The many different types of contact lenses can be confusing. Here are some of the different types of regular contact lenses available on the market today. See our page on Specialty Lenses for those types of contacts not covered here.

First, be aware that there are two different protocol categories to consider when deciding which type of contact lenses would be best for you:

Replacement schedule -how often to you want to discard and replace your lenses? You can choose from disposable (replaced every two weeks), frequent replacement (replaced monthly or quarterly), and traditional lenses (replaced every six months or longer). The deciding factor within this category is usually the difficulty of the cleaning regimen and the cost.

Wearing schedule -how often do you want to remove your lenses and clean them? Choices are daily wear (remove and clean every night) or extended wear (you can sleep in these contact lenses). Both daily wear and extended wear lenses are available as disposables.

Here are the different types of disposable contact lenses:

Daily Disposable Contacts: the ultimate in health and convenience, these lenses are worn once and then discarded. While these cost about $1 per day, you won’t need to purchase cleaning solutions.

Weekly Disposable Contacts: these contacts are discarded and replaced about every two weeks. For daily wear disposables, you will need to remove the lenses every night for cleaning and disinfecting, but you will not need a separate solution for protein removal.

Frequent Replacement Lenses: these contact lenses are discarded and replaced monthly or quarterly. These contact lenses will require periodic removal of protein build-up.

Traditional Lenses: these contact lenses are discarded and replaced every six months or year.