We Know Lenses…
Expert Contact Lens Fitting at Taylor-West & Co
At Taylor-West & Co, we have extensive experience fitting both standard and complex lenses. We excel in helping patients with high or challenging prescriptions. Our team is patient, compassionate, and dedicated to ensuring your success, never pushy or rushed. Even if you have failed with lenses in the past, we may be able to help.
Specialist Care for Every Prescription
As contact lens specialists, we firmly believe there is a contact lens for every prescription. If you’ve been told you can’t wear contact lenses due to astigmatism, a high prescription, the need for reading glasses, or dry eyes, we invite you to talk to us. Most people can wear contact lenses, and it often comes down to finding the right motivation and solution. We’re determined to find lenses that you’ll love and that meet your needs.
Our close relationships with contact lens manufacturers and attendance at international conferences keep us at the forefront of new lens innovations. This means we often have access to specialist lenses before they are widely available.
Benefits of Contact Lenses
Contact lenses offer a wide range of benefits, making them a great alternative to spectacles. Here’s why you might consider them:
Versatility
Whether you need lenses for full-time wear or just for special occasions, sports, or holidays, it's nice to have options beyond spectacles.
Enhanced Vision for High Prescriptions
Contact lenses help avoid minification and magnification caused by spectacle lenses, increase your field of view, and reduce optical aberrations.
Boosting Confidence
Especially beneficial for kids and teenagers, contact lenses can improve confidence and are great for activities and sports.
Myopia Management
Myopia Management lenses can help slow the progression of short-sightedness in children.
There are numerous types of contact lenses available to suit different needs. If your eyes are generally healthy, read on about standard contact lenses. If you’ve had difficulties in the past or suffer from specific eye conditions, learn about our extensive range of complex lenses.
There are numerous modalities available, including daily disposable, fortnightly or monthly disposable, and lenses which you keep for up to a year before replacing.
Soft lenses can correct long- or short-sightedness, astigmatism (toric lenses), presbyopia (multifocal lenses), or even all of the above!
The benefit of soft lenses is the excellent initial comfort levels, the huge range of prescriptions available, ease of care and hygiene levels (in the case of daily disposables), and ease and speed of fitting.
RGP lenses are a more traditional type of lens, and are usually smaller than soft lenses. They do not drape over the cornea like soft lenses, they float on the centre of the cornea, moving slightly on blink.
The benefits of RGP lenses are numerous. They often provide crisper optics than soft lenses. The incidence of infection and complications are lower. And the cost per wear is considerably lower than most soft lens types. For these reasons they can be a great choice for people with high prescriptions and irregular corneas. However, they can tricker to fit than soft lenses, and initial comfort is usually not as good as with soft lenses, though wearers typically adapt over time.
RGP lenses are categorised by the bearing surface on the eye. Small lenses which rest only on the cornea are ‘corneal’ lenses, and are typically 8-11mm diameter. ‘Corneoscleral’ lenses bear weight on both the cornea and sclera, and are typically 13-15mm diameter. And lenses which bear weight only on the sclera are known as ‘scleral’ lenses, which can be anywhere from 14-24mm in diameter. The latter are a fantastic options for those with a plethora of ocular complaints, such as dry eyes and other ocular surface disease, keratoconus, corneal graft, corneal scarring, and high prescriptions coupled with intolerance to corneal RGPs. For more information, visit our Complex Contact Lenses page.
Hybrid contact lenses feature a rigid gas permeable (RGP) centre with a soft material skirt around the edge. This design provides the crisp optics of an RGP lens while offering comfort similar to a soft lens. Typically, they are around the same size as soft lenses, approximately 14.5mm.
Hybrid lenses are an excellent option for individuals who are intolerant of corneal RGP lenses but still require the superior optical quality that rigid lenses provide. Additionally, hybrid lenses offer a variety of multifocal options, making them a great option for people over the age of 50 with astigmatism, as the rigid centre can mask astigmatism and eliminate the need for reading glasses.
Ortho-K lenses are RGP lenses that are worn at night, which gently and temporarily flatten the central cornea to correct moderate levels of myopia and astigmatism. They are removed in the morning, allowing the wearer to see clearly all day without the use of contact lenses or glasses.
They are a great option for people who are intolerant or allergic to soft lenses, who do a lot of sports or water sports and can’t wear lenses during the day, and are especially good for myopic children as they have been shown to reduce to progression of myopia in children and teenagers by 50-60%. Please visit our Myopia Management page for further details.
At Taylor-West & Co, we’re here to help you find the perfect contact lenses to fit your lifestyle and vision needs.
Please contact your nearest branch for further information or to book an appointment.
