How to Find the Right Contact Lenses

Written by Christine Yu, Marijke Vroomen Durning, RN
Medically Reviewed by Whitney Seltman, OD on March 28, 2025
12 min read

If you’re new to contact lenses, you may have questions about how to wear and care for them. It may not be as simple as slipping on a pair of eyeglasses. And it may take longer to get used to them.

Here’s what contact lens beginners should know.

Contact lenses have come a long way and offer some exciting options. You can wear a pair of baby blue lenses one day, then flash golden tiger eyes the next. You can even toss disposable lenses in the trash each night. 

For people who have difficulty seeing in the distance or close up, contacts remain an effective, comfortable, and almost invisible tool. The thin plastic lenses fit over your cornea — the clear, front part of your eye — to fix vision problems, including nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. You can wear contacts even if you are both nearsighted and farsighted and need bifocals.

Contacts have some advantages over glasses, aside from the convenience of not wearing frames. For example, placing contacts directly on your eyes gives you a full range of vision, unlike lenses in frames that are just a few inches around your field of vision. The contact lens itself can also “smooth out” some imperfections on the eye surface better than glasses can.

If you’re interested in trying contacts, speak to your eye doctor about the best type of lenses for you. Get regular eye exams to keep your eyes healthy and make sure your prescription stays up to date.

It’s important to understand what kind of contacts your eye doctor has ordered for you. Common types of contact lenses include:

Soft lenses

They are the most commonly prescribed type of lenses. “Soft contacts are easy to insert and remove. They're comfortable and less intimidating,” says Timothy S. Liegler, OD, an optometrist at Gavin Herbert Eye Institute at the University of California, Irvine.

The lenses are made from a special type of plastic mixed with water. The water content lets oxygen pass through the lens to your cornea. That makes the lenses more comfortable, lessens the risk of dry eyes, and helps keep your cornea healthy. If the cornea doesn't get enough oxygen, it can swell, get cloudy, and cause blurry vision or other, more serious problems.

Pros. Many soft lenses are disposable, so you can throw them away after using them for a short time. Having a fresh pair of soft contacts means less chance of infection, less cleaning, and more comfort.

While most soft contact lenses are throwaways — whether daily, two-week, or monthly replacements (all of which you take out and clean at night) — some are not. Depending on what you need for your eyes, you may, in rare cases, wear the same pair for about a year and take them out and clean them each night. These are typically more custom-designed contact lenses.

Compared to rigid gas-permeable lenses, soft lenses usually feel better when you first put them in.

As a bonus, some soft lenses provide UV protection. “UV protection in a soft contact is a nice feature and patients should ask about it,” Liegler says. But it’s not available in all brands and types, he points out.

Cons. Soft contact lens material can absorb particles, chemicals, bacteria, and mold more easily than hard and rigid gas-permeable lenses. They soak up all kinds of things that can irritate your eyes — from smoke and sprays in the air to lotion or soap on your hands. Even with the most oxygen-permeable soft lenses, your eyes can still feel drier than with glasses. 

Soft contacts are also more fragile. They can rip or tear more easily than hard or gas-permeable lenses.

Varieties of soft lenses

New types of soft lenses come to market as new technologies emerge.

  • Daily disposables are soft contacts that you wear only for a day and then throw away. That means you don’t have to clean them regularly or risk dry eyes and irritation from contact solutions. If you have allergies, dry eyes, or a history of eye infections, they may be the best choice for you.
  • Silicone-based materials create an extremely breathable lens that lets plenty of oxygen pass through to your cornea. They also keep deposits from building up. That means less irritation from dry eyes. Some silicone contacts are FDA-approved for extended wear, so you can use them for up to 30 days. But many eye doctors suggest removing any type of contact lens at bedtime anyway. Why? Your cornea gets less oxygen when you sleep in contacts, raising the chances of serious complications. Silicone lenses aren’t for everyone, so talk with your eye care professional if you’re interested in them.

Colored, soft contacts

They're hip, fun, and can even be practical if you drop one.

  • Visibility tint lenses have a tiny bit of color, so you can find your lens if you drop it. This type of lens tinting isn’t enough to affect the color of your eyes.
  • Enhancement tint lenses play up your natural eye color and are slightly darker than visibility tints.
  • Color tint lenses are darker, opaque, and change the color of your eyes. Specialty colors include amethyst, violet, and green.

Remember, colored contacts are a medical device just like clear lenses. “Be very careful,” Liegler says. “Do not buy them over the internet or at your local vape store. Have them fit and followed up by an ECP (eye care professional).” Also, don’t share them with anyone. Clean and care for them just as you would any prescription lenses.

Rigid gas-permeable (RGP) lenses

RGP lenses are often called hard lenses, and as the name suggests, they are stiffer than soft contacts. These are different from the hard lenses you might have heard of or even tried a few decades ago. Those aren’t available anymore. “In times gone by (some 20-plus years ago), there were also doctors fitting poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA) hard lenses,” Liegler explains. “These hard lenses were not gas permeable, and while easy to clean and durable, they did not breathe well and so have fallen out of fashion. Twenty years ago, a hard lens referred to a PMMA lens and not an RGP.”

RGPs are made from silicone and, like soft lenses, they're also designed to let oxygen pass through to your cornea. Your optometrist or ophthalmologist may suggest hard lenses in some situations, such as if you have astigmatism or allergies.

Scleral lenses are a new type of RGP with a larger diameter. This makes them much more comfortable than small-diameter standard RGPs because they don't touch the cornea. These lenses can correct highly irregular corneal shapes and significant levels of astigmatism, like in patients who have keratoconus or who have had corneal transplants. But these lenses are costly, and it may take your doctor a few appointments to get them to fit right. Compared to other contacts, there’s a learning curve for putting them in and taking them out.

Pros. You might see better with RGPs than you do with soft lenses. They can correct substantial astigmatism. They’re durable and easy to take care of.

Hard contacts last longer than soft ones, up to several months. If you plan to store them for a long time, use a dry case without contact solution to avoid possible contamination.

Cons. At first, RGP lenses are much more uncomfortable than soft contacts. It takes longer to get used to them, so you need to wear them every day.

Bifocal contacts

As you age, the lens in your eye loses the ability to focus from far to near — a condition called presbyopia. You’ll know you have it when it starts to get hard to read up close, or you realize you can’t read the tiny writing on labels. This can happen if you had otherwise normal vision or if you already wore glasses for distance.

If you have trouble with both near and far vision, bifocal lenses might help. Like bifocal glasses, bifocal lenses have both your distance prescription and near prescription in one lens. They come in soft and gas-permeable options.

“Bifocal and multifocal contacts are the same thing for softs, but different animals when talking about RGP or hard lenses. They are fantastic when properly prescribed,” Liegler says. “The way a multifocal contact works is by having several powers present on the contact lens surface, all within the very front and central portion of the lens. This way, the pupil of your eye is presented with prescription power for distance, intermediate, and near all at the same time. Your brain simply decides which distance it wants to pay attention to and concentrates on that. We even have multifocals which correct for astigmatism.”

You need a professional fitting and eye exam to know which bifocal design is best for your needs. Keep in mind, this may slightly affect both your distance and reading vision to give you a happy medium of seeing far and near. 

Monovision lenses

Some people have eyes with opposite correction needs. You could have one eye that can’t see distance well and the other can’t see close up. When this happens, you won’t have the same prescription in both eyes. This can take a while to get used to because each eye works on its own. Having opposite lens prescriptions makes it harder for them to work together. You might have problems with depth perception. That can make it hard to drive. You might have to adjust your gaze more often to allow one eye or the other to see properly.

Another monovision option is to wear a bifocal lens in one eye and a single-vision lens in the other. This makes driving easier. Keep in mind that this may slightly affect a little bit of both your distance and reading vision to give you a happy medium of seeing far and near.

Readers and contacts

If you need correction for both distance and close up but don’t want to get bifocals, there is another option: Get your contact prescription for distance vision and then wear reading glasses, which you can wear while you’re wearing your contacts, but you need to see up close.

Toric lenses for astigmatism

If you have astigmatism and want to wear contacts, you’ll need a toric lens. They’re made from the same material as other contacts but work with your eyeball, which isn’t completely round. They come in soft or rigid gas-permeable forms, extended wear, daily disposable, and even in colored lenses. 

Like bifocal lenses in a pair of glasses, toric lenses have two powers in one lens: one that corrects your astigmatism and another for nearsightedness or farsightedness.

“They are very sophisticated and are designed to not rotate on the front of your eye and in this way, they provide your tailored, individual prescription in a stable way,” Liegler explains. “In some ways it’s like getting a tailored fit instead of a suit “off the rack.” Even if you have a small amount of astigmatism, we have excellent lenses available for one-day, two-week, and monthly use.” He explains that all lenses should be removed for sleep unless you’re told otherwise by your eye care provider. “Astigmatism correcting contacts provide what I often call the “icing on the cake” for extra sharp and clear vision.”

Lenses that reshape your cornea

If you’re mildly nearsighted, your eye doctor may suggest orthokeratology, or ortho-k for short. They’ll use a special contact lens to reshape your cornea — and improve your vision. But the results only last while you have the contact in. The change isn’t permanent.

This procedure isn’t widely used because laser vision correction offers the same result in less time and is permanent. Laser surgery is now OK for professionals, such as members of the military or airline pilots, whose jobs didn’t allow them before. But you still have to qualify to be a good candidate for laser eye surgery.

If you can’t have laser surgery, ask your eye care professional if ortho-k could work for you.

It may take some practice to get the hang of it, but take the following steps to put in your contacts:

  • Wash your hands with soap, and dry them with a lint-free cloth or towel.
  • Open your contact lens case or package. Always keep the other eye closed so you won’t mix up the right and left lenses.
  • Use your fingertips, not nails, to slide one lens into the palm of the hand that you don’t write with. Rinse the lens with a contact solution.
  • Place the lens on the tip of your index or middle finger of your dominant hand.
  • Check that the lens isn’t damaged and make sure it’s right side up. The edge of the lens should form a bowl. If it’s inside out, carefully flip the lens.
  • Hold your upper eyelid open with your pointer or middle finger of your nondominant hand. Hold your lower eyelid with your middle or ring finger of your dominant hand.
  • Using a magnifying mirror, try to look forward, or up if you can’t look straight ahead. Place the lens in your eye.
  • Close your eyes slowly, and let the lens settle into place. The lens should feel comfortable, and you should see clearly. If not, take it out, rinse with the solution, and try again.
  • Repeat with your other eye.

Whether they’re daily- or long-wear lenses, be sure to take them out on schedule. Here’s how:

  • Wash your hands with soap and dry them.
  • Use the middle finger of your nondominant hand to hold open your upper eyelid.
  • Use the middle finger of your dominant hand to hold open your lower eyelid. Pinch the lens with your index finger and thumb and take it out. You can also try sliding the lens downward first, and then pinching it out.
  • Repeat with your other eye.

There are two main types of cleaning solutions.

Multipurpose solutions. These are the most common. They can clean, disinfect, and keep your lenses moist overnight in a case. You can get multipurpose solutions for both hard and soft lenses.

Hydrogen peroxide-based solutions. These are a good choice if you have allergies or are sensitive to chemicals. But they require an extra step. You add a neutralizing disk to convert the solution to saline so it won’t sting your eyes.

It’s not safe to use saliva, tap water, or even rewetting drops to clean or rinse your lenses. They don’t disinfect and could cause an infection.

Here are some rules to help keep your eyes healthy if you wear contact lenses:

  • Replace contacts as often as your doctor recommends.
  • Use unscented soap to wash your hands.
  • Dry your hands well with a lint-free cloth.
  • Don’t rewear daily disposable lenses or reuse old solution from the case.
  • Replace the contact lens case every three months.
  • Don’t sleep in your contacts, especially daily-wear lenses.
  • Avoid showering or swimming with your contacts in.
  • Use only rewetting drops specifically made for contacts. Don’t use regular eye drops.
  • Get your eyes checked every year.

Problems with contacts may include infection or lenses that don’t fit well. Take out your contacts right away and call your doctor if you have:

Contact lenses are a very popular method for correcting vision. Most people choose soft lenses, but some prefer or need gas-permeable lenses, often called hard lenses. There are many options to choose from, but you should always be fitted for contacts by an eye care professional, even if you just want to wear colored or design contacts to change your look. Contact lenses are medical devices and should be used with caution.

How can I tell if a contact lens is still in my eye?

Sometimes, a lens can move, especially after you’ve rubbed your eyes or slept with the lenses in. Using a mirror and a bright light, check if you can see it. If your lenses are slightly tinted, this will be easier to see. You may want to ask someone to help you look.

You can also very gently lift your upper eyelid to check if it folded up and got stuck. Look under your lower lid too.

Are contact lens and eyeglass prescriptions the same?

No. They aren’t the same. Prescriptions for lenses need to include the base curve of your eye, the diameter if needed, and the material to be used. This is not needed for eyeglass prescriptions.

How can I tell if a contact is inside out?

A lens that is the right way (not inside out) should sit on your fingertip like a bowl. If you see a lip around the edge of the lens, it’s inside out.

How long can a contact lens last?

How long a contact lens lasts depends on the type of lens you have. Some are only to be used for one day, some for a few weeks, some longer. Always follow the directions that come with your lenses. Wearing contacts for longer than you should could cause an infection and damage to your eyes.