Most articles about Halloween contacts, or the ones that are shared the most that you are most likely to have read, are outrageous stories how someone ripped their cornea off because they bought a cheap pair of lenses or slept in their lenses for a year or wore the wrong size.
These stories can be true, but often they are attributable to poor contact lens care, hygiene, wear, or simply the wrong contact lens fit or an irreputable contact lens brand.
I have never had a bad experience and I’ve worn Halloween contacts for the past two Halloweens – one hot white cat eye lens and the other a huge black pupil with red around the rim.
Watch my videos describing the lenses and my experiences here:
Although my experiences were awesome, you can read about a few of the horror stories in my article about contact lens safety.
This article is assuming you are an informed contact lens wearer with a prescription, who will take good care of your eyes and contact lenses and avoid any of the aforementioned contact lens horror stories through informed buying and correct lens hygiene.
There are probably an infinite number of types of Halloween lenses for sale on the market. I will go over my favorite design types.
I dislike sclera lenses, those that cover your entire eye, because that cuts off all oxygen flow to the eye and is not comfortable. I am also not sure if there are any FDA-approved or certified safe sclera lenses, so I would not recommend any of this lens type to any interested in purchasing Halloween contact lenses.
The fun part about Halloween lenses, and Halloween in general, is that they let you change from your normal self to become anyone you want and your eyes are part of that transformation.
Even normal color contacts allow for a part of this type of physical paired with mental freedom and transformation to take place.
There are so many different style and color options to choose from, and all can completely change your look, even making you unrecognizable or a different person physically and mentally while you wear them.
Obviously this does not mean go break the law or hurt anyone kind of different person, but it does give you mental freedom from your normal life and allow you to have fun and play with being someone other than your normal self for a few hours.
Here are a few of my favorite Halloween lens types:
Cat Eye Contacts
Cat eye lenses are versatile and can be worn for many different costume types. They can really be paired with almost any costume if you affix the word ‘vampire’ or ‘zombie’ etc pick your favorite half dead character + any Halloween costume and you are good to go. For example ‘zombie cat’, ‘zombie nurse’, ‘vampire football player’ the list could go on infinitely.
They are in the shape of two half moons and have an eery feel, since no human is naturally born with this eye shape. Cats are one of the few animals naturally born with this type of eye shape, hence the name ‘Cat Eye’ contacts.
These lenses are made in many unnatural colors as well, which is what makes them fun and lends even more of an eery feel, since no one is born with white or pink eye colors.
UV Lenses
UV lens contacts are crazy because they glow under UV lights, similar to UV paint or white shirts that glow under UV light. They look the same as any other colored contact in normal lighting, and then they glow, giving off their own light while under a UV glare.
UV lenses are the most unique Halloween lens option, and technically could be available in any lens design type.
However, it is rare that you will find yourself in a situation with glowing UV lights while wearing these lenses, so I would recommend only purchasing if you know in advance you will be somewhere UV light exists while you are wearing your UV lenses. Otherwise, why not just stick with the normal lenses if you know you will be somewhere that UV light will not.
Funky Design lenses
Some Halloween contact lenses have a funky design such as mesh, hearts, checkers, insects, or stars, that make it clear these are not the wearer’s natural eyes.
These are less interesting to me, because although they may be pretty or unique, they don’t fit as naturally with any type of costume, and they don’t have the eery feeling of, “where have I seen this before, it doesn’t quite fit here, but it almost does”.
This leaves people half wondering if what they are seeing is real. The designs can be fun, however they are so unnatural they almost lose the eery Halloween feel many other Halloween contacts have.
Huge Pupil Lenses
Huge pupil lenses are two color lenses, black plus one other color, where black takes up the majority of the eye, without covering the entire eye as a sclera lens does. Your pupils naturally get bigger or dilate when you are scared or excited or attracted to something, and there have been studies showing that people are also more attracted to women with larger pupils (sorry men I don’t know if there are studies regarding how people view males with larger pupils attractiveness), so this is a way to naturally manipulate how others view your feelings and attractiveness.
This means that people will naturally feel something is off, or if they are very perceptive or high in emotional intelligence they might think you are nervous, excited or attracted to them, depending on the surrounding external circumstances. They may also see you as more attractive, which is an added bonus for the women.
Werewolf Lenses
Werewolf contacts usually have two to three colors surrounding the black pupil of the eye. These colors are usually lighter such as orange and yellow, and radiate from the eye in waves or a glowing manner to simulate the eyes of a werewolf.
Not that werewolves exist in real life, but the eyes of werewolves as they have been portrayed in movies and books.
Cat eye lenses look more unnatural due to their shape, however werewolf lenses possess unique colors that are not found in human’s natural eyes, and so are also an otherworldly Halloween costume option. No animals really naturally possess the colors found in many werewolf lenses, and it is their color that gives them their unique edge and Halloweeny feel.
Specific-Costume Lenses
The last type of Halloween lens I will discuss today are lenses made with a specific Halloween costume in mind.
This may be something such as a Hulk contact lens for someone intent on being the Hulk for Halloween, Mummy lenses for someone who wants to be a mummy, Ghost lenses for someone who wants to be a ghost, etc. However, you can be almost any of these costumes with any of the lenses I mentioned above, by simply pairing a lens with a specific-costume lens to make that type of costume.
Specific-costume lenses are great when you have a specific idea in mind and want your contacts to complement your idea either with direct drawings of your costume in your eye, or a more costume-specific feel.
Conclusion:
Halloween contact lenses are prevalent in today’s world and online marketplace, just make sure you have your prescription ready and are buying from a trusted source.
There are so many options available in almost any color for any costume you could ever dream of.
Even UV lenses which will glow under special lighting types and give an otherworldly feel. My personal favorite are the white cat-eye lenses which seem to glow even without UV light, and have the eery cat eye shape not found naturally in human eyes.
Remember to take care of your lenses as well as purchase as a well-informed consumer buying in your size and prescription, so you don’t add to the most-shared contact lens horror stories or statistics.