We repair frames for a living, so take what follows with that in mind. But we also turn work away, and the honest position is that repairing is the right answer most of the time and the wrong answer some of the time. Here is how to tell which one you are looking at.
Start with the arithmetic
Work out what the fix actually costs before you compare it with anything.
A full frame repair is from £40. That is hinges, arms, nose pads and screws serviced, your lenses refitted, and an ultrasonic clean, with postage free both ways — we send you a free post label to get the frame to us, and return postage is included. A pair of genuine Ray-Ban replacement lenses starts at £60 non-polarised and £80 polarised, with £10 on top if you want us to fit them. Frame polishing on acetate is from £50.
So a tired pair of Wayfarers with a loose hinge and scratched lenses is from £40 plus £60, and comes back working. Put that next to what the same frame costs new today — you know that figure better than we do — and the decision usually makes itself.
Parts alone are cheaper still. A nose pad, a screw, a set of temple tips, a single arm: those are items off the shelf, and there are 788 of them in the replacement parts collection. If the fault is one missing component and you own a precision screwdriver, the job may cost you a few pounds and ten minutes.
The part nobody prices
A pair of sunglasses is acetate or metal, a pair of coated lenses, steel hinges and screws, sometimes silicone or rubber. Nothing about that goes in a kerbside recycling bin. It goes in the bin whole, and a new frame gets made somewhere to replace it.
We are not going to put a number on that, because any number we gave you would be made up. The point is simpler than a statistic: a repaired frame is one frame that does not get thrown away, and the materials it is made of are the reason that matters.
Older frames are often worth more effort
This is our own view rather than a measurable fact, but it is what we see on the bench. Frames from twenty years ago tend to come in with metal hinges properly pinned into thick acetate. They come apart, they take a new hinge, they go back together. A lot of what breaks is repairable precisely because it was built to be taken apart.
There is also the simple matter that you already know the frame fits. A shape that suits your face and sits right on your nose is not easy to replace, and it is the single most common reason people send us something that a stranger would have binned.
Age on its own is not a barrier. We have written separately about repairing discontinued and vintage Ray-Bans, which covers what is still possible once the original parts have stopped being made.
When replacing is the right answer
An article that says never buy new is not worth reading. Here are the cases where we would tell you to replace.
The frame cost less than the repair. This is the big one. A repair from £40 on a £25 pair of sunglasses is not a saving, it is a sentimental purchase. That is a perfectly good reason to do it if the pair means something to you, but be clear with yourself that it is the reason.
The front is broken and no part exists. If a discontinued model has snapped through the bridge or the rim and the component is no longer made, there is nothing to rebuild it from. We will tell you that rather than take the frame in and disappoint you later.
The costs stack past the point of sense. A new arm, plus a new pair of lenses, plus polishing, on a frame that was inexpensive to begin with, adds up to a number that buys a new pair. We quote before we start for exactly this reason: you should get to see the total and say no.
You need a lens we cannot make in that frame. Genuine Ray-Ban and Oakley prescription lenses for your own frames are single vision only. If you need varifocals in that particular frame, that route is closed, and a different frame may be the sensible answer.
You have stopped wearing them. Repairing a frame you do not like is money spent on a drawer. Sustainability arguments do not apply to something that is going to sit unworn either way.
The middle option people forget
It is not always repair against replace. Quite often the frame is fine and only the lenses have gone, which is the cheapest outcome of the three and the one most people overlook because a scratched lens makes a pair look finished.
It is also worth saying that a scratch in a lens cannot be buffed out. The coating is what is damaged. Anyone who offers to polish the scratches out of a coated lens is going to hand you back a worse lens than you gave them. New lenses, or nothing.
How to find out which one you are
Tell us what has happened to the frame and what it is. We will say whether it is a part, a repair, a new pair of lenses, or a lost cause — and if it is the last one, you have lost nothing by asking.
We have been doing this by hand in the UK since 1999, and the frames that come back for a second repair years later are the whole argument. A frame you already own, that already fits, is almost always the better buy.