Thankfully face masks are now widely available, but despite their necessity in a pandemic and their wide usage in hospitals and medical environments, nobody has quite figured out how to make great face masks for glasses.
The main problem, which you already know if you have glasses and have been wearing masks a lot lately, is fog. Breathing only through your nose will help a bit, but it won’t singlehandedly solve the problem. Of course, most face masks have some basic features to make them more usable for people with glasses, but it’s difficult to make one perfect mask for all glasses-wearers for a few reasons.
First, a mask is literally designed to make it difficult to expel air through it. So by design, air only has two places to flow out: Up past your nose to your eyes or down past your chin.
Second, the thickness of the mask and/or the presence of a filter affects your ability to breathe air through it. Though you’d think you’d want a thinner mask for improved airflow that compromises the very reason you put the mask on in the first place, to stop air from people expelled out.
Third, cuts vary widely from mask to mask and every person’s face shape is unique, meaning what works well for one person might not work well for another.
In short, identifying the mask that will best cover your unique face and successfully block airflow from coming up to fog your glasses is a tall order.
But there are some features, mainly one feature, that can help you find great face masks for glasses. In addition to checking a mask for thickness and shape, you absolutely want to get a face mask with a nose pinch, preferably one sewn inside the mask.
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A nose pinch is really the only thing that has any hope of stopping the warm air from drifting up to your glasses because it helps keep the mask pressed against your nose and cheeks. If the pinch holds close enough to your face, the air won’t be able to leak up and through.
Some masks also feature vents or breathing valves, but we run into similar problems to mask thickness in terms of airflow. Vents with a filter won’t expel air easily, sending air up or down, but vents without a filter compromise a bit on safety.
Which brings us all the way back to the best face masks for glasses. We can’t promise success on the first try, but we’ve rounded up a variety of face mask options below that could work for you if you get the fit (especially around the nose and cheeks) just right.
They all feature nose pinches and/or vents and we verified that there were users of every mask who saw improvements with fogginess. All the face masks also use different materials, mask shapes and mask thickness, so you should be able to find something according to your preference. And if you’re at your wits end with fogged-up glasses, we’ve also included a few non-mask products that might help minimize fog.
So give a few of these face masks for glasses a try and we’ll bet you’ll find at least one that improves on your current go-to’s.
1. Jumbl Blue Disposable Face Masks
To start with, you’ve got your basic, disposable, medical-style mask from Jumbl. These are solid face masks for glasses because they’ve got a long, sewn-in nose pinch. Multiple users praised the ability of the pinch to lessen fogging, though some noted the metal pinch could be longer.
Of course, these masks are cheap and other users complained that the loops were uneven or that they broke off. But you’re getting 50 masks at the same price you’d pay for one durable mask. Plus, with this many masks, you can easily throw an extra one or two in your bag, just in case.
2. Grehome Disposable Face Mask
For a more ergonomic style, you could consider the Grehome Disposable Face Mask. The five-ply, non-woven fabric offers protection from 95% of things bigger than three microns, which is well under half the width of a human hair.
So they’re definitely useful in terms of safety, but, most importantly for glasses wearers, these masks have long, sewn-in nose pinches to help prevent warm air from drifting up. We’ve used these masks before and though we’d be the first to say they’re not foolproof (definitely not foolproof), when we get the fit right on our cheeks with the metal nose pinch adjusted just so, we saw little to no fogging on our glasses.
So like many other face masks, these Grehome face masks offer some safety and some fog prevention, but they do require a bit of finessing.
On one downside, though the cut of the mask feels more natural on the face, the upper ridges of the mask can get in your eyes if you lift the mask too high on your nose.
3. Withmoons Reusable Cotton Face Masks
Moving over to cotton masks, the Withmoons Reusable Cotton Face Masks offer a different tradeoff in terms of safety and comfort.
First, they’re made of cotton and what Withmoons calls Coolon fabric that absorbs and evaporates moisture quickly. While that may be true, cotton, and all woven fabrics, offer less protection than non-woven face masks because they’re more penetrable by air. At the same time, that makes these masks more breathable, which means you might have less warm air float up to fog your glasses.
The most important fog prevention feature of this mask though is the cut of the mask around the nose. Unlike some cheaper masks, the cloth on this face mask contours and pinches around the nose, which helps keep the top of the mask flush against your face, blocking the air from coming up to your glasses. It also has a strong nose pinch to help keep the mask in place.
4. F-Stop Dyota Face Mask
This F-Stop Dyota Face Mask stands out from the crowd for one reason. Unlike most other masks, this mask features a separate nose flap sewn to the core mask specifically designed with fog prevention in mind. The extra cloth doesn’t seem like much, but it can help the mask block air from floating past your nose and cheeks.
Alas, because F-Stop went the nose flap route, this mask doesn’t use a nose pinch, so you’ll have to get the mask situated just right to keep the air from floating up. So though it’s not great for a lot of activity, if you can get the fit right, you’ll be fog-free as long as you don’t adjust the mask.
5. That Healthy Skin Glow Reusable Cotton Face Mask
This cotton face mask from That Healthy Skin Glow brings us into face-masks-with-vents territory. The use of vents is neither here nor there, depending on whether you actually put the filter inside the mask or not. If you do, you’ll have more protection but less breathability and vice versa if you don’t.
The mask fits snugly but because the vent disperses additional air, you should have less fogging when compared to masks without vents. To boot, these face masks for glasses also have adjustable nose clips. Get the right fit with the nose clips and between that and the vent, you should experience a lot less fogging.
6. KellyKessa Reusable Cotton Face Masks
These reusable cotton face masks from KellyKessa are similar to the previous pick: They’ve got vents, adjustable nose pieces and a mask cut that sits more ergonomically on your face. One user praised the shape of the nose on the mask, saying, “The nose shape is especially appreciated by me, who wears glasses when I’m not wearing contacts, and helps keep fogging to a minimum.”
But for some small differences between this vented face mask and the previous one, these face masks for glasses are all black if you’re not keen on patterns and you also get four of them, plus 10 cotton filters, for a bit more money per mask.
At the same time, some users complained these face masks didn’t block enough fogging, but if you get the nose pinch right we’d bet you’ll be able to make these masks work.
7. FamBrow Dust Mask
So you’ve been dutifully wearing your terrible face masks but just haven’t been feeling quite enough like Bane from The Dark Knight Rises. Well, that’s where this double-vented mask designed for athletics can help.
Bane jokes aside, this FamBrow Dust Mask is one of the best-reviewed masks on Amazon, with more than nine out of 10 users giving it five stars on more than 200 reviews, and it’s pretty rare to get over 90%.
But the positive reviews make sense when you see what this mask offers: five layers of non-woven fabric for better protection, two breathing valves, mesh fabric for improved breathability and comfort, a nose clip, adjustable earloops and a Velcro strap to secure the mask to the back of your head.
That’s all the bells and whistles as far as masks go and users praised this mask for the fact “it just works” and raved about its ability to prevent fogging. We saw more positive reviews here for fog prevention than on any other mask we reviewed.
The only major downside is the price. $25 is a lot for one mask, but it is washable and reusable and effective at preventing foggy glasses. So the cost-benefit analysis is for you to decide, but we think this is one of the best face masks for glasses.
8. Alameda 3D Bracket Silicone Mask Support
If you find that nothing you do helps with fogging, before you buy something you don’t need, we recommend tinkering more with your mask’s nose pinch.
But if you’re convinced that will never work, then you might want to try doing something more radical, like wearing this Alameda 3D Bracket Silicone Mask Support under your mask.
This silicone mask frame goes on your face and then you stretch the mask over it. It essentially gives structure to the mask and creates additional breathing space inside. While that doesn’t seem like a big win, every second your breath has to cool before reaching your glasses will help lessen the amount of fogging you get. Additionally, the way the mask rests on your nose can also help block the air from rising up to your glasses.
Just double-check and make sure your mask of choice is large enough and/or has long enough earloops to handle this unit.
9. Optix 55 Anti-Fog Treatment for Anti-Reflective Lenses
If all else totally fails, you’re more or less out of luck unless you get contacts or pick up a bottle of this Optix 55 Anti-Fog Treatment for Anti-Reflective Lenses.
To use it, you just put a couple of spritzes on each lens, making sure the lenses are clean beforehand, spread the treatment around with a soft cloth, let them air dry for about 20 seconds and wipe them with a dry cloth. Voila, one application should get you a couple of days without fog.
Though most lenses you can buy today will have an anti-reflective coating on them, it’d be good to double-check before buying this spray.