Whether you decide to wear contacts for aesthetics, or just so you don’t spend all day pushing glasses back up on your face, contacts are a wonderful choice to aid your vision. They are small, lightweight, and compact. What’s great is that you don’t have to continuously worry about cleaning dirty lenses, either.

So how can you be a champion contacts wearer and avoid some common mistakes people make? Follow the steps below and find out.

1. See an optometrist first, even for just colored contacts

You should make sure to get an updated prescription for any contacts by visiting your eye doctor. They can let you know if you have any issues such as astigmatism, which can change what sort of contacts you should be wearing. Also, keeping your prescriptions updated is just generally good for your eye health.

2. Decide what type of contacts are right for your routine

Contacts for everyday wear come in monthlies or dailies. Monthlies are pairs of contacts that are useable for one month. You will have a contact case for them and also solution that needs to be cleaned and changed out so your contacts stay free of any bacteria. There is a little more maintenance to be done on monthly contacts, but, there is far less waste involved, and less packs of contacts you need to keep up with.

Dailies are as they sound. They are one only once, and then at the end of the day, thrown away. With dailies, there is no need to worry about contact maintenance. However, if you find yourself needing to take them out for any reason, you may find yourself unprepared and without a spare pair or cleaning materials, since you’d probably not be used to carrying the supplies around. However, they are one and done, and you don’t have to think about them after you’ve discarded them.

Colored contacts usually come in quarterly or yearly, as they are generally thicker than general use contacts and have a longer shelf life. They also have to be taken care of with routine maintenance so they do not dry out or grow any bacteria.

3. Don’t sleep in your contacts!

One of the worst things you can do is fall asleep in your contacts. This is especially dangerous for people wearing dailies, as they are much thinner and can get stuck to your eyes. Even taking a nap in them can make them difficult to take off once you remember. Also, sleeping in your contacts may make you forget you have them on, and some people have layered contacts over one another. You can distort your vision and even potentially need to have the contacts surgically removed, so be careful!

4. Don’t keep or wear contacts longer than suggested

You might be tempted to extend those monthly wear contacts into a month and a half or two months to get some extra wear out of them. Don’t. Be sure to change out your contacts for a new pair when told by your eye doctor or the packaging. There is a reason the contacts are made to last a certain amount. Doing any sort of damage to your eyes will cost you way more in the long run! And, following up with this is the last bit…

5. Keep a pair of glasses on hand… just in case.

You may find yourself in a bind from time-to-time. Maybe your new contacts haven’t come in yet, or you cut up some onions and now your contacts are no good because you can’t clean the juice out of them. Perhaps you just took off your dailies for the night, but have to run to the store for something right after.

Keep a pair of glasses on hand for those times, or when you’re just feeling lazy or hanging around the house and don’t feel the need to put in your contacts. You will be glad you have them!


Excited to wear contacts? Be sure to talk to your optometrist about contact lenses and your general eye health.