Category: Swim Goggles

Everyone knows how critical swim goggles are. But what’s the best way to wear them, over or under a swim cap? We tackle this time-tested question.

One of the most essential pieces of equipment for any swimmer is their trusty set of swim goggles.

They perform a variety of functions, not limited to improving visibility in the water, reducing those pesky red and itchy eyes, and even helping you swim with better technique.

It’s rare to meet a swimmer who doesn’t grasp the utility of swim goggles.

But when it comes to swimming goggles being under or over your swim cap, that’s where things start to get tricky.

There are some excellent arguments for both, and ultimately, it comes down to the kind of swimming you are doing and your comfort levels.

In this article, we will look at both sides of this debate.

Let’s dive right in!

Swim Goggles Over the Cap

Let’s start with what could be considered the more traditional approach—wearing your favorite set of swimming goggles over a swim cap.

🏊 Easy to adjust the goggle straps and sockets.

For novice swimmers who are getting used to swimming goggles, placing the straps over the swim cap gives you easy access to the head straps.

It’s a reality that sometimes you need to tighten your goggles mid-workout, and removing both the cap and goggles to make an adjustment can eat up time that is better spent swimming.

Additionally, there may be a time when you need a wholesale adjustment of the angle of the straps leading into the goggle sockets.

Fixing these issues, which are common to both novice and experienced swimmers, is a piece of chlorinated cake when the straps are sitting on top.

🏊 Less restrictive.

Wearing your goggles for two hours straight can leave your face and eye sockets feeling a little sore.

There will be times when you want to take off your swim goggles, whether that’s for some social kicking with your teammate or during a break between sets.

Related: Why You Should Always Wear Swim Goggles When Lap Swimming

When the cap is over the goggles, you can’t take the swim goggles off for a “breather” without having to reapply everything.

🏊 Goggle straps won’t pull or tug on the hair.

For swimmers with long hair, wearing your swim goggles over the cap is a big win.

Goggle straps move around on the head when swimming, doing kick on a board, flip turns, and all the rest.

Placing goggles over the cap mean the straps aren’t tugging and pulling on your hair over the course of your workout.

Swimming Goggles Under the Cap

Next up, is the more “competitive” style of strap and cap placement.

Here’s why swimmers put goggles under their caps when hitting the water.

🏊 Keeps your swim goggles in place.

Know what every swimmer’s worst nightmare is? Goggles leaking or outright falling off when they dive into the water on race day.

Wearing goggles under a cap will *almost* completely eliminate this possibility.

The cap locks the straps into place, so they won’t slide and move when hitting the water or when swimming at high speed. Goggle straps can catch water and fold over at very high speeds.

Competitive swimmers cannot waste a moment adjusting their goggles on race day, so securing their goggles under the cap makes logical sense and gives swimmers a little confidence knowing that their equipment won’t fail them when it matters most.

🏊 Creates a more hydrodynamic profile in the water.

This again applies primarily to serious swimmers who are out to maximize every last ounce of their preparation and hard work. However small, goggle straps create a tiny bit of resistance and drag in the water. When swimmers are moving at peak speeds, they are streamlined and trying to be as efficient as possible.

The fewer obstacles swimmers give the water to hit and bounce off of, creating more drag and slowing them down, the better.

What about putting your goggle strap between two caps?

Want the best of both worlds?

The reduced hair tugging of wearing a cap over your goggles combined with the strap security and drag reduction of wearing your goggles under your cap?

Then consider wearing two caps and putting the goggle straps between them.

Here’s how this works:

• The bottom layer (usually a latex or Lycra cap, which is comfortable and won’t tug on the hair) is put on.
• Then the goggles.
• And then a silicone swim cap, locking your swim goggles into place.

Voila, a swim goggle/swim cap sandwich!

Plenty of elite swimmers do this, including among them Katie Ledecky, who wore two caps with her goggles between them at the Tokyo Olympics.

This method is generally reserved for competitive swimmers, but if it’s what makes you comfortable at the lap pool, go for it!

At the end of the day, whether you put your goggles under your cap, over your cap, or between a pair of caps, you wanna hit the water with confidence.

Got more questions about swim goggles?

I’ve got answers!

Check ‘em:

✔️ Frustrated with goggles that keep leaking? Here is a simple step-by-step guide to troubleshooting leaky swim goggles.

✔️ Swim goggles come in a variety of tints and lenses. Here’s a detailed look at figuring out which lenses to get for your next set of swimming goggles.

Confused about the different types of swim goggle lenses? Here’s a detailed look at every type of swim goggle lens so that you can find the one that is perfect for you.

Swim goggles come in a huge variety of sizes, materials, colors, and yup… lenses!

Which can make a difficult decision ever trickier.

After all, choosing the best swim goggles for you is hard enough. Sorting through all of the different types of head straps, adjustable nose bridges, peripheral vision, gasket material, drag profile, and much more.

Fortunately, choosing a goggle lens is much more straightforward.

Especially when you have a good understanding of the different types and which lenses are best for specific situations.

Here’s everything you need to know about choosing the right swim goggle lenses for you.

Clear swim goggle lens

Want super X-ray vision at the pool? Maximum brightness?

Clear goggle lenses are your best friend in this scenario.

A clear lens allows the maximum amount of light to pass to your eyes, making these types of lenses best suited for darker, indoor swim pools.

Some clear lens swim goggles offer a UV coating that can induce some reflection, they won’t help reduce glare or brightness when swimming outdoors.

Best for: Darker and indoor pools.

Prescription swim goggle lens

There are a lot of reasons you should wear swim goggles, not the least is that they help you accurately see the environment around you.

For a long time, this clarity wasn’t available to the countless people who use corrective lenses on the dry side of the pool.

Not anymore.

Prescription swim goggles are now available in a decent range of goggle types and a range of diopters.

Most prescription swim goggles come with a clear lens (some brands, like the Speedo HydroPure pictured below, also have smoke or blue lenses), which does limit the range of lens tints available, but something is better than nothing in this case.

Best for: Swimmers with a prescription

Mirrored swim goggle lens

Mirrored swim goggles are a long-time personal favorite of mine.

Most, if not all of my swim goggles since my early days of swimming have been mirrored.

They simply look badass.

In more practical terms, mirrored goggle lenses reflect light away from the eyes and turn down the brightness of the sun and bright pool lights.

They also do a great job at reducing glare (but not as effective as polarized lenses, which we will look at next).

That said, like any kind of darker lens—and this goes for smoke and polarized lenses as well—this kind of tint can make it harder to see in darker pools.

Best for: Bright and outdoor pools and psyching out the competition on race day

Polarized swim goggle lens

Spend a lot of time swimming outdoors? (Lucky!)

Fed up with squinting from the sun’s glare bouncing off the surface of the water? (Fair enough!)

Swim goggles with a polarized lens are your best bet.

They almost completely eliminate the glare (up to 99% according to the folks at TYR) that happens from the sun while churning up and down the lane.

This reduces eye strain and also protects your eyeballs from the sun’s rays.

Unlike mirrored or metallic goggle lenses, I’ve always found that polarized lenses are a little better for darker, indoor swim pools.

Best for: Reducing glare when swimming outside

Smoke swim goggle lens

Another entry in the “turn down the brightness” category of swim goggle lens is our old friend and pal, smoke.

As you can guess, they are designed to reduce brightness when swimming in outdoor pools or the stadium-lit indoor swim pool.

Most decent swim goggle makers construct all of their goggles with some sort of UV coating, so smoke goggles are also ideal for sunny days swimming outside.

How smokey the lenses are depends on the goggle manufacturer, with some going nearly black-out while others produce lenses that have a light touch of smoke.

With the exception of really dimly lit indoor pools (my high school team’s pool was an excellent example of this—orange overhead lighting and no natural light), smoke goggles are great for just about every kind of pool environment.

Best for: Bright indoor pools and outdoor swimming

Colored swim goggles lenses

Finally, we have a mixed bag of lens colors that include blue, pink, orange, green, red and yellow.

Colored lenses are a little rarer on pool decks and in the water, but swimmers who choose them tend to stick with them.

Colored goggle lenses help make things around you “pop,” making them a solid choice for swimmers who want more contrast in what they are seeing in the water.

Red, orange, yellow, or pink lenses are a good choice for dimly-lit pools as they can help to increase the contrast of the environment around you.

Blue or green lenses, like smoke, are good all-environment lens colors that can boost brightness and in some cases can also reduce glare.

Colored lenses are also available on mirrored goggles. The TYR Rocket Sockets, for example, have a mirrored and red google lens.

Best for: Increasing contrast

The Bottom Line

We made it.

We laughed. We cried. We learned all about google lenses and what kind you should get.

At the end of the day, swim goggles are a tool to help you swim better, swim safer, and to get the most from your time spent in the pool.

For more information on swimming goggles, check out these other guides:

🏊 Why You Should Wear Swim Goggles When Lap Swimming. Swim goggles protect your eyes and help you swim better. Here is a deeper look at the benefits of wearing swim goggles at the pool.

Swim goggles protect your eyes and help you swim better. Here are the benefits of wearing swim goggles at the pool.

Swimming is one of the best sports and activities you can do for both your physical and mental health.

Regardless of whether you are aiming at attending the next summer Olympics or you simply just like taking a break from social media and your smartphone for an hour to stare at a black tiled line, swimming is awesome.

And one of the essential pieces of swim equipment for tackling today’s swim practice is a set of swim goggles.

While you could go au naturel like the swimmers of the past, there are a lot of serious benefits to strapping on a pair of trusty swim goggles when you hit the water.

Some of the benefits of goggles are obvious (seeing stuff) but other reasons to wear swim goggles might be a little less obvious.

If you’re still sitting on the side of the pool about whether or not you should wear them, check out some of the best reasons to strap on a pair of swim goggles below.

Safety first!

The primary function of swim goggles is to improve underwater visibility.

Some of the ways this underwater vision comes in handy:

🏊 Judging distance to the wall. Crystal-clear vision means we can see that bulkhead or pool wall coming at us, even in the most dimly lit of swim pools. This helps you time your flip-turns properly and touch the wall at the end of your race on a full stroke.

🏊 Seeing other swimmers. Going to a swim meet and getting for warm-up can feel like a full contact sport. Hundreds of swimmers packed into the pool, the water bubbling with arms. Swim goggles allow you to keep an eye on other swimmers to avoid collisions.

While you can try and acclimatize your naked eyes to the water, we aren’t built to do so. Human eyes aren’t designed to see well under the surface as water reduces the power of the eye to focus. The scattering of light also reduces contrast, making it harder to properly assess depth and shapes.

Focus on technique.

Swim goggles help you swim with better technique. Is that an outrageous statement?

Maybe.

But because you can see properly under the water, you can see your hand placement, the path of the pull under the water, how close you are to the surface on a backstroke breakout, and so on.

So much of your stroke technique depends on being able to process the visual cues of the environment around you.

Extend your swim workouts.

Every swimmer, at some point, experiences the struggle of having their eyes become bloodshot and supremely itchy while at the pool.

That awful itchiness and bloodshot eyes that comes from your eyes interact with chloramines (it’s not chlorine specifically that causes your eyes to itch and burn—it’s the chloramines, a byproduct of chlorine interacting with organic matter like sweat and pee) can stop a great workout dead in its tracks.

After all, what is gonna drain your motivation faster than your eyes feeling like they are on fire and super itchy? Doesn’t make me want to keep swimming, that’s for sure.

Swim goggles, by reducing and eliminating the red eyes will keep you in the water longer.

Purists, the kind who walked to school uphill, five miles in the snow—both ways!—will  say that you don’t need swim goggles.

I would argue that I want my eyes to be healthy more than I need to be a tough guy 😉.

(If you are wearing swim goggles and your eyes are still getting itchy and red, here’s a guide on how to stop your swim goggles from leaking.)

Protect your eyes from the sun and glare

There are few things in the world better than swimming laps in an outdoor pool. Some might say it’s my happy place. The sparkling water, a sunny day, and a lane to myself is a recipe for all the ills in my life.

But on these occasions when I find myself out on the water, having a pair of swim goggles with a dark tint—or better, polarized or mirrored lens—is a gamechanger.

Properly tinted swim goggles can make swimming outdoors way more enjoyable as you won’t find yourself squinting like you are trying to read the page of a dictionary from a distance of 25-yards.

For outdoor swimming, at the least look for a darkly tinted lens. A polarized lens is a great all-weather lens that is built to reduce the glare from water in the outdoors.

Mirrored lens also does an exceptional job or reflecting light and competitive swimmers love them because of the perceived psychological advantage that comes with competitors not being able to see their eyes on race day.

Prescription options!

Lastly, swim goggles come with the option of corrective lenses. Which is great news for the estimated 45 million wearers of contact lens in the United States¹ (plus the countless others who wear corrective glasses).

While optical swim goggles were a little slow to come to market, swim companies have finally caught up, producing a decent number of very reasonably priced swim goggles with optical lenses.

Trying to see under the water is hard enough, no need to compound the issue for those who have myopia or other vision-related issues.

In Conclusion

Swimming goggles, as you are hopefully starting to see by now, provide a heap of benefits for you in terms of motivation, safety and health.

At the end of the day (or rather, at the end of your swim practice), they are a tool to protect your eyes from yucky pool chemicals, help you see everything and everyone under the water, and can even help you swim with better technique.

The next time you head down to the pool, grab a pair of swim goggles and make the most of your time in the water.