A couple years ago I ordered new pair of glasses with a relatively expensive option, the anti reflective coating. Sadly, when my glasses came in, they didn’t have the coating. I was seeing light reflections all over the place, so I brought them back and had them re-order my lenses, and once I got what I ordered and paid (too much) for, I was fine.

Fast forward a few months, and I’m already getting bothered by “scratches” on my lenses, but they weren’t terrible, so I lived with them.

Fast forward a year or so, and I’ve managed to scuff up the front of my lenses, the right lens more so than the left, but both inconveniently placed directly in front of my eyes.

I tried to polish it out but with no luck, so I looked online to see if “lens polishing” was a service normally offered. Considering these retail places exist to sell new lenses, I eventually came to the conclusion that it wasn’t something they would do. However, my search yielded an unexpected result: How to Fix Scratched Glasses with Minimal Effort. To sum up, he used a glass etching cream to remove the anti-reflective coating, which is where most light scratches sit. Score!

Reading through other threads about anti-reflective coating revealed that the “scratches” I first encountered were actually issues with the coating itself. Fail! You can see most of the scratches on my lenses were from the coating flaking out, with the exception of the massive abrasion.

Nicole has a huge bottle of the same glass etching cream, so as soon as I could, I tried it out. I applied it on a small corner near the frame and it came out fine, so I coated both lenses, one side at a time for 5 minutes each side.

…and voila!

It worked rather well and though I no longer have that anti-reflective coating, my lenses are practically as good as new.

A word of warning: do NOT try the glass etching cream on actual GLASS lenses. It will etch your lenses into a cloudy frosty mess. This “cream” is actually a hydrofluoric acid, so treat with caution. Also, if you do this, you do so at your own risk.

I thought the hardest part of all of this was pulling the lens out, but putting the one I removed BACK turned out to be even more difficult. After the ordeal of removing the first one, I decided against removing the second. I suggest trying the cream against a part of your frames to see if they’ll cause any damage. Of course, plastic frames may be okay, but test anyway.

My thumbs are hurting like I’ve been playing Contra all day. And yes, there was blood. And teeth.