Farsightedness is corrected by redirecting light so it focuses directly on the retina instead of behind it. This can be done with glasses, contact lenses, or surgery, and the best option depends on your age, prescription strength, and lifestyle. Most people start with glasses or contacts, while surgery offers a more permanent fix for those who qualify.
Why Farsighted Eyes Need Correction
In a farsighted eye, the cornea is too flat, the eyeball is too short front to back, or both. This means light rays converge at a point behind the retina rather than on its surface. The result: close-up objects look blurry, and in stronger prescriptions, distant objects can blur too.
Young people can sometimes compensate without realizing it. The eye’s internal lens can flex to pull that focal point forward onto the retina, a process called accommodation. This is why many farsighted children never complain about their vision. They don’t know that reading shouldn’t cause eye strain or headaches, because their focusing muscles are constantly working overtime to keep things sharp. Over time, or with higher prescriptions, this compensation becomes insufficient and correction is needed.
Glasses and Contact Lenses
The simplest correction uses convex (plus-power) lenses. These lenses are thicker in the center and cause light to converge before it enters the eye, shifting the focal point forward onto the retina. Your prescription will be written as a positive number, like +2.00 or +4.50 diopters, with higher numbers indicating stronger farsightedness.
Both glasses and contact lenses use the same optical principle. Contact lenses sit directly on the eye, which can provide a wider field of corrected vision and eliminate the slight magnification effect that strong plus-power glasses create. For children, glasses are almost always the first-line treatment. Correcting the refractive error with lenses also helps resolve related problems like eye strain, difficulty focusing between distances, and in some cases, eyes that tend to cross inward.
The main limitation of glasses and contacts is obvious: you have to keep wearing them. They can also be inconvenient for sports, certain jobs, or people who simply prefer not to deal with them, which is where surgical options come in.
LASIK for Farsightedness
LASIK corrects farsightedness by permanently reshaping the cornea so it curves more steeply. A surgeon creates a thin flap on the cornea’s surface, then uses a laser to remove tissue from the mid-periphery of the cornea. This peripheral thinning causes the central cornea to steepen, increasing its focusing power and pulling the focal point forward onto the retina.
This approach differs from LASIK for nearsightedness, where the laser flattens the central cornea instead. The peripheral ablation pattern used in farsighted LASIK is technically more complex, which historically made outcomes less predictable. Modern techniques have improved significantly though. Across large studies, more than 80% of treated eyes achieve 20/40 vision or better (the threshold for driving without glasses in most states), and in the majority of patient groups studied, over half achieve 20/20 vision.
LASIK can treat farsightedness up to about +6.00 diopters. Beyond that level, the amount of corneal reshaping required becomes too great for safe, stable results. You also need to be at least 18, have a stable prescription for at least a year, and have corneas thick enough to safely reshape. People with very dry eyes, thin corneas, or certain autoimmune conditions may not qualify.
PRK as an Alternative to LASIK
PRK uses the same laser technology as LASIK but skips the corneal flap. Instead, the surgeon removes the outer layer of the cornea (the epithelium) entirely, then applies the laser directly to reshape the underlying tissue. The epithelium grows back on its own over several days.
PRK is typically recommended when someone’s corneas are too thin for a LASIK flap or when other factors make flap creation risky. The visual results are comparable, but recovery takes longer. Expect blurry vision and some discomfort for the first week, with full visual stabilization taking one to three months rather than the day or two typical of LASIK. One consideration specific to farsighted PRK: without a protective flap over the reshaped area, the regrowing epithelium can partially undo the corneal steepening over time, which may reduce the long-term correction.
Refractive Lens Exchange
For people with moderate to severe farsightedness (generally above +6.00 diopters), or those over 40 who are also developing age-related difficulty with close-up reading, refractive lens exchange is often the better surgical path. This procedure replaces the eye’s natural lens with an artificial intraocular lens, similar to cataract surgery but performed before a cataract develops.
The artificial lens is calculated to provide the correct focusing power for your eye, eliminating the refractive error at its source rather than reshaping the cornea to compensate. Depending on the type of lens implanted, it can correct distance vision alone or both distance and near vision. Because the artificial lens doesn’t change with age, this procedure also eliminates the possibility of developing cataracts later. Recovery typically takes a few weeks, and the correction is permanent.
Refractive lens exchange carries slightly more risk than corneal laser procedures because it involves surgery inside the eye rather than on its surface. Rare complications include retinal detachment and infection. It’s generally reserved for patients whose farsightedness is too strong for LASIK, who are already experiencing lens-related aging changes, or who have early cataracts.
Farsightedness in Children
Children deserve special mention because their eyes handle farsightedness differently than adult eyes. A child’s lens is flexible enough to accommodate for mild to moderate farsightedness automatically, which means many farsighted kids pass basic vision screenings. They can see the eye chart clearly because their focusing muscles are working hard to compensate.
The problem is that this constant effort causes symptoms the child may not recognize or report: headaches after reading, difficulty concentrating on schoolwork, fatigue, or avoiding close-up tasks altogether. The American Optometric Association recommends a first eye exam around 6 months of age, another at age 3, and again before first grade. These comprehensive exams can detect farsightedness that a simple screening misses.
When correction is needed, glasses with plus-power lenses are the standard treatment. Relieving the eyes of the strain of constant accommodation often resolves not just blurry vision but also concentration problems and headaches that parents and teachers may have attributed to other causes. Surgery is not performed on farsighted children; their eyes are still growing and their prescription is still changing.
Choosing the Right Correction
Your prescription strength is the single biggest factor in narrowing your options. Mild to moderate farsightedness (up to about +6.00 diopters) can be corrected with glasses, contacts, or LASIK/PRK. Stronger prescriptions generally point toward refractive lens exchange. Age matters too: people over 40 are often losing the ability to focus up close regardless of their farsightedness, and a lens replacement can address both problems at once.
For people in their 20s and 30s with stable, moderate prescriptions who want freedom from glasses, LASIK is the most common surgical choice. The procedure takes about 15 minutes per eye, and most people return to normal activities within a day or two. If you’re not a LASIK candidate due to corneal thickness or other factors, PRK achieves the same result with a longer recovery window. And if surgery doesn’t appeal to you at all, modern glasses and contact lenses correct farsightedness just as effectively as they always have, with none of the surgical risks.