So it turns out that wearing a mask is one of the best ways to protect yourself and others when you haven’t got a choice about social distancing and need to go out. That said, if you thought glasses fogging up in the winter was frustrating then welcome to foggy glasses from wearing a mask. Brutal.

Never fear though! There are solutions. Here are a few of our favourites.

Tried and true but a little sticky

One of the most effective ways is to tape the top of your mask to your face. Air simply cannot escape up to your glasses and so the fogging stops! Don’t use regular tape though. Surgical tape is your best option to avoid skin irritation. Still, while this works great it does require taping a mask to your face which maybe isn’t going to work for you.

Stuff it with kleenex

Sounds awkward and it is, but if you line the top of your mask with a little kleenex (or other disposable item) it also blocks air from blowing up and fogging your lenses. It’s not as effective as tape but it does the trick. Just make sure to replace it regularly. Any time a mask or anything touching it gets too wet it can start to harbour germs, which is the opposite of what we’re trying to do.

Use a commercially available anti-fog product

There are a lot of different antifog products out there. The one Dr. Ross has been using is called Cat Crap, which is a terrible name but it works great! We sell it in our office and in our online store so if you want to give it a try we can help you out!
Another great option is Foggies anti-fog towelettes which you can find on Amazon or, if you want, we can order some in for you! We don’t have them in stock at the moment but can easily order them in.

Wear a medical mask and make sure it’s fitting well

A good quality medical mask that’s properly fit will help since it shouldn’t allow any air out other than through the filters that are built-in. This is a great option if you have access but as many of you have found, finding good quality medical masks right now is a huge challenge.

Slide your glasses down your nose

No one wants to look like an old school librarian but if you slide your glasses down your nose a bit it increases the space between your face and glasses and reduces the risk of fogging. Just don’t slide them so far down they fall off!

What we DON’T recommend

Soap, toothpaste, shaving cream and a myriad of other options have been roaming around the internet as people struggle to prevent fogging. While these options may work, there is a risk of damaging the coatings on the lens or even the lens itself! Use these techniques at your own risk.

It's been a while since 'the dress', we all know the one by now, appeared online. You may have already seen my Facebook post explaining why some people saw white and gold and others saw black and blue but I thought it would be a great idea to explain things in a bit more detail.

If you really want to break the internet you don't need a Kardashian, you need a dress that looks different colours to different people. #thedress #blueandblack #whiteandgold

The most important thing to know is that you aren't crazy and that seeing either colour combination is normal. As with so many things in life what is important is context. A perfectly innocent phrase heard out of context may sound shockingly inappropriate. A perfectly blue and black dress in the wrong lighting may suddenly seem to be white and gold to certain people. What makes this situation interesting and unique is that different people seeing the same dress under the same conditions see different things. It's the fault of the lighting in the picture, NOT the lighting around you when you look at the picture.

The frilly part of the dress, according to most reliable sources, is black and the rest of the dress is really blue. So how can someone possibly see the black part of the dress as yellow and the blue part of the dress as white? To help this make sense all we need is a little help from the CIE colour chart below.

This is the CIE colour wheel. It is ridiculously helpful at making confusing colour problems make sense. Add or subtract certain amounts of light away and you move from one end of the scale to the other. Blue, as seen here in the bottom left, can be… — This is the CIE colour wheel. It is ridiculously helpful at making confusing colour problems make sense. Add or subtract certain amounts of light away and you move from one end of the scale to the other. Blue, as seen here in the bottom left, can become white and eventually yellow if you add more and more yellow light.

The key to the dress is the surrounding lighting. From the chart above it's not hard to see that if we add yellow light to the colour blue it slowly will shift from blue to white. Black is the absence of any reflected light. If more yellow is added to the colour black it will change to yellow or in this case, gold. So if we add more yellow lighting to a picture of a blue and black dress it makes a lot of sense that it would appear to be white and gold instead (to be clear, this is only true of reflected light. If you add lots of yellow paint to blue or black paint this won't work and you'll just end up with a mess). What makes the dress really interesting is that some people see it as blue and black and some people see it as white and gold while looking at the exact same picture at the exact same time. Why is this happening?

Whenever you look at any colour in any lighting condition your brain has to edit out the surrounding lighting so things don't look like totally different colours at different times of the day and different lighting conditions. In most situations and looking at most pictures we all subtract out the same colours or add in the same colours. In the case of the dress a certain number of people's brains subtract out the yellowish lighting so the dress looks blue and black. Some people's brains add in more yellow making the dress look a vibrant white and gold. The dress may really, truly be blue and black but each of us will perceive the dress differently depending on whether we subtract out the yellow light or add in more.

So, in the end, you aren't colour blind and you aren't going crazy. It's totally the fault of your visual cortex and some higher end perceptual calculations that you can't control. I hope this has helped make the dress make way more sense.

If you have any questions about this or anything else feel free to contact us on Twitter, Facebook, Google +, via our website or phone us at (403) 474-6744.