With a non-prescription contact lens, the world won't look different to you, but you'll look different to the world. All contact lenses require a prescription for their fit, but most can be bought without vision correction. So if there's a reason you want to change the look of your eyes, but not your vision, there's probably a non-prescription contact lens for you.

A serious use for a non-prescription contact lens could be as a protective bandage after eye surgery or damage to an eye. But most uses are strictly cosmetic and usually are to either improve eye color or to completely change its apparent color.

If you have light colored eyes, you may want to add some accents to your color. An enhancement non-prescription contact lens is tinted with the same color as your eyes. The color is a transparent dye layer contained within the lens, which colors your eye without coloring what you see.

Unlike an enhancement lens, a non-prescription contact lens made to change your eye color, is opaque. Because of this, the color tinting is a ring which surrounds a clear center. The clear center goes over your pupil for unobstructed vision and the color ring covers your iris so none of your eye color shows.

An extreme type of non-prescription contact lens is the special effects or theatric type. Whether used in movies or just for fun, the possible effects are virtually unlimited. They can make you look like you have an alien's or a vampire's eyes. Or they could have a special design like a sports team's logo.

An increasingly popular use for a non-prescription contact lens is in sports, particularly tennis. Special lenses can mute background colors so that a tennis ball or other object stands out more clearly.