A colored contact lens lets you change your eye color as often as you change your underwear. Maybe even more often. But no matter how often you choose to do so, with the comfort of soft contact lenses, it's no problem to have a different colored contact lens for any occasion.

The only difference between a colored contact lens and a regular lens is the dye embedded in the lens. Most types of contact lenses are available in a colored style and color contacts can come without vision correction. There are several types of color contacts and they're defined by their intended use. But like uncolored contacts, color contact lenses require a prescription, even if they don't have vision correction.

The simplest type of colored contact lens is an enhancement lens. It's made to enrich your eye color instead of change it. To do this, it has a light layer of tint contained in the lens. The tint covers both the iris and the pupil, but it's so light that it doesn't color what you see. Because the effect is moderate, most enhancement lenses are made for light color eyes.

To change eye color, an opaque tint is needed to cover the iris. This type of colored contact lens has one or several layers of non-transparent tint. The lenses which look most like a real iris have multi-layer patterns for increased depth and realism. Obviously, the center of an opaque lens is left clear for unblocked sight. Opaque lenses are also used for creating special effects in movies or to produce an unusual effect for parties or other occasions.

A recent type of colored contact lens is for use in sports. By filtering certain background colors a moving object, such as a yellow tennis ball, stands out. And any sport using a fast moving object can benefit from this type of lens.