How to Adjust Sunglasses at Home

Before you bend anything

Two minutes of diagnosis saves a frame. Almost every fit complaint people try to fix by bending is one of four faults, and three of them are corrected in different places on the frame.

• Crooked — one lens sits lower than the other. Usually a temple angle, occasionally a twisted frame front.
• Too tight — grips at the temples, leaves marks, aches after an hour. Either the temples are bent in too far, or the frame is too narrow for your face.
• Too loose or sliding — creeps down your nose. Either the temples are too straight behind the ear, or the bridge is too wide for your nose.
• Digging in behind one ear — a temple bent down too sharply, or a hard tip concentrating pressure on a small area.

If the complaint is specifically that the frame slides, our companion guide to why sunglasses slide down works through the six causes in order — it is worth reading first, because two of them cannot be fixed by adjustment at all.

Step 1: identify what the frame is made of

This decides everything about what you can safely do, and it is the step most people skip. The AAO’s own guide to frame materials runs through the common ones — cellulose acetate (zyl), cellulose acetate propionate, blended nylon and Optyl among the plastics; monel, stainless steel, titanium, beryllium, aluminium and the memory alloy Flexon among the metals. For adjustment purposes they fall into three groups.

• Adjusts cold: monel, stainless steel and most common metal alloys. These take a new shape and hold it, which is why metal frames are the friendliest to work on at home.
• Needs gentle warmth: acetate and other plastics. Cold acetate can be moved a little, but pushing a cold plastic frame is how hinges crack and how frame fronts snap. Warmth is what makes the material compliant.
• Leave it alone: titanium and memory metals such as Flexon. These are engineered to return to their original shape, so home bending either does nothing or damages the frame. Nylon-family sport frames like TR90 and Grilamid are similar — they flex enormously and remember their shape, which is exactly why they survive being sat on and exactly why you cannot reshape them.

Our frame materials guide covers how each type behaves and ages if you are not sure what you are holding.

Step 2: find the fault on a flat surface

Fold the temples and set the frame upside down on a table, resting on the top of the rims and the two temple tips. A frame in alignment sits still. A frame that rocks has one temple bent at a different angle from the other, and the temple that sits proud of the table is the one to move.

Then put them on and look straight at a mirror. If the frame passes the table test but one lens still looks lower, the difference is behind your ears rather than in the frame — most people’s ears are not level with each other, and the fix is to change one temple’s angle to match. That is normal and it is what an optician does routinely.

Step 3: adjust the temple angle

This is the single most useful adjustment there is, because it controls both how high the frame sits and whether it slides.

Hold the frame front firmly in one hand, gripping right up at the hinge so that no force reaches the lens or the rim, and move only the temple with your other hand. Bending the temple slightly down behind the ear makes it grip more and stops the frame creeping forward. Bending it slightly up lets the frame settle back and lowers the front.

Two rules make the difference between an adjustment and a repair bill. Move in increments so small that you have to try the glasses on to see whether anything changed, and never apply force across the frame front or near a lens — a lens under pressure pops out or cracks, and on cheap frames the rim is the weak point. If you hear a creak, stop.

Step 4: width, and nose pads if you have them

For a frame that pinches, ease each temple outward a fraction at the point where it passes your temple, taking the same amount off each side. For one that slips sideways, bring them in the same way. Expect this to be a small correction: it fine-tunes a frame that is nearly right and cannot rescue one that is the wrong width.

If your frame is metal with separate nose pads on thin arms, those are the most powerful adjustment available to you. Squeeze the pad arms closer together and the frame rides higher on your face and further from your cheeks; spread them apart and it sits lower. Use fingers or padded pliers, move both sides equally unless you are correcting a tilt, and go gently — pad arms are thin and will fatigue if you work them back and forth.

Acetate frames with a moulded bridge have no such adjustment. If one of those sits badly, the bridge shape does not match your nose, which is a buying problem rather than a fitting one — our guide to sunglasses for low nose bridges covers what to look for instead.

Step 5: heat, and why we would rather you did not

Plastic frames are warmed before bending, and opticians use a frame warmer that heats evenly to a controlled temperature. The improvised versions — a hair dryer, a bowl of hot water — work in principle and carry real risk in practice: uneven heat warps a frame permanently, too much heat damages lens coatings, and on inexpensive frames warmth can loosen the adhesive or the rim that holds the lens.

If you are going to do it anyway, keep the heat moving, keep it away from the lenses, warm the frame only until it flexes easily rather than until it is soft, and do not expect to be able to undo a mistake. For anything you would be upset to lose, the optician route is better in every respect, and it is almost always free.

When adjustment is the wrong answer

Three situations where no amount of bending will help, and continuing risks the frame.

• The frame is too narrow. If the temples are visibly splayed outward when you wear them, your head is holding them apart under constant tension. They will grip, mark your temples, and spring back to gripping every time you adjust them. You need a wider frame; our wide-fit roundup is the place to start.
• The frame is too wide. A frame that sits away from your temples slides forward no matter how you angle the temples, and tightening them enough to grip makes them dig in behind the ear. See our small-face roundup.
• The hinge or rim is failing. A temple that will not stay where you put it, a hinge that has gone loose, or a lens that rattles in its rim is a repair rather than an adjustment — and a lens that can move will eventually leave the frame. Our repair guide covers the options.

If the frame is the wrong size, here is what to replace it with

Only relevant if you landed in the section above. Three registry picks, one per failure, all stating a UV rating.

If yours is too narrow. The SUNGAIT SGT458 Ultra Lightweight Rectangular is a 62mm metal frame — genuinely large, and almost nothing else this cheap is — stating polarized and UV400 together. Being metal, it is also the easiest kind of frame to fine-tune afterwards. Check your current frame’s numbers against it first; our size guide explains how to read them.

If yours is too wide. The Ray-Ban RB4171 Erika is a 54mm round lens on a slim nylon frame with 100% UV protection, which suits a narrower face without looking like a child’s frame. Note that this trim is not polarized; Ray-Ban sells a polarized version of the same frame separately.

If you keep bending frames out of shape. Buy something that cannot be bent out of shape. The Duduma Polarized Sports runs a TR90 frame that flexes and returns rather than deforming, with polarized UV400 lenses, for under twenty dollars. The trade is the one named above: a frame that remembers its shape is a frame you cannot adjust.

While you have them in your hands

One last thing, since most people only handle their sunglasses properly when something is wrong. Clean them the way the AAO recommends — a soft cloth made for lenses and a mild detergent, never a tissue or a shirt tail, both of which are abrasive enough to scratch a lens. That habit does more for how long a pair lasts than anything you paid for it. Our cleaning guide has the method.