Read Your Prescription

How to read a glasses prescription?

A prescription includes all the details needed to correct your vision and is issued by an optometrist or ophthalmologist after an eye exam. When ordering glasses, you can enter the details yourself or upload a photo of your prescription — we’ll take care of the rest.*

The numbers on your prescription show exactly how your lenses should be made. To ensure the best vision, it’s important to keep your prescription up to date. Prescriptions include standard abbreviations that contain all the essential information.

What do all these numbers and words mean in my eyeglass prescription?

OD – Oculus Dexter (Latin), right eye | OS – Oculus Sinister (Latin), left eye

SPH – Sphere
Corrects nearsightedness (myopia) or farsightedness (hyperopia). This value shows whether you are farsighted (+ diopters) or nearsighted (- diopters) and how strong the correction is.

CYL – Cylinder
Always combined with AXIS, corrects astigmatism. (Astigmatism correction will always be negative diopters.)

PD – Pupillary Distance
The distance between the centers of the pupils. The most important measurements for making optical glasses. Adult PD ranges from 54–74mm, and children from 43–58mm.

AX – Axis
The angle (0–180 degrees) at which the cylinder power is placed to correct astigmatism.

ADD – Additional correction
For presbyopia correction: the value that indicates how much additional power is needed for near vision.

*If you choose to upload your prescription as a photo, our team will contact you to make sure everything is correct.

Have any questions? Feel free to contact Dr.Lensor support team info@lensor.eu