green reflections in glasses

[Phillip Mosness]

just curious why the reflections in eye glasses often have a green hue.

I might guess it has to do with florescent lighting having a spike in the green of the spectrum, but only in people's glasses?

I see it in both video and film.

[Satsuki Murashige]

The simple answer is the lens coatings on the glasses. Coatings are microscopic layers of chemicals applied to the glass surface designed to reflect away or absorb different wavelengths of light in order to produce clearer images to the viewer. If you're seeing green reflected back, then that means this light is being rejected by the coatings and not passed through to the eye. Fluorescent lights generally do contain a green spike so you would expect them to appear less green when viewed through these multi-coated optics. Not sure if it works that way in practice though.

[David Mullen ASC]

It's the anti-reflection coatings -- even a normal white tungsten light becomes a green reflection.

[Phillip Mosness]

Thanks guys.

That makes sense.