The price of a pair of glasses is two prices added together, and most people only ask about one of them. The frame has a sticker on it. The lenses do not, and the lenses are where the number moves.

Here is how the total is built, using the range we actually sell in.

The frame

Branded frames at our shop run from about ₹7,400 to ₹11,500. Carrera acetate and the HD acetate front sit around ₹8,300 to ₹8,500, the Puma gold glaze is around ₹8,000, and Hugo sits at the top of that band around ₹11,500.

What you are paying for at that level is the material and the hinge. Acetate is cut from sheet rather than injection moulded, holds colour through the thickness instead of on the surface, and can be heated and adjusted repeatedly without going brittle. Metal frames in this band use sprung hinges that survive being taken off with one hand, which is how most people take their glasses off.

Cheaper frames exist everywhere and some of them are fine. The failure point is usually the hinge, and a hinge that fails takes the frame with it.

The lenses

This is the part that varies, and it varies for reasons you can actually control.

Your power decides the starting point. A low prescription can be made in a standard plastic lens and stays thin. A high prescription in the same material comes out thick at the edges, which is why high powers get made in a high-index material that bends light more in less thickness. High-index costs more and is the single biggest jump in a lens bill.

Single vision, bifocal or progressive is the next step. Progressives cost more than single vision because the corridor has to be laid out and the lens has to be surfaced to your fitting height in that frame rather than pulled off a shelf.

Coatings are the last layer. Anti-glare is worth adding on almost any pair and matters more the stronger the prescription, because high-index materials reflect more. Blue light filtering is optional and we would rather explain what it does before you pay for it.

The practical consequence is that two people can walk out with the same frame and pay very different totals, and neither of them was overcharged.

Contact lenses

Acuvue Moist is ₹2,800 a box and Bausch & Lomb sits at ₹2,500. Lens solution is ₹500.

Contact lenses are a running cost rather than a purchase, which changes how you should compare them to glasses. Work out what a year costs before deciding they are cheaper.

Why the online price looks lower

Online sellers quote the frame and a base lens. The prescription lens, the material for your power, and the coatings are added at checkout, and the number at the end is usually closer to a shop than the landing page suggested.

The larger difference is the measurements. A prescription from an optometrist gives your powers. It does not give your fitting height, and often not a per-eye pupillary distance either, because both are taken in the frame at the point of dispensing. Single vision is forgiving about this. Progressives are not, and a progressive lens fitted to an estimated height is the most common reason a pair ends up in a drawer.

There is also what happens afterwards. Frames need adjusting when they slip, screws come loose, and lenses come out of rims. All of that is a five-minute walk-in if you bought locally.

What to bring

Your prescription, if you have one from the last year or so.

Your current glasses, even if the prescription is old. What works and what does not in the pair you are wearing is the most useful thing you can bring.

An idea of what the glasses are for. Screen work at a fixed distance, driving, reading, or all of it. That changes what we recommend more than any preference about frame shape does.

Buying in Colaba

We are on Shahid Bhagat Singh Road in Colaba, near INS Shikra, open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 8pm. You can see the frames and current prices on our product page before you come in.

Come in with the prescription and the pair you are wearing now, and we will tell you what the lenses will cost before anything is ordered.