napkins, etc) and not a scratch.

And of course there's the little fact that microfiber cloth is a recent synthetic thing. People used cotton and linen squares, or chamois leather ones if they felt fancy, to clean their glasses.

[nunez]

yes they do. it's not so much the cotton fabric that will scratch your lenses; it's the dirt on them. cotton weaves leave bigger holes for dirt to get caught in; much much bigger than microfiber, which is why it's best for the job.

[codesnik]

but glasses were made of glass, and nowadays most are plastic.

[Kirby64]

They’re also typically covered in hard anti reflective coatings. Making them similar to glass in scratch resistance.

[coldtea]

You can trivially get glass lenses nowadays. It's a prescription option.

In any case, no scratches on my non-glass eyewear either.

[nunez]

most cheap ones, yes.

if you have vision benefits in the US, you can get glasses with glass lenses for free or heavily discounted

the best optics are glass

[eudamoniac]

I don't know why people say this. When I wore glasses I cleaned them with my cotton shirts for over a decade and they didn't get scratched up, at all. I don't see how cotton would scratch glass to begin with.

[varjag]

Usually it's not the fabric but trapped dust that scratches the coating when you wipe.

[eudamoniac]

Dust is harder than hard plastic?

[dpark]

A large amount of dust is essentially powdered rock, which absolutely is harder than the plastic you would generally find in optical lenses.

[varjag]

Good glasses are in fact glass with PVD coating, that's where the scratches show up. And yes dust particles are often very hard.

[dpark]

Very few people wear actual glass lenses. They are something like 1-2% of the market from what I can tell. Everyone else wears plastic lenses, which are much lighter and thus more comfortable to wear. Also slightly safer due to much reduced risk of shattering with plastic lenses. I've never even had an optometrist offer glass lenses. I think you'd have to specifically ask for them.

But yeah, dust can also definitely scratch the coatings on glass lenses, too.

[varjag]

Are we still talking about glasses, not contacts right? Because everyone over here (Norway) gets glass lenses in glasses on prescription. They are much better optical quality and not uncomfortable in the slightest, and can be customized to individual vision. Mine have glass from Rodenstock, a long time camera lens supplier but other vendors like Zeiss or Swarowski are common too.

You can always tell if it's glass by tint of PVD coating. Polycarbonate or acrylic lenses can't be coated. Plastic's only advantage is low manufacturing cost.

[dpark]

They live in an imaginary world where no one ever cleaned glasses until microfiber cloths were widely available.

To clean glasses safely you basically need a soft, clean cloth. Cotton is totally fine. You could get away with a soft clean sponge, too. Or even a soft-ish piece of paper (which is what most disposable lens words are.)

[dredmorbius]

There is lens-cleaning paper (I used to use this in photgraphy), and facial tissue-grade paper.

The latter does tend to scratch over time, if perhaps only slighly, but the damage can accumulate.

I'm on team soft-cotton, with a very-well-worn bandana serving as my usual cleaning material, plastic lenses, no scratches.

Another sin, for glasses, is laying them lens-down, or face-up, on surfaces when not in use. Lens-down of course grinds the lens into whatever is on the surface. Face-up, as you'd wear them, is vulnerable to flipping over (most glasses are top-heavy), so upside down is preferable. Or folded, with the earpieces down and lenses up. In a case is of course preferable to either.

Leaving glasses randomly on chairs, sofas, beds, etc., is also an invitation to catastrophe.

I've lived with people doing many of the above, and their glasses were perpetually scratched and damaged. Given the high cost of a new pair for many of them, this was ... curious.

[dpark]

It’s certainly possible that facial tissue is more likely to have contaminants that could scratch lenses.

A lot of facial tissue also has lotion, which means it just smears glasses anyway.

[coldtea]

Most believe whatever marketing material or sponsored "expert" advice is presented to them for "proper care", without actually checking. At least glasses clenaning is a harmless area - people do the same for supplements, diets, and all kinds of health advice too.

[seb1204]

Yea, this reads very meticulous to me. I clean my glasses under running hot water and the micro fibre cloth. I wash the micro fibre cloth with dish soap from time to time. In a bind I clean the glass with any clean fabric that feels soft.