Clear Safety Glasses

Glasses or goggles

Glasses stop impact from the front and sides and breathe, so they stay on all day. Goggles seal against dust, splash and fine particles, which is what demo, drywall, grinding and chemical work throw at you. If you take your glasses off because of dust, you needed goggles.

If you wear prescription glasses

Over-glasses are built to fit over your frames without pressing the arms into your head. Check the inside width against your frames; ours list it. Safety readers and bifocal safety glasses are a different product and we'll say so plainly on the page.

Fog

Fog is the reason eye protection ends up on a forehead, and comfort and fit are the reasons it ends up in the truck: seven of seven worker focus groups named them first. Anti-fog coatings wear off with wiping; vented goggles fog less than sealed ones but let fine dust in. Match the vent to the hazard, then keep a case in the truck so the coating survives the toolbox.

Tint

Tint is for sun and glare, not for impact. A tinted lens carries the same Z87 marking as a clear one; if it doesn't, it's sunglasses.

How to read the marks

Look on the lens and the frame. Z87 means the pair passed basic impact tests; Z87+ means high-impact. D3 is splash, D4 dust, D5 fine dust. The marks are the spec; the brand name isn't.