How to choose children’s sunglasses
1. Insist on a published UV figure — most listings do not have one
This is the whole exercise. You are looking for one of three phrasings, all of which the AAO accepts: 100% UV protection, UV400, or UV absorption up to 400nm. Prevent Blindness gives the same advice for adults — buy only sunglasses that carry a clear statement of UV blocking.
If a listing describes the colors, the flexibility and the strap and never mentions ultraviolet, treat the pair as unprotected. There is no home test for UV, because it is invisible; our guide to whether polarized lenses block UV explains why, and why a polarization claim does not stand in for a UV one.
2. For younger children, look for ANSI Z80.3
The AAO specifically recommends that sunglasses for young children be rated to ANSI Z80.3, which is the American National Standard for non-prescription sunglasses and fashion eyewear. It covers both UV transmittance and impact performance — the second matters because a small child will fall over wearing them.
Not many marketplace listings state it, which is a reasonable reason to prefer a brand that does. The FDA regulates sunglasses as medical devices in the US and its guidance points to the same standard family.
3. Buy a frame that bends, not one that breaks
The physical reality of children’s eyewear is that it gets sat on, stood on, thrown and slept on. Two materials handle that: flexible rubber or TPE, which twists and returns to shape, and TR-90 nylon, which is what adult sport frames are made from and is close to unbreakable at this scale.
Rigid molded plastic snaps at the hinge, usually within two weeks. Metal frames bend permanently and leave a sharp end.
4. Size by age band, and check it
A shrunken adult frame is not a children’s frame. It will sit past the temples, lift off the nose and slide, which means it gets pushed up onto the head and stops protecting anything. Look for eyewear sold with a stated age band — 0-2, 3-5, 6-10, 4-12 — and check the millimeter measurements if they are published.
Our size guide explains how to read those numbers and how to measure a pair that already fits, which is the fastest route to a second pair that also does.
5. Straps: useful, with an age caveat
A retaining strap turns sunglasses from something a child removes and drops into something that hangs on their chest, and it is the single feature most responsible for a pair surviving a holiday.
The caveat is honest and worth stating: any cord around a very young child’s neck is a supervision matter, and for under-3s the sensible approach is to remove the strap or use a frame designed to stay on without one. For older children it is straightforwardly a good idea.
6. Coverage matters more on a small face
Both the AAO and the CDC recommend wraparound or larger frames because they block light arriving from the side, and on a child that advice is doing more work than usual — a small lens shades very little of the surrounding skin. Pair sunglasses with a brimmed hat, which the AAO recommends alongside eyewear for exactly this reason.
Why children need this more than adults do
Three reasons that compound. First, exposure: children spend substantially more time outdoors than most adults, and much of it in the middle of the day. Second, cumulative damage: the AAO links UV exposure to raised risk of cataract, growths on the eye and eye cancer, and the exposure adds up over a lifetime, so childhood years count more than later ones. The World Health Organization estimates that a meaningful share of cataracts worldwide may be attributable to UV exposure.
Third, and most often missed: a child’s eye is more transmissive than an adult’s. The lens inside the eye yellows gradually with age, and that yellowing filters some ultraviolet — so a young child’s eye passes more UV through to the retina than an adult’s does.
None of that requires expensive eyewear. It requires eyewear that states a UV figure, worn reasonably often. Our UV protection guide covers what the labels mean.
Sunglasses are not sport eye protection
Worth being explicit, because parents buying for youth sport frequently conflate the two. Prevent Blindness states that ordinary sunglasses — and even occupational safety glasses — do not provide adequate protection against ball impact, and that what does is a sport eye guard meeting the relevant ASTM standard for the sport, with polycarbonate lenses.
So the youth sport pick on this list is a sun frame, not eye protection. If your child plays baseball, softball, or a racket sport, buy proper eye guards separately. Our baseball roundup makes the same distinction from the adult side.
Getting a child to actually wear them
The practical half of the problem, and it decides whether any of the above matters.
- Fit first. Anything that pinches behind the ears or slides down comes off within ten minutes and stays off. This is the main cause of rejection.
- Let them choose the color. The spec decision is yours; the colorway genuinely is not worth fighting over.
- Wear yours. Modeling works better than instruction with eyewear, as with most things.
- Keep a spare. Buying a two- or three-pack is not indulgence, it is planning. A lost pair should not mean an unprotected week.
Where to spend and where not to
Do not spend much. The specification that matters costs almost nothing, and the attrition rate in children’s eyewear is brutal — a $10 pair that gets replaced twice a summer is a better plan than a $40 pair that gets lost in week two and not replaced.
The one case for spending more is a brand with a published replacement policy for lost and broken pairs, which changes the arithmetic for toddlers specifically. Beyond that, apply the same rule as for adults: our honest answer on expensive sunglasses applies equally to children, and our under-$50 roundup covers the adult end of the same logic. For teens moving into adult sizing, our small-face roundup is usually the right next page.
