The safest way to swim with contacts is to wear watertight goggles over them, or better yet, skip the contacts entirely and use prescription goggles instead. Both the CDC and the FDA recommend removing contact lenses before any water activity, including swimming, showering, and using hot tubs. Water and contacts are a genuinely risky combination, but if you’re going to do it anyway, there are steps that significantly reduce your chances of a serious eye infection.
Why Water and Contacts Don’t Mix
Soft contact lenses absorb water. When pool, lake, or ocean water seeps under or into a lens, the lens can change shape, swell, and stick to the surface of your eye. That clinging creates friction that scratches the cornea, the clear outer layer protecting your eye. A scratched cornea is more than uncomfortable. It opens a direct path for bacteria and parasites to enter.
The most dangerous of these is an amoeba called Acanthamoeba, which lives in tap water, pool water, lake water, well water, and essentially any water that isn’t sterile. An Acanthamoeba infection of the cornea (Acanthamoeba keratitis) is extremely painful and notoriously difficult to treat, sometimes requiring more than a year of medication. In severe cases it leads to a corneal transplant or permanent blindness. One published case in The Lancet Infectious Diseases described a 25-year-old swimming instructor who developed the infection despite wearing daily disposable lenses and goggles. Acanthamoeba was found both in her corneal biopsy and in the pool water itself.
Chlorine doesn’t eliminate this risk. Pool chemicals reduce many germs but don’t reliably kill Acanthamoeba cysts, which have a tough double-walled structure that resists disinfection. Lakes and oceans carry an even wider range of bacteria and parasites.
If You Swim With Contacts, Wear Goggles
A pair of well-fitting, watertight swim goggles is your best line of defense if you choose to keep contacts in. The goal is simple: create a seal around each eye that prevents water from reaching the lens. Look for goggles with a snug silicone gasket that presses evenly against the skin around your eye socket. Before getting in the water, tilt your head forward and check that no air escapes. If you feel bubbles, adjust the strap or try a different size.
No goggle seal is perfect, especially after a racing dive or a rough wave. Water can trickle in during a long session, so goggles reduce the risk rather than eliminating it. Treat them as a strong precaution, not a guarantee.
Use Daily Disposable Lenses
If you’re swimming with contacts, daily disposables are the smartest choice. You wear them once and throw them away, so there’s no chance of a contaminant sitting on the lens overnight and multiplying. With reusable lenses, even a small amount of water absorbed during a swim can harbor germs that survive in the lens material and grow in the storage case.
The CDC’s guidance is clear: if water touches your contact lenses for any reason, take them out as soon as possible. Throw them away, or if they’re reusable lenses, clean and disinfect them overnight before wearing them again. Dailies make this easy. You get out of the pool, peel them off, toss them, and put in a fresh pair if you need one.
Prescription Goggles as an Alternative
The cleanest solution is to leave your contacts at home entirely and swim in prescription goggles. These come in two forms. Ready-made versions use “step diopters,” meaning they’re available in common prescription increments and typically cost $20 to $40. If your prescription is more complex (significant astigmatism, for example), custom-made prescription goggles are available at a higher price point through optical retailers.
Prescription goggles give you clear underwater vision with zero infection risk from contact lenses. For anyone who swims regularly, they’re worth the investment. You also avoid the annoyance of a lens shifting or falling out mid-lap.
What to Do After Swimming With Contacts
Remove your lenses as soon as you’re out of the water. Don’t wait until you get home. If you wore daily disposables, throw them away immediately. If you wore reusable lenses, place them in fresh disinfecting solution overnight before wearing them again. Never rinse or store contacts in tap water, as that introduces the same waterborne germs you were trying to avoid in the pool.
Give your eyes a few minutes to readjust before putting in a fresh pair of lenses. If the lens felt stuck or your vision was blurry after the swim, that’s the lens swelling from water absorption. It usually resolves once the lens is removed, but persistent blurriness, redness, or discomfort is worth paying attention to.
Warning Signs of Infection
Most swimmers who accidentally get water on their contacts will be fine. But if you notice any of the following symptoms in the days or weeks after swimming, take them seriously:
- A feeling that something is stuck in your eye that doesn’t go away after removing the lens
- Increasing redness or irritation that worsens rather than improves
- Sensitivity to light that makes it hard to be in bright rooms
- Excessive tearing
- Blurry or changing vision
- Severe eye pain, sometimes accompanied by pain on one side of the face
Acanthamoeba keratitis in particular tends to start with mild irritation and escalate into intense, disproportionate pain. Early diagnosis matters enormously because treatment becomes more difficult the longer the infection progresses. Diagnosis typically involves a corneal scraping (your eye is numbed with drops first) and sometimes specialized imaging. If caught early, outcomes are far better than if the amoeba has had weeks to establish itself.
Quick Summary of Best Practices
- Best option: Prescription swim goggles, no contacts
- Next best: Daily disposable contacts plus watertight goggles
- After any swim: Remove and discard dailies immediately, or disinfect reusable lenses overnight
- Never: Rinse contacts with tap water, swim in reusable lenses without goggles, or sleep in lenses that got wet