Are Your Blue Light Glasses Actually Working? A Functional Eye Doctor's Trick To Tell

It's no secret screen time has soared during the pandemic1. Especially for those able to work from home, you might oscillate from virtual meetings to online happy hours to a feel-good TV series on Netflix. And repeat. With all this skyrocketed screen time, the thought might have crossed your mind once or twice: Should I invest in a pair of blue-light-blocking glasses? These lenses, meant to filter out the blue light in your surroundings, are practically exploding in popularity as we continue to bombard our retinas with LED-backlit screens—you can snag a pair for anywhere from $12 to $95. 

Aside from the pretty penny, though, not all blue-light-blocking glasses are the same—meaning, some actually function better than others. "They all filter out different amounts of that blue light," says functional eye doctor Rudrani Banik, M.D., on the mindbodygreen podcast.

First things first: Look at the lenses themselves. "If you see that the lens is pretty much clear, even light yellow, it's probably not blocking out most of that light," says Banik. Best to opt for darker-tinted lenses (think amber, orange, or even a deep red) to completely block out the blue light. That's not to say clear lenses don't help at all, but if you really want to up the ante, you might want to invest in a pair of ambers. 

If you do already own a set of clear lenses, though, Banik does offer another trick to tell whether the glasses actually do their job well: "Put them on, then look at your screen at something that's blue. If you can still see that color blue, it means that it's not really blocking the blue light." On the flip side, if blue tones on your screen have an orangy hue, this means the lenses effectively omit the wavelength.