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Hello, friends! Tracey here, your friendly neighbourhood Registered Optician from Merivale Vision Care. I’m here to share some helpful tips on what not to use (and what to use when in a real pinch) for at home repairs in case your glasses have an accident at home.

We know it can feel frightening if something happens to your specs, especially if a lens falls out of your frame or something breaks off your glasses. Certain home DIY repairs can seem like a good idea in the moment but can sometimes make an already damaged frame irreparable. If your instinct is to try to fix it yourself, please follow our tips below.

Our goal is to keep the glasses you love functioning and looking their best for you, so the absolute best thing you can do is bring them in to us as soon as you can after any accident. We have everything we need right here to provide a broken glasses solution as quickly as possible!

Please do not use:

Glue/Epoxy – Glue or any adhesive really can have instant gratification when it comes to fixing glasses at home. Unfortunately, using glue can prevent us from taking apart a damaged pair of glasses, and damage lenses beyond repair.

Toothpicks – Toothpicks work super well for a quick fix because they often fit perfectly into frame front and temple screw barrels, however they break easily and once broken and stuck in a screw barrel they don’t come out at all.

Band-Aids – Band-Aids are often layered to reattach temples that have fallen off, and oftentimes lots of them are used at once. They leave tons of adhesive gunk on frames and can be super time consuming to cut through.

If you must, please use:

Dental floss – Dental floss is our number one favourite material for at home repairs. Floss is super tiny and fits through all sizes of barrels, its soft and flexible and is easy to cut off when the glasses are finally in our hands for a fix-up.

Paper clips – Paperclips can be unfolded and re-bent in many directions for a quick fix at home. They are also nice and easy for us to remove from damaged frames so we can get on to fixing what’s wrong.

Scotch tape – If you must use tape, scotch is our choice. We can remove it easily, and it doesn’t leave tons of sticky bits on damaged glasses. Scotch tape won’t damage coatings on lenses either.

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