I Tried DIY Hacks and Scratch-Removal Products to Fix My Busted Sunglass Lenses. None of Them Worked.

Distraught and determined to restore my glorious new-to-me sunnies, I set off on a mission to learn how to remove scratches from plastic sunglass lenses at home.

The internet is rife with do-it-yourself hacks claiming that everyday items like toothpaste and baking soda can buff out minor imperfections. There’s also a proliferation of sprays, creams, and pencils specifically marketed as scratch-removing cure-alls, promising to erase scrapes from plastic lenses.

My expectations were low, but I needed to know if they would work to save my precious specs.

I spoke with Georg Nadorff, an optical engineer who has designed lenses for the Ray-Ban division of Bausch + Lomb, to figure out if what I was attempting to do was even possible.

Unfortunately, he delivered news that I really didn’t want to hear.

There’s not much you can do at home to fix a pair of scratched plastic lenses. In fact, Nadorff told me that I would likely do more damage to my sunglasses if I tried to buff out the scratches, and even if I did manage to remove them, I’d likely leave a cloudy haze in their place.

He added that you might have more luck restoring scratched glasses lenses on your own by filling the scratch with superglue and then buffing it out with sandpaper, but if done incorrectly, this process could lead to even more scratches. “The solvents in superglue would dissolve the plastic in a plastic lens, or at least craze it, so that wouldn’t work,” he said.

Nadorff concluded that you’re better off replacing the sunglasses entirely or learning to live with the scratched lenses, so long as they don’t impair your vision. (You could also get the lenses replaced, but that would require considerable time and effort, and it seems like a last resort.)

Nevertheless, unable to accept that this could be a problem without a solution, I put a series of at-home DIY scratch-removal techniques and scratch-removing kits to the test to see for myself.

After scouring the corners of the internet for the most popular at-home remedies, I decided to put the following methods to the test, using things I already had lying around the house:

• a drop of nonabrasive toothpaste, such as Colgate Sensitive, gently rubbed in circles with a microfiber cloth
• baking soda and water, mixed together to create a paste and then rubbed in circles over the scratched surface with a microfiber cloth
• vinegar and baking soda, also mixed together and rubbed in small circles with a microfiber cloth
• baby oil, slathered over the scratch with a microfiber cloth
• clear nail polish painted over the scratch and left to dry, then wiped away with an acetone-drenched cotton ball

“All these methods are going in the right direction and might help slightly for very fine scratches,” Nadorff said. “But they won’t work for deep [ones].”

To test all of the methods, I needed more scratched lenses to work with—so I purposefully scraped up four pairs of cheap sunglasses, including two pairs of Wirecutter-recommended Sungait sunglasses, with the intention of ruining them. I felt like a criminal as I dragged the lenses against my concrete porch.

The toothpaste and both baking soda slurries dulled the scratches a bit, making them less prominent but failing to eliminate them. The baby oil did nothing for the scratches, leaving behind a greasy mess to clean up. But these techniques didn’t damage the lenses further or leave behind a hazy cast, which felt like a minor victory even though the scratches remained.

The clear nail polish seemed promising at first—the polish filled in the scratches, making them disappear. But they reappeared when I wiped away the excess polish with acetone, which also left a hazy cast on the lens. This process effectively ruined that pair of sunglasses: Not only was the scratch still obscuring the lens, but I couldn’t see through the cloudy haze, either.

Nadorff pointed me toward a few scratch-removal kits, though he wasn’t optimistic that they would work. “You’re probably wasting your money,” he said, “but if you’re curious and experimental—and have money to burn—why not try?”

So I did.

The results were middling.

A bottle of Lens Scratch Removal Spray, a $9 mixture of water, coconut oil, and aloe extract, proved to be completely ineffective (not to mention it took about a month to arrive after Wirecutter ordered it).

Novus Fine Scratch Remover, a cream made with aluminum oxide and propylene glycol monomethyl ether, is meant to remove heavy scratches from acrylic and most plastic surfaces, but the $10 solution also disappointed. Like my homemade toothpaste and baking soda slurries, the Novus formula merely made the scratch less prominent.

I had the best results with the LensBuff, a $14 as-seen-on-TV pencil designed to fill in light scratches to make them less noticeable, rather than removing them. The substance is dark and waxy, and the pencil makes it easy to apply. And to my surprise, the scratches were a lot less visible after I applied the LensBuff and rubbed the substance in with a paper towel before wiping it off. I can still see the scratches across my field of vision when I wear the sunglasses, but the effect is less distracting than before.

While I was excited to see a noticeable difference after using the LensBuff, I still wouldn’t recommend it. This $14 pencil might be able to change the aesthetics of scratched sunglasses, but the lenses remain scratched in a way that can be visually distracting for the wearer. Buying a new pair of Sungait Vintage Round Sunglasses for $13—that you can see clearly through—is a better use of that money.

Fortunately, attempting to buff out scratches from your lenses won’t make your sunglasses any less effective. That’s because the UV-blocking properties are activated through the absorption of the UV light in the bulk material of the lens, not by any surface treatment, Nadorff explained.

But even though scratched sunglasses can still protect your eyes from sunlight, Nadorff warned that they may be rendered unusable, especially if your lenses are covered in any kind of mirrored or decorative coating. Trying to “repair” a scratch on this type of coating might ruin it by further stripping it away, leaving behind a cloudy haze.

One of my lenses suffered this fate after acetone stripped the coating, but the other DIY techniques I tried didn’t harm the coatings on any of the other sunglass lenses. However, if you really don’t believe me and the expert, and you plan on trying any of the hacks above on your own scratched sunglasses, don’t say we didn’t warn you. Depending on your glasses, you could end up making the problem worse.

This might seem obvious, but the best way to keep your sunglasses scratch-free is the old-fashioned way—by storing them in a case when you don’t have them on your face. A hardback case that snaps closed offers your sunglasses more overall protection, but even a soft eyeglass pouch can help to mitigate scrapes.

If you’d rather not carry a case, you can instead keep your sunglasses secured around your neck with a sporty retainer strap or a stylish chain.

For me and my fabulous thrift-store sunglasses, this commonsense advice comes far too late. But hopefully my mistake can help you keep your favorite sunnies from suffering a similar fate in the future.

This article was edited by Alexander Aciman and Annemarie Conte.