Why Daily Contact Lenses are the Best Choice

Some reluctance to using contact lenses can emerge around their perceived daily upkeep. You may have grown up watching your parents go through the tiresome ritual of “taking out their contacts” before sleep, which often likely entailed some degree of careful, and lengthy, cleaning and storage of lenses. Similarly, perhaps you’ve been around friends or acquaintances on trips into remote wilderness, or vacationing far away from home, and seen the difficulty of needing to care for and store a pair of lenses, perhaps with little access to the necessities required to do exactly this. You might have gotten the impression that contacts and their care are always something to endure, and the contacts-wearer always must diligently and maintain the regimen of cleaning, storing, and preparing the lenses pre-storage in a continuous cycle. Not so! For the potential contacts wearer who wants to avoid being tied to often time-consuming efforts of cleaning and storing, daily lenses are a simple way to just toss your old pair out at the end of the day and start fresh the next. Let us lay out a few reasons, including this toss-out simplicity, why we are fans of the daily contact lens.  

Don’t deal with negative consequences around storage

There are numerous considerations around storing reusable contact lenses. You need to use proper (and pricey) solution, and ensure you are using that solution in the storage process correctly. You need to carefully rub the lenses to remove deposits and microbes. Failure to do these things can lead to eye issues, and even bigger, related problems. Using dailies means you get to forego this process entirely. You can forget about the whole issue of storage, and storage preparation, entirely—you are kept running on a stream of dailies that are disposed of after each use. 

Make it simpler to remember to take your contacts out before sleep

Are you the kind of person for whom an additional, laborious step to take care of before bedtime is likely to slip through the cracks? Does the idea of going through the steps of storing your lenses overnight seem like an annoying task? Using a lens that allows you to throw each pair away before bed may make it easy to remember to simply—and carefully, hygienically, and with hands washed using soap and water, and dried with a clean fabric—remove your lenses at night, and not forget and leave them in while sleeping. (Friendly reminder, leaving in contact lenses not intended for sleeping overnight can increase risk of infection.)

Freshness is key

One big thing you want to avoid is putting a damaged or torn contact lens in your eye. Hard lenses, for the record, are less likely to tear; but, regardless, getting small snags or breakages on the lens are going to prove a problem. And, if you’re trying to make lenses stretch, you might feel yourself more inclined to push your lenses beyond what is healthy, potentially using damaged or unsound lenses in your eye. One nice side-effect of using dailies is that you get to use a fresh lens in your eye every time. There’s no worry or wonder about how long you have been keeping a pair, or what condition it’s in when you’re putting it in your eye. Just imagine putting on a fresh pair of socks every morning, but for your eye.

Occasional wearer

Do you prefer to only wear contacts occasionally? In this case, daily wear contacts are a solid fit for you, since you only have to pop in a pair when necessary and needed. No storage necessary; just keep a ready stack on hand, and use your prescribed pair when you need to use them.

Limit necessary of extra materials

One benefit of daily contacts is that you get to do away with all the various materials you would normally need to store your contact lenses overnight, or over a series of nights. In fact, you don’t need to store things at all, so contacts cases and bottles of solution are out of the equation for you. (And, remember, if you did have a contact lens case, you’d be having to replace it every three months, at minimum.)

Dailies might be simpler for you to travel with

Darting around the Earth on vacation—previously a thing of the past, but now on the horizon of possibility again—can mean you are moving between multiple locations quickly. This might mean you don’t have ready access to a stable, consistent place to store your contact lenses overnight, or deal with the operation of cleaning longer-term lenses. Having a pack of dailies with you means you can drop them at the end of the night without needing to put them away for the morning, then pop in a fresh pair in the morning and hit the town.

Toss away should problems crop up

Another benefit of dailies is that should any issues arise with the lens, you can give yourself the peace of mind of tossing them out--while keeping an ample supply at the ready--then not worry about how many longer-term lenses you might have left. If your contact lenses are bothering you, you’ll want to remove them, and consult with your doctor if the problems persist, or irritation increases. Tricking yourself into wearing lenses that are irritating you can lead to negative consequences. The disposability of dailies means that you are probably less likely to hesitate when you encounter problems. Just toss that sucker in the trash and start again, worry free and eyes fresh.

Quick trials

Given that dailies are only meant to be worn for that—a day—if you want to consult with your physician to test out dailies, you’ll also have a shorter period in which to try out the lens’s intended span. 

Keep extras around

The fact that dailies are created for shorter periods of time, and are sold in daily-use packs, means that each individual daily lens is less valuable, in general, than a lens you need to care for and store over a longer period of time. This means that you can easily have a few around in different places, should you like. Want to store a few at work, at a partner’s home, or elsewhere, should something crop up when you are away from your home? Or, want to keep some in your car, or different bags? You probably won’t rue the day you lose track of a few dailies, but having them in the right place in a pinch can be a tremendous stress-saver.