How Much Do Colored Contacts Cost?

If you want to spectacularly improve your looks, you can spend thousands on a makeover (which may or may not work—we’ve seen a number of big Hollywood names made over very badly).  Or you can spend thousands on a new wardrobe (often out of fashion within a month).  But there’s one fashion accessory that people seldom consider, a central focal point that defines the beauty of the face in a spectacular way.  Your eyes, the windows to the soul, are often your most beautiful feature, and coloring them with new contacts—a slight change, a whole new shade or a startling innovation—can really get you noticed, and in a good way.  Colored contact lenses are probably the least expensive way to give a temporary (or permanent—depends how long you feel like wearing them) jolt of loveliness to your looks and life.

How much do colored contacts cost?  How much for that kind of happiness and self-esteem?   Some would say it’s priceless, but we want to be practical.  Let’s begin, before we get to color, with black and white, as we price a pair of ordinary contact lenses.  The actual prices of contact lenses vary, naturally, depending on prescriptions, styles and materials (most lenses are soft disposables, but there are still some hard surfaces available).  However, the least expensive models of clear contact lenses on the market right now come in boxes of six lenses (these are the disposable soft brand) for $25 or so.  If you replace your lenses periodically, such as twice a month, it’s a yearly expense around $250 (or five boxes a year, more or less).   If you are you near-sighted, far-sighted, or have an astigmatism, you can count on them costing around $60 a box (a model also known as toric lenses), or around $600 per annum.

Once you enter the arena, so to speak, of coloring your eyes with lenses, a number of questions naturally arise.  Let’s switch the channel to color and answer a few of them.

How much do colored contacts cost?  Take the price of the clear contact lens and multiply it by approximately one and one-half (150%) and that calculation will give you some idea of the price of colored contacts.  A box of colored lenses would therefore be close to $35 to $45, with $450 covering colored contacts cost for one year.  This is assuming you are looking for a true color change (as opposed to an enhancement lens, which colors your eyes slightly, or a visibility tinted lens, a light blue/green colored contact that enables you to see the lens if you should drop it).  True color lenses are intended to completely change your eye color.  They are designed to be as naturally close to the human eye in color and proportion as possible.

Most colored lenses have an artistically created center, a duplication of the area known as the iris, in the middle of the lens.  To replicate the actual iris of an eye, these surfaces have tiny drawn dots and lesions in colors that match those of a true retina.  The outer rim of the lens is where the eye color is tinted, usually deeply enough to cover the real eye color of the wearer.  The center of the lens is clear, so vision is never obstructed.   The color spectrum for these products is truly endless, hazel to turquoise, blue to violet, aqua to grey-green – every color of the rainbow is possible for your eye shade.

Prescription Colored Contacts Cost

Prescription colored contacts can be had at a slightly higher expense than colored contacts cost for non-prescription lenses, but most customers think the price increase is well worth the benefit, since these lenses are not only appealing to your looks but also improve the health, longevity and clear, correcting sight of your eyes.   Prescription colored contact wearers must have a prescription from their optometrist or ophthalmologist before purchasing colored prescription lenses, which run between $45-60 for a single lens power (such as Acuvue) and $80-200 for a specialty or progressive corrective lens(made to order by your optometrist).

There is no basis, according to the opinion of most optometrists, for the old wives’ tale that colored prescription lenses somehow damage or otherwise de-sensitize your eyes to light.  There have been instances where the size of the pupil (which is constantly changing with the shifts in light in your environment) is expanding and contracting, and in moments of its greatest expansion, the pupil may experience a slight distortion in peripheral vision as it reaches the limits of the clear section of the lens.