How often should you get an eye exam?

For a healthy adult under 60, every two years is the standard advice. From 65 on, make it annual. Go yearly at any age if you have diabetes, wear contact lenses, or have a prescription that keeps moving.

How often should you get an eye exam at each age

The professional bodies don't fully agree, which is worth knowing before treating any single number as settled. Optometric guidance leans toward every two years for low-risk adults and annually from 65. Ophthalmology guidance is looser in your twenties and thirties, then anchors a baseline exam at 40 — when presbyopia and early glaucoma start showing up.

Who you are	Usual interval	Watching for
18–39, no symptoms or risk factors	Every 2 years	Refraction shifts, baseline health
40–54	Every 1–2 years	Presbyopia, early glaucoma
55–64	Every 1–2 years	Cataract, macular change, pressure
65 and older	Every year	Glaucoma, cataract, macular degeneration
Diabetes, any age	Every year, dilated	Diabetic retinopathy
Contact lens wearers	Every year	Corneal health, fit, prescription expiry
Prescription still moving	Every year or sooner	Refractive drift vs. something medical
Family glaucoma, high myopia, past eye surgery or injury	Every year, or as advised	Optic nerve, retina, pressure

One caveat about eye exam frequency: these intervals are expert consensus, not trial results. The US Preventive Services Task Force has found the evidence insufficient to recommend routine glaucoma screening in symptom-free adults, and says the same about vision-acuity screening in older adults specifically — that second finding is about older adults, not a blanket statement covering every age. Silent early damage is real; the exact schedule is a judgment call.

What happens at an eye exam beyond the letter chart

The acuity chart is about two minutes of a 20–40 minute appointment. The rest is what you're paying for.

• History. Screen hours, medications, headaches, family history of glaucoma or macular disease. It shapes everything after.
• Refraction. An autorefractor sets a starting point; the phoropter's "better one, or two?" narrows it. In the US this step is often billed separately from the medical exam.
• Binocular vision. Cover test, eye movements, near point of convergence. Convergence insufficiency — eyes that struggle to hold a near target together — is a treatable reason close work feels exhausting.
• Pressure and optic nerve. Tonometry, plus a look at the nerve head. Pressure alone doesn't diagnose glaucoma; nerve appearance and visual field carry more weight.
• Slit lamp. Lids, tear film, cornea, lens — where dry eye gets confirmed rather than guessed.
• The back of the eye. Dilating drops and a fundus exam, or wide-field imaging and OCT. Imaging is fast and drop-free but not a universal substitute.

Dilating drops take 15–30 minutes to work and leave you blurry up close and light-sensitive for a few hours. Bring sunglasses.

Bring your working distance in centimeters

A distance refraction is measured at six meters — 20 feet, usually folded into a smaller room with a mirror. That's what 20/20 describes. Your monitor sits at roughly 50–70 cm: the intermediate zone, and nothing in a standard exam measures it unless you raise it.

So measure it first. Sit at your desk in normal posture and run a tape from the bridge of your nose to the center of the screen. Note whether it's a laptop, an external monitor, or two screens. That number is what a computer glasses prescription gets built around — separate from the ergonomics of how far your monitor should be.

Under 40, healthy accommodation covers that range on its own, and screen symptoms usually trace back to breaks, blinking and glare rather than lens power. After 40 the flex goes, and the gap between where your glasses focus and where your screen sits becomes the problem. If you're unsure which side you're on, needing glasses versus needing a break usually sorts out by whether symptoms clear overnight.

Reading glasses vs computer glasses

Off-the-shelf readers are built for about 40 cm — book distance. Wear them at a monitor 65 cm away and you lean in to find focus, which is how a lens problem becomes a neck problem. Computer lenses are set to your measured distance instead: single-vision intermediate lenses, or an occupational progressive with a wide intermediate corridor and a small reading zone below. A standard progressive can work, but its intermediate channel is narrow — hence the chin-up hunt for the sweet spot.

If you already wear a distance correction, the computer pair carries that plus an intermediate add — often near half the reading add, then adjusted to comfort. Blue-light filtering gets offered alongside; the evidence that it eases eye strain is weak, and it's no substitute for correct power, as blue light glasses covers.

When to see an eye doctor sooner

Some things don't wait for the next appointment. Sudden vision loss, new floaters or flashes, a curtain across part of your field, sudden double vision, or eye pain with halos and nausea all need same-day care.

The slower signals are easier to argue with. Squinting at a sign you used to read. Holding your phone farther out. One eye clearly weaker when you cover the other. Headaches after screen work that used to respond to breaks and no longer do. That last one is the useful test: if you've genuinely held a break routine for a few weeks and nothing has shifted, the cause is more likely refractive or ocular-surface, and it needs an exam rather than more discipline. Eye Rest Reminder, an eye-break reminder app for iPhone and Apple Watch, helps by removing the ambiguity — you know whether the breaks actually happened, so persistent symptoms become a reason to book.

FAQ

How long does an eye exam take?

Usually 20 to 40 minutes. Add time for a first visit, dilation, or a contact lens fitting, which evaluates fit and corneal health on top of the refraction.

Is an eye exam the same as a vision screening?

No. A screening at the DMV, a school, or a pharmacy checks acuity and little else. A comprehensive exam adds refraction, pressure, slit-lamp examination, and the retina.

Can I skip it if my vision seems fine?

Seeing well rules out less than people assume. Glaucoma takes peripheral vision first and the brain fills the gap; diabetic retinopathy stays symptomless until it reaches the macula. That's why the intervals above apply even with no complaints.

How long is a prescription valid?

In the US, contact lens prescriptions generally run at least a year. Glasses prescriptions vary by state, commonly one to two years — a legal convention, not a claim that your eyes change on schedule.