Polarized Lenses on the Water: What They Do and When They Matter

Glare is light that has bounced. When sunlight hits a flat surface like water, a wet road or a windshield, much of the reflected light ends up vibrating in the same plane as the surface, which on water means horizontally. That reflected sheet sits on top of everything underneath it. It's the white flare that makes you squint and hides what the water is doing.

How a polarized lens works

A polarized lens carries a filter that only lets through light vibrating in one direction, set vertically when the glasses sit on your face. Think of it as a fence: waves moving up and down slip between the boards, waves moving side to side hit them. Most of the horizontal glare stops at the lens. The rest of the scene comes through.

What changes on the water

With the surface glare gone, you look into the water rather than off it. On a kite or a wing that means reading the dark patch of an incoming gust earlier, seeing the texture of the chop and the shape of the swell, and judging the distance to other riders more easily. Sailors use it for the same thing over longer distances.

Your eyes also work less. Less squinting over a three-hour session means less fatigue at the end of it.

When polarized gets in the way

• Screens. Many LCD screens, including some GPS watches, phones and bike computers, give off polarized light. Tilt your head and the display can dim or go dark.
• Ice and wet patches. The glare a polarized lens removes is sometimes the thing that shows you a sheet of ice on a piste or a slick patch on the road. Many skiers prefer non-polarized goggles for this reason.
• Tempered glass. Some car and bus windows show dark patches or patterns through a polarized lens.

Polarized and UV are separate

Polarization deals with glare. UV protection deals with ultraviolet radiation. A lens can be polarized and filter UV poorly, or block UV fully without being polarized, so it's worth checking both. Every Ocean lens blocks 100% of UV. Most of our sunglasses are also polarized, and each product page says so.

Where to start

For the water, every sunglass in our Watersports range is polarized and carries a hydrophobic coating. For the street, most of our Fashion frames are polarized too, from Bowie to Kimberley. If you're choosing for kite or wing, read How to choose kitesurf and wingfoil sunglasses.