Safety glasses tint levels: the numbers that exist, and the ones nobody prints

Why there is no tint level on the box

If you have come here from the sunglasses world, the absence of a number is jarring. Fashion sunglasses are commonly described by filter category, and photographic and welding filters have their own well-defined scales. Industrial safety eyewear mostly does not work that way: Pyramex lists the Intruder in "Clear, Gray, I/O Mirror, Amber, Infinity Blue, Silver Mirror, Blue Mirror", Walker's ships a kit with "Clear, Smoke Gray, Amber, Yellow", and neither prints a transmission percentage anywhere.

There are two reasons for that, and both are worth knowing. The ANSI Z87.1 standard is primarily an impact and marking standard, with filter requirements attached for lenses that are filters — so a lightly tinted impact lens has no scale number to carry. And commercially, these are catalogue products sold by the box to employers, where the purchasing decision is clear-versus-gray-versus-amber rather than a number.

The practical consequence: you cannot compare two safety tints numerically, and anyone presenting a tidy table of safety-lens transmission percentages has either found a source we have not or made them up. We will not. Where a figure is published, it is in the table below with the document it came from.

The three numbering systems that do exist

The U scale: ultraviolet filters. Marked U followed by a number from 2 to 6, with U6 the highest step. This describes UV filtering, which is invisible and unrelated to how dark a lens looks — covered in detail on do safety glasses block UV.

The L scale: visible-light filters. Marked L followed by a scale number, for lenses intended as visible-light filters rather than general-purpose tinted impact lenses. This is the closest thing to a "tint level" in the standard, and the reason most safety glasses do not carry one is that most safety glasses are not sold as light filters.

The W scale: welding shades. Marked W followed by a shade number — on the frames and lenses in our registry, the Pyramex Capstone 500 is offered in an IR3 shaded variant, for example. These are a different product class with a different purpose: blocking the intense visible and infrared radiation of an arc or flame. A welding shade is not a "darker tint", it is a filter chosen from a table by process and amperage, and nothing on this page is a substitute for that table.

All of these are markings on the device, which makes them the only tint information on a pair of safety glasses that is tied to the standard rather than to marketing. The complete decoder is on what does Z87+ mean.

Every transmission figure we can cite

Notice what these have in common: they are all photochromic lenses. Transition lenses are the one category where makers publish a range, because the range is the product.

Figures quoted verbatim from the linked documents. The last row is the honest state of the category: for fixed tints there is no number to compare, which is why this site ranks tints by light condition and target instead.

How to choose without a number

Choose by the light you are in and the target you are looking at. That is how this site organizes the whole tint hub, and in the absence of transmission data it is the only defensible method.

Dim indoor light. Clear, or vermillion where the range runs fluorescent or halogen fixtures — the tint Honeywell names specifically for that lighting on the Genesis Sharp-Shooter. The indoor-range guide has the detail.

Flat, overcast, dusk. Amber or yellow. Honeywell names amber for low light, cloudy and foggy outdoor environments. These lenses are not dark; they lift apparent contrast. Yellow vs clear settles the common argument.

Bright open sun. Gray or smoke, for even dimming without a color shift — smoke lens safety glasses.

Orange clay against sky or trees. Vermillion, rose or purple, which lift orange out of a green or blue background — vermillion and rose and purple lens shooting glasses.

Changing light all day. A photochromic lens, which is the one case where you get a published number — best photochromic safety glasses.

Kits: the honest way to find your tint

If the numbers do not exist, the cheapest way to settle a tint question is to own several and find out. Three of the four picks below are multi-lens kits for exactly that reason.

Where shade numbers genuinely matter

One serious caveat to end on. If your work involves welding, cutting or brazing, tint selection stops being a preference and becomes a shade-number decision governed by the process and the current you are running. A general-purpose dark safety lens is not a welding filter, and no amount of tint depth makes it one — the hazard includes infrared and intense visible radiation that a sunglass tint does not address.

That is outside what this site rates: we cover impact-rated eyewear for the range, the field and the shop, not welding filters. What we will say is that the markings are the place to check — a W or R code on the lens means it was assessed as that kind of filter — and that eye protection worn under a welding helmet for grinding and chipping is a separate, legitimate purchase. The grinding side of that job is on safety glasses for grinding metal.