For many years, people with astigmatism were told that they could not wear contact lenses to correct their vision. Now, not only can astigmatism be corrected with special contact lenses called torics, but wearers have a choice across a broad range of materials, brands, and replacement schedules. They even come in colors.

First it helps to understand what astigmatism is. Astigmatism occurs when part of your eye (usually your cornea, though other types exist) is oval instead of round. This leads to problems with the way that light and images are reflected through to the back of your eye, or retina, where nerve endings translate those light waves into the images or pictures that you see. The result is that people with astigmatism are neither nearsighted nor farsighted, but have blurry vision whether things are close to them or far away.

The way that contact lenses correct this is that they are round and cover the oval shape of the cornea. This way, the eye gets its signals from the properly shaped contact lens instead of the misshapen cornea. Toric lenses have two types of correction in them, one to correct for the shape of your cornea, and the other to correct for either nearsightedness or farsightedness. Because they have some rigidity and thus keep their shape easily, your eye care professional may suggest gas permeable (GP) lenses if your astigmatism is pronounced. Conversely, very mild forms of astigmatism may be corrected with regular, non-toric lenses. If your level of astigmatism falls somewhere in the middle, soft toric lenses, which are available even in disposable lenses, might be the best option for you.

If you need bifocal lenses and have astigmatism, there are even contacts available for you. The best technique for this will probably prescribing toric lenses to compensate for the astigmatism and using the monovision correction method for the bifocals. In this situation, one eye is corrected for distance vision and the other is corrected for near vision, rather than having both corrections on the same lens. While it might sound strange, your eyes adjust to this very quickly and most people will not even notice the difference.

If you and your eye care professional decide that contact lenses are the best choice for your astigmatism, be aware that because they require more complicated fitting and have two levels of correction in them, both the fitting and the lenses themselves will be more expensive than other contact lenses.