Best Anti-Fog Treatments for Swim Goggles — Triathletes

When I started training for triathlon 15 years ago, I had never participated in an organized swim workout, never worn fins, or experienced any of the selective cultural customs. So imagine my surprise when the guy in the little Speedo started spitting into his goggles. Not polite little movements, but great big throat-clearing lugs. Hmm, I believed, This will be interesting.

I soon learned that using goggles for phlegm is quite unusual—just one of the methods used by desperate swimmers to keep their lenses clean. Some swear by baby shampoo, others by toothpaste, shaving cream, dish soap, and even hand sanitizer. At my pool, most athletes buy anti-fog sprays or wipes. But when I asked for advice on best brands and best practices, they all shrugged. No one really had a confident opinion.

And this is why Triathlete They assigned me the important task of testing anti-haze treatments. There is a scarcity of reliable performance data to guide shopping decisions. In fact, we scoured the web for signs of actual comparison tests, and couldn’t find anything legitimate.

With this heavy task on my plate, I obtained samples of seven leading anti-fog products regularly marketed to swimmers and athletes (and purchased one bottle of baby shampoo). Then, as detailed below, I subjected each treatment to five cycles of densification testing.

Anti-fog products at a glance

Why do your swimming goggles get foggy?

For those of you who fell asleep in 10th grade physics, here’s a remedial lesson in goggle thermodynamics, simplified into four steps. (Want to dig deeper? Check it out This interview.)

Step 1: Wear safety glasses while standing on a deck or shoreline where the ambient temperature is likely to be 70 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer. Lenses and inserts trap a small amount of air up to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as sweat vapor that naturally escapes from your eyes and skin.

Step 2: Jump into the water, which can be up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Even in warm water, there is still a large gap between the temperature and humidity of the air inside your goggles versus the outside conditions.

Step 3: The difference between cooler outdoor temperatures and warmer indoor temperatures causes sweat vapor to begin to condense.

Step 4: Small droplets of condensation collect in clusters, creating hazy conditions. Blur is made worse by diffraction of light through the droplets, which distorts vision and can lead to glare in bright ambient settings.

Swimmers often make matters worse by rubbing the lenses with their fingers, using soap to clean them, and wiping them with a cloth. All of these procedures will speed up the decomposition of the hydrophilic layer that comes on all new glasses. This reduces their effectiveness, which may result in fog appearing after a few weeks of continuous swimming instead of the usual months.

Best Practices: Rinse and dry your goggles in tap water after swimming, try not to touch the lenses with your fingers, and store them in their original case or bag to keep them free of dust and oils.

Best triathlon goggles of 2026: Testers swam nearly 100,000 yards to evaluate our leading models The last roundincluding a pair with integrated anti-fog properties.

How do anti-fog eyeglasses treatments work?

The factory-applied and aftermarket coatings that we rely on for crystal-clear underwater visibility are chemicals known as surfactants. Their active ingredients may include strange-sounding compounds such as propylene glycol butyl ether, oxyethylene fluorochlorocarbonate, magnesium lauryl sulfate, cocamidopropyl betaine, decyl glucoside, sodium cocoyl isethonate derived from organic sources (such as coconut) or inorganic emulsifiers (such as silicone). Although these chemicals are widely used in shampoos, detergents and other household products, they can cause irritation in people with sensitive skin, so it’s wise to review the ingredients if you have a condition like contact dermatitis. It should go without saying, but never spray it in your eyes.

To prevent fogging, these compounds form a hydrophilic film on your lenses, causing those tiny condensation beads to coalesce and spread into a clear film rather than developing into separate clusters of droplets.

When it’s time to apply aftermarket treatment

Even with careful maintenance, glasses can develop condensation problems after only a few dozen swims. But the first sign of fog isn’t necessarily an indication that you need to buy an anti-fog spray or wipe. In our experience, everyone Goggles — even brand new ones — are prone to fogging up in the first few minutes of swimming, especially when jumping into cold water on a warm day. The initial temperature difference causes this early fog, and it often dissipates as the microclimate around your eyes reaches a better balance.

Instead, you’ll know it’s time to start treating your glasses when the lenses remain cloudy throughout your swim. This indicates that the factory paint has worn off and needs help.

How we tested anti-fog eyeglasses products

Scoring for spectacle therapy in a swimming pool may involve too many variables to achieve fair and objective results. Outside air temperatures and humidity may change while swimming, and the same will happen inside a pair of goggles. It would be nearly impossible to replicate the exact amount of time glasses spend under or over water from one cycle and round of anti-fog treatment to the next.

To reduce these variables and create a more controlled testing environment, I set up a small laboratory in my kitchen. My goal was to follow an evaluation protocol that simulated the conditions that cause fogging (differences in temperature and humidity) and could be applied consistently and repeatedly to each product. Main ingredients:

• Ambient temperature: Because condensation occurs more easily when the water outside the lenses is cooler than the air inside, I set my home thermostat at 70°F, where it stayed throughout the test.
• Temperature and humidity: To mimic the thermal and humidity conditions inside your goggles, you needed to create a source of heat and humidity that could be kept at a constant temperature. To do this, I heated a pot of water on the stove until it was lightly steaming (but not boiling), then monitored it constantly with a liquid thermometer.
• Google interface: To direct the heat and moisture directly to the lenses, I cut an eyeglass-shaped section out of a sheet of hard plastic that was placed over the pan like a lid. My test glasses fit snugly into the opening, eye-side down, trapping warm, humid air and reducing leakage through the gaskets.
• Test glasses: Fogging affects lenses whose hydrophilic coatings have worn away, so I opted for an old pair of goggles whose clear lenses will make it easier to spot condensation.

With these pieces in place, I put each product through five test cycles, completing a full run before moving on to the next product. Process:

• Cleans: To remove oils, dust, and any remaining anti-fog treatment, I washed the lenses of my old glasses with dish soap.
• He advances: After the lenses dried, I applied the product according to the manufacturer’s instructions. This usually means one or two swipes per lens to spray, and one thorough swipe of each lens to towel, followed by several minutes for the treatment to dry and cure.
• Testing and observation: When placing the glasses in the lid, I used a stopwatch to determine how long it took for condensation to appear.
• repeats: Once condensation appeared, I removed the glasses from the lid, rinsed them and let them dry. Without cleaning the lenses or applying further anti-fog treatments, I then repeated the test four more times, recording the time until the first fog appeared each time.

My goal was to evaluate two critical performance characteristics: the initial effectiveness of the treatment and its durability across multiple rinse cycles. Why did you stop at five test cycles for each product? Because we know that many swimmers reapply anti-fog treatments every few swims once their goggles are outdated, and because manufacturers typically recommend reapplying them at a similar frequency. But most importantly, none of the products prevented fogging for more than three cycles, making more cycles unnecessary.

Our anti-fog test results

Each treatment tested succeeded in its most important task: preventing fogging in the first cycle of testing after application. Each time, my lens was crystal clear after 10 minutes, which made me confident I could complete the workout or race without blurring.

But performance differed after the first cycle, once the glasses were rinsed and air dried. Most products weren’t able to prevent fogging on their second cycle, which means you’ll need to reapply them every time you swim. The exception and clear winner was the Frog Spit Spray, which kept the fog away through three full cycles. Its sister, Frog Spit Wipes, was equally effective, staying clean for two cycles and part of a third.

The best of the rest were the Foggies Towelettes, which stayed clean longer on their second cycle. The remaining products – JAWS, Arena, Speedo and TheMagic5 – followed in close order. Interestingly, baby shampoo (in a 5-to-1 shampoo-to-water solution) fared similarly to these four.

In real-world conditions, small time gaps between competitors are insignificant enough that I recommend choosing between them based on price and availability. But that’s only after trying Frog Spit, which is the best option and best value (apart from baby shampoo) from a price-per-application perspective.

What makes our reviews different? Our testers are actually using this thing. a lot. Learn more about Triathlete Equipment Review Process.