Replacement lenses
You paid for the frame once. A lens with a hairline across it does not mean buying the whole pair again - find the frame you own, pick how much light you want through it, and put a new lens in tonight.
01Start with the make
Oakley calls a shape a Holbrook, Costa calls one a Rincon, and Ray-Ban calls one RB4165. You know which of those is sitting in front of you, so that is where the catalog starts.
Ten makes, one shelf each, and the same question at the top of every one: which frame is in your hand. the Ikon Lenses catalog is filed that way from end to end, and the full list of frames is the short route if you already know the name.
02Most asked for
These are the shapes that come back scratched first - the everyday pair, worn in the car and dropped on the deck. Each page names the codes the lens fits and the tints cut for it.
03The tint and the number
A tint decides what color the world is; the percentage decides how bright it stays. Twelve percent is a road lens, ten is for open water, nine is for snow at noon. Every lens here shows both.
| Tint | Light through | What you look through | Lenses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black | 12% | Gray | 158 |
| Ice Blue Mirror | 10-12% | Gray with warm rose, Gray | 64 |
| Ice Mirror | 9-12% | Gray with warm rose, Gray | 51 |
| Emerald Green Mirror | 12% | Bronze, Gray | 67 |
| Deep Blue Mirror | 12% | Gray-green, Gray | 50 |
| 24K Gold Mirror | 12% | Bronze, Gray | 45 |
| Fire Orange Mirror | 12% | Neutral, Gray, Bronze | 40 |
| Silver Chrome Mirror | 11-12% | Gray | 16 |
| Silver Mirror | 11-12% | Gray, Gray-green | 46 |
| Violet Mirror | 12% | Gray-green, Gray | 29 |
| Rose Gold Mirror | 11-12% | Gray | 25 |
| Red Mirror | 9-12% | Gray | 24 |
| Bronze Brown | 12% | Bronze, Gray | 61 |
| Green | 12% | Bronze | 8 |
| HD Yellow | 75% | Yellow | 1 |
Two numbers settle a tint: what you look through and how much of the light gets past it. We print both on every page rather than leaving you with a color name, and that habit is the whole of the Ikon rule. What each tint is for, and how the percentage is read.
04Where you will be standing
The same frame takes a different lens for a commute and for a skiff at midday. Choose by the light you are in most and the rest of the choice makes itself.
Neutral grays leave a signal head the color it is and take the glare off the bonnet and the wet road.
Gray-green and the deep mirrors hold contrast against blue water while the filter kills the glare off the surface.
Warm rose and bronze separate a fish from the bottom in shallow water and on the flats.
The lowest transmission in the range, for open snow, white sand and noon on the water.
05Three steps
No tools, no appointment and nothing to send away. The only thing worth doing slowly is the first corner.
Open the left temple arm and look along the inside. Two letters and four digits - OO9102, RB4165 - and that code, not the name, is what decides the lens.
Twelve percent for the road, ten for water, nine for snow and white sand. Gray leaves color alone, bronze and warm rose lift contrast out of a dark background.
Run the front under hot tap water for half a minute, press the old lens out from the inside, and start the new one at a top corner. It springs in, and it should never need forcing.
06By tint and by use
Some people arrive with a frame; some arrive knowing they want the gold mirror or something that works on the water. Both roads are open.
If you are replacing a scratched lens and do not want to think about it, this is the tint to take. Black over a neutral gray leaves every color where it was - a red brake light stays the red it is - and twelve percent is the transmission a bright road wants without going dark at dusk. It is also the widest-cut tint in the catalog: it reaches every one of the ten makes on the site, which no other color does.
The pairing that does the most work on water: a warm rose base to pull contrast out of a dark bottom, and a cold blue mirror on the front to take the top off the glare bouncing back at you. Ten percent through means it holds up at noon in July, and the largest single group of frames it is cut for is Costa - which is where most of it ends up.
Bronze underneath, green mirror on top, twelve percent through. Bronze is the tint that pulls a tarpon off a sand flat and a fairway apart from the rough, and the green mirror over it keeps the whole thing from going orange the way a bare bronze lens can. Half of every emerald lens in the catalog is cut for a Costa frame, which tells you where it is used.
A driving lens is a narrow specification and this page is what meets it. Gray or neutral underneath, so a brake light stays red and a green signal stays green; eleven or twelve percent through, which is the brightest this catalog goes; and a polarizing filter to take the sheet of glare off a wet road and off your own bonnet. The American standard for sunglass lenses tests the first of those specifically, and it is the reason a bronze or a violet lens is the wrong tool in a car.
Fishing is the job a polarizing filter was made for, and the Academy of Ophthalmology names it first when it explains what one does: the filter blocks the light bounced off the surface and passes the light coming straight at your eye, so the water stops being a mirror and starts being water. Tint does the rest. Every lens on this page has a warm base - rose-warmed gray or bronze - and warmth is what pulls a dark fish out of a dark bottom.
Each of those is a real slice of the shelves rather than a landing page: the frames behind it, the light each lens passes, and what the people at Ikon would take it out in.
07What stands behind it
Nothing rounded up and nothing invented: these come straight off the shelves as they stand today.
08About the brand
Everything here is a spare part for sunglasses somebody already owns. A card gives you the frame code, the tints cut for it and how much light each one passes before it gives you anything else, because those are the facts a photograph of a lens cannot settle.
the Ikon desk cuts one thing, and the pages here are filed the way the question arrives: the make on your temple arm, then the frame, then how much light you want through it. Read what Ikon Lenses makes and who it is for.
09Guides
Reading a frame code, telling a mirror from a tint, and getting a lens in without marking the rim.
Warm the frame, push from the inside, start at a corner. What the code inside the arm settles before you begin, and what to do when a lens will not seat.
Darkness and ultraviolet filtering are two different properties, and a percentage on a lens describes only the first. What the published guidance says, and what sunglasses are never for.
It sorts light by the direction it came from, so it clears a lake and blanks a dashboard screen. The mechanism, the uses, and the two known drawbacks.
10Questions
Fit, tints, what arrives in the envelope, and where the buying happens.
Every buying button on this site opens the lens you were looking at, in the tint you chose, at our retail partner. That is where the payment and the delivery happen, and where the price you see is the price you pay.
The wide button at the foot of the page opens the whole range at once, which is quicker if you are still deciding between two tints.
Open the left temple arm of your sunglasses and read the code molded on the inside: two letters and four digits, like OO9102 or RB4165. Every frame page on this site names the codes that lens is cut for, so your code either appears on the page or it does not.
If the arm is scratched past reading, the finder at the top of the front page takes the make and the frame name instead and sends you to the right page.
No. What arrives is a pair of lenses - left and right - with a cleaner and a microfiber cloth, in a hard case. The frame in the photograph is yours already. That is the whole point of a replacement lens.
It is the share of visible light that reaches your eye through that lens. Twelve percent is the brightest thing in this catalog and the one to drive in. Ten percent is an open-water lens, and nine is for snow and white sand at noon.
It is a different question from ultraviolet. What protects the eye is the filter rather than the darkness of the tint, and the American Academy of Ophthalmology tells buyers to look for full protection across the UV range instead of judging a lens by how dark it looks.
All but a handful, and the specification on each frame page says which. A polarizing filter passes the light coming straight at your eye and blocks the light that bounced sideways off a smooth surface, which is what takes the sheet of glare off water, off a wet road and off a car bonnet.
The one thing it does do is darken some phone and dashboard screens at certain angles. Tilting your head brings them back.
About two minutes for a full-rim frame and less for a half-rim one, with no tools. Run the front under hot tap water for half a minute so the plastic gives, press the old lens out from the inside, and start the new one at a top corner.
The only rule worth keeping is not to force it: a lens that will not seat is usually the wrong one for that frame code rather than a lens that needs more pressure.
Your frame, a new lens
Every frame we cut for and every tint in the Ikon Lenses range sits behind this button.