Prescription eyeglass users are currently allowed to select a pair of full-frame, semi-rimless and rimless glasses. These three styles have respective pros and cons. Partial-rimmed eyeglasses and those without a rim may bring a more attractive look, but they are delicate and easy to be broken. It is widely known that the sunwear industry allows more innovative and bold designs. Since half-frame design has been long around in the prescription eyewear world, sunwear designers will also apply it to their products. Till now, both rimmed sunglasses and half-rim sunglasses are widely available. These two forms are quite similar in frame structure to related styles in prescription eyeglasses. Some people may wonder that why rimless sunglasses can hardly be found, when half-rim sunglasses have gained a certain degree of popularity.
Well, sunwear designs are largely limited by the essential features of these products. The most important and traditional point of developing sunglasses is to gain eye protection against UV rays. The lenses over the eyes are the key part which offers this protection. Only the covered part of the eyes will be under such protection. The situation in prescription eyeglasses is quite different that by seeing through the lenses proper vision correction will be present. Due to this essential feature of sunwear, all designers try to enable their products to shield the wearers’ eyes as much as possible. A common and natural design is to use large frame and lenses. And only rimmed sunglasses are able to hold the big lenses firmly.
Sunglasses in a rimmed design have been the mainstream in this industry for many years. Sunwear designers usually use a full frame to wrap around the large lenses, covering closely a maximum part of the eyes. This full-rimmed design is nearly the sole player in the protective sunwear world. Protective rimmed sunglasses are now widely used in circumstances involving balls, racquets or flying objects. Protective sunglasses must be strongly impact-resistant. From the lens perspective, polycarbonate is the most popular material used to make protective sunglasses. Moreover, a full-rimmed frame design is equally important. Only a full frame can achieve maximum impact resistance.