If you’ve ever had anti-reflective (AR) coating on your glasses, you know the basics: it helps reduce glare from headlights at night, cuts down on screen reflections, and makes your lenses look cleaner. But if you’ve also noticed that faint greenish, purplish, or yellowish sheen bouncing off your lenses in photos, or caught your reflection in a mirror and wondered why your glasses look a little “off,” you’re not imagining things.
That color you’re seeing is called residual reflection color, and until recently, even the best premium AR coatings couldn’t fully eliminate it. That changes with the new Crizal Natural Look from Essilor.
At Urban Optique & Eyecare, we’re always looking for the best lens technology to offer our Chandler-area patients, and this one genuinely caught our attention. Here’s what makes it different.
What Does a Basic Anti-Reflective Coating Actually Do?
A standard AR coating works by applying microscopic layers to your lens that cause light waves to cancel each other out, reducing the amount of light that bounces back toward the viewer. This is why AR lenses look clearer and why people’s eyes are more visible through your glasses in photos.
Basic AR coatings do a decent job with light intensity, but they’ve always left behind some visible color. You’ve seen it: that telltale tint on the lens surface that changes depending on the angle you’re looking from. In a world where your glasses show up in every video call, photo, and selfie, that residual color reflection has become more than a minor inconvenience. It’s an aesthetic issue that patients increasingly notice and care about.
If you’re not sure what kind of lenses you currently have, our team can review your options during your next comprehensive eye exam in Chandler.
What Makes Crizal Natural Look Different?
Essilor’s Research and Development team spent over two years specifically studying residual reflection color, something no one had formally tackled with this level of rigor before. They built a new evaluation method, validated it through sensory analysis with an expert panel, and used those findings to develop a brand-new coating technology called Advanced Aesthetic Technology.
The result is a coating that controls both light intensity and color intensity simultaneously. That dual control is the key breakthrough. Previous premium coatings could minimize glare, but the color cast remained. Crizal Natural Look reduces the reflection to the point where it’s nearly invisible to the naked eye, and it performs that way from multiple viewing angles, not just straight on.
In practical terms, this means:
- Less visible lens color in photos and video. Your eyes look more natural, the way they would without glasses.
- More consistent appearance across angles. Whether someone is looking at you straight-on or from the side, the reflection stays subtle.
- Reduced yellow color cast compared to previous top-tier Crizal coatings like Sapphire HR.
- Fewer distracting ghost images. These are the faint secondary reflections of light sources that appear inside the lens.
How Does It Compare to Other Crizal Coatings?
Crizal Natural Look sits at the top of the Crizal portfolio. It’s their best-performing anti-reflective coating, offering equivalent scratch resistance to Crizal Sapphire HR and Crizal Rock while significantly outperforming them on aesthetics.
Compared to Crizal’s entry-level coatings, it delivers 2x higher scratch resistance. And it maintains all the protection you’d expect from a premium lens: smudge resistance, dust and water repellency, and backside UV protection.
You’re not trading performance for looks. You’re getting both. To explore your full lens options, visit our frames and lenses page.
Who Is This Coating Best For?
Most of our patients would benefit from Crizal Natural Look, but a few groups will notice the biggest difference. We see patients from across the East Valley and beyond, including Gilbert, Queen Creek, San Tan Valley, Ahwatukee, Mesa, Tempe, Phoenix, and even Casa Grande, and Crizal Natural Look is available to anyone who visits our Chandler office.
Frequent video callers and remote workers. If you’re on Zoom or Teams daily, your glasses are constantly visible on camera. That persistent lens reflection is something your colleagues see even if you’ve stopped noticing it.
Social media users and people who take a lot of photos. The residual color on standard AR lenses shows up clearly in photos, especially in bright indoor lighting. Crizal Natural Look minimizes that noticeably.
Patients who spend long hours on screens. If you’re experiencing eye fatigue or discomfort at your computer, the combination of glare reduction and reduced color distortion can make a meaningful difference. This pairs well with our digital eye strain services if screen use is a consistent issue for you.
Patients who care about a polished, natural look. Glasses are a fashion accessory, and how your lenses look is part of the overall aesthetic. Our wide selection of premium frames paired with Natural Look coating creates a cleaner, more refined result.
It Also Pairs with Transitions Lenses
Crizal Natural Look is available in combination with Transitions lenses, giving you the added benefit of automatic darkening outdoors. That combination delivers true-to-tone color at every stage of activation: fully clear indoors and darkened in sunlight, with all the aesthetic advantages of the Natural Look coating intact.
For Chandler patients who are constantly moving between bright Arizona sunlight and air-conditioned indoor spaces, this pairing is a particularly smart choice. Ask us about it at your next eye exam appointment.
Seeing Is Believing
The difference between a basic AR coating and Crizal Natural Look is subtle until you see them side by side, and then it becomes quite obvious. The lens surface simply looks more like it’s not there.
If you’re due for new glasses or have been thinking about upgrading your lenses, we’d love to show you the difference in person. Book an appointment at Urban Optique & Eyecare in Chandler, or give us a call at 480-802-7170.
Your eyes and your Instagram feed will thank you.
