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Contact lenses for eyes that standard lenses do not fit
When a cornea is cone-shaped, scarred or uneven after surgery, an ordinary soft lens drapes over the problem and passes it straight through to your vision. Specialty lenses solve it differently — and which one suits you depends on how irregular your cornea is, whether your eyes are dry, and how much handling you will take on.
Start with one question
Almost every specialty lens decision turns on whether your cornea is regular or irregular. Corneal topography answers it in minutes, and the answer removes most of the list.
An even curve
Glasses give you clear, stable vision. Your astigmatism, if any, is the ordinary rugby-ball kind. Soft lenses work — and if stock ones will not stay oriented or your prescription is out of range, a custom soft lens usually solves it.
Astigmatism options →An uneven surface
Glasses never quite work, your prescription keeps changing, and you see ghosting or streaking around lights. A soft lens cannot correct this. A rigid design — corneal, hybrid or scleral — can, by replacing the eye's front surface with a smooth one.
Keratoconus options →The lens types
Seven designs, each solving a different problem. Every page explains the mechanism, who it suits, and where it falls short.
Hybrid lenses
A rigid centre for sharp optics, a soft skirt for comfort and stability. Mostly fitted for keratoconus and irregular corneas.
Read more →Rigid gas permeable
The sharpest optics available for an irregular cornea, and the most durable lens. The trade-off is adaptation.
Read more →Ortho-k
Rigid lenses worn overnight that reshape the cornea, so you see without correction during the day. Also used to slow myopia in children.
Read more →Custom soft lenses
Made to your eye's own measurements. For prescriptions, curvatures and diameters that stock lenses do not cover.
Read more →Scleral lenses
Vault the cornea entirely and hold fluid against the eye. For advanced irregularity and severe dry eye.
Read more →Prosthetic lenses
A printed or hand-painted iris to mask a damaged eye and control disabling glare.
Read more →Bandage lenses
A dressing for the cornea, not a correction. Prescribed, worn continuously, and monitored closely.
Read more →Weighing two options against each other
The pattern worth holding onto: the further a lens's support moves away from the cornea, the more irregularity it corrects — and the more handling it asks of you.
All lenses compared
Every type in one table — what it rests on, what it corrects, comfort, handling, lifespan and consumables.
See the table →Hybrid vs scleral
Both give rigid optics comfortably. The deciding factors are corneal irregularity, dryness and handling.
Read more →RGP vs soft
Sharper vision and longer life, against immediate comfort. Your corneal shape usually decides it for you.
Read more →If you already know the diagnosis
Each of these works through the options for one condition in the order practitioners usually consider them.
Keratoconus
Every lens option fitted for keratoconus, in the order fitters usually work through them.
Read more →Astigmatism
Regular or irregular? The answer decides whether a toric soft lens is enough or whether you need a rigid design.
Read more →Myopia management
Slowing short-sightedness in children, not just correcting it. Ortho-k, soft multifocals, and what should be measured.
Read more →Lens care
The routine that prevents most complications, plus the extra steps for rigid, hybrid and scleral lenses.
Read more →What this site is, and is not
We are an independent guide. We fit no lenses, sell no products, rank no brands and list no practices, and we take no payment for coverage of any kind.
That also sets the limit of what these pages can do. No website can tell you which lens you need — that depends on measurements of your own eyes and the judgement of the person fitting you. What this site can do is make sure you walk into that appointment understanding the options, and walk out knowing whether the answer you got makes sense.
Every page states where its lens falls short as well as where it works, carries a review date, and omits any statistic we cannot source. How we write and who owns the site is set out in our editorial policy.