The Health Nut Blog

Change Your Eye Color With Contact Lenses

Contact lenses are first and foremost a practical device. But there's no reason they can't also be a fashion statement, a way to alter your natural attributes to suit your fancy.

The types of contact lenses that make that possible fall into four categories:

Visibility tints are typically a light blue or green cast infused into a contact lens. The dye is too weak to affect how your eye color looks, but it's just enough to make the contacts easy to see. That helps when inserting them and minimizes the odds of losing one.

An enhancement tint, by comparison, is a richer dye that does change the hue of your natural eye color. They won't change your color from, say, blue to brown but can give blue or green eyes a more vibrant look.

Color tints take the process one step further. They are virtually opaque and are designed to alter the natural color of your iris, the colored portion of the eye. Brown eyes can be made to look blue, blue eyes can change to brown with the flick of a lens. They come in an assortment of colors including hazel, green, or blue and even violet or gray.

These contacts generally do a very effective job not only of shifting or changing color, but of making the effect look very natural. Uniformly colored dyes are enhanced with dots, stripes and other features to mimic the mottled look of the iris. The central portion is clear to allow for full passage of light. Since the pupil of even the lightest eye-colored person is still very dark the natural effect isn't spoiled.

At the extreme end of the range of effects are special effects theatrical contact lenses used for 'eye decoration'. They may be in the form of slits to produce cat's eyes or larger colored areas to make the iris look unnaturally large. They can be intentionally designed in unnatural colors such as red or white to produce a character effect for a party or just for fun.

A full range of special-contact lenses are available but almost all of them still give the ability to improve vision the way regular contact lenses do. They're typically available in soft, RGP, daily wear or extended wear, and other common choices. Some theatrical lenses may be designed solely for effect with no 'eyeglasses' ability, but even many of those are available for those who do require contacts.

Extend the range of your fashion choices by including colored contact lenses. After all, why should the fun stop at your earrings?

# posted by NeilG @ 2:06 AM