Why do glasses slip down my nose?
Glasses can slip down your nose if they are too loose. This issue can occur to individuals with smaller noses or lower nose bridges and more generally, people of Asian descent.
In western countries, most eyewear frames cater to Caucasian head shapes, which are longer (from nose to back of the head) than Asian ones.
In a 2010 geometric morphometric study titled, “A comparison between Chinese and Caucasian head shapes,” researchers Roger Ball, Chang Shu, Pengcheng Xi, Marc Rioux, Yan Luximon and Johan Molenbroek compared 1,200 head scans of 1,200 Chinese and Caucasian men and discovered that the average Caucasian head is 11 mm longer than a Chinese one (National Library of Medicine). Interestingly, the researchers excluded females from the study because their hair kept skewing the data!
Ball et al. produced the above scatterplot, which illustrates general differences between Chinese (red; SizeChina) and Caucasian (blue; CAESAR) head shapes from a top-down perspective. According to the graph, Chinese heads are shorter (front of head to occiput) and wider than Caucasian ones.
In other words, if you find that glasses often slip down your nose, it’s likely that the distance between your nose bridge and the back of your ears is too small to support the length of your frame’s temple arms.
The gap between the temple tip and the back of your ear allows glasses to slip down your nose until the temple tip “catches” the back of your ear.
Heavy or wide frames can exacerbate slipping.
What is a low nose bridge?
In the above picture, Tiffany (left) has a lower nose bridge than Zenos (right).
Low and high are relative terms, but from a Western perspective, a low nose bridge refers to one that is closer to one's cheekbones. Conversely, a high nose bridge is one that protrudes further from one’s cheekbones.
If glasses often slide down your nose or touch your cheeks, you may have a nose bridge that is too low for your frames, and you might want to try glasses with larger nose pads.
What are Asian fit glasses?
Asian Fit, or low bridge fit, glasses have larger, deeper nose pads that add space between the frames and your cheekbones so that the bottom rims of the frames don’t rest or touch your cheeks.
Every pair of Rocket Eyewear sunglasses is available in Raised "Asian" Fit, which feature larger, deeper 12-mm nose pads to prevent slipping so that your Rockets stay on even when you get down!
How can I stop my glasses from slipping down my nose?
There are two ways you can stop glasses from slipping down your nose: