Help me clean my glasses!

April 6, 2018 5:48 PM

I have glasses that I love with anti-reflective coating. Unfortunately, I wore them outside on a windy day while spray painting something, and I got spray paint droplets onto my glasses.

The droplets aren't coming off just with water...does anyone know how to clean them off without damaging the lenses?

Also, yes, I understand that they're $7 glasses, but I'd prefer not to re-order them if I don't have to!

posted by christinetheslp to Grab Bag (5 answers total)

Just flick/scrape the paint off with your fingernail. (I do this regularly.)
posted by DarlingBri at 5:57 PM on April 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

I assume plastic lenses, so acetone is out. Try rubbing alcohol. Or I'd just do the fingernail scrapey thing like DarlingBri said.
posted by sanka at 6:30 PM on April 6, 2018

If latex paint, use vodka. Latex paint dissolves in ethanol.
posted by ShooBoo at 7:42 PM on April 6, 2018

I'm a lifelong glasses wearer who paints walls, so have often had paint spatter on my anti-reflective-coated lenses. The best way I've found to remove the spots is running hot water from the faucet onto the lens and rubbing with my fingers, followed by rubbing with a clean cotton tee-shirt.
posted by anadem at 9:08 PM on April 6, 2018

Finger scraping, then hot water, then alcohol. I have removed paint from glasses with mineral spirits before, but you can only do that a few times before it wrecks the coatings so it's a last resort.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:24 AM on April 7, 2018