Hard or Soft Contact Lenses - Which is better?

For a beginner, I would definitely recommend soft lenses.

Namely for the following reasons:

• The soft ones are larger and elastic and can therefore also be inserted much easier.
• The hard ones have the advantage that they are smaller and therefore have more freedom of movement in the eye. Thus, they can let more oxygen into the eye, which is healthier, especially for long-term users. However, this also makes them more difficult to handle.
• The soft lenses, on the other hand, only let a little oxygen through, since they almost cover the complete eye.
• Another advantage of hard lenses is, that they last much longer, but they are also more expensive and quite hard to put them in the eye.

Therefore, I would recommend to try everything with the soft ones and then, maybe after a few years, you can still upgrade to the hard lenses. Especially for starters, the difficult hard lenses make no sense and it may even occur that the one or other lens drops on the floor. Therefore, it is better to have the soft ones, since they have to be replaced more often anyway and so, the loss is not so great.

And make sure that you choose lenses that allow a maximum amount of oxygen to pass through. There are very big differences and your eyes will thank you!
Last update on 2026-09-30 | Created on 2012-08-08

Hard lenses are much thicker than soft ones. For this reason, I had personally always the feeling to have a foreign body in the eye. Therefore, I would also recommend soft lenses for a beginner.

Later, after you have accustomed yourself to the soft lenses, you can still switch to hard ones.
2012-08-21 at 20:19