Exploring light and colour with Transitions

The lenses feature a subtle permanent tint in either a gradient or wash style in five colours from the Gen S line: ‘ruby,’ ‘emerald,’ ‘amethyst,’ and ‘sapphire.’ Once activated, the lenses reach a vivid colour saturation.

Coralie Barrau, a senior photobiology scientist and research and development innovation manager at Transitions, leads a cross-disciplinary department exploring the science of light modulation.

Barrau spoke to OT about the research behind the Transitions Gen S, the new Color Touch lenses, and the possibilities in light modulation.

Communicating research

The Transitions Gen S lens launched last year, supported by clinical trials led by Professor Pablo Artal at the University of Murcia, and Professor Billy R Hammond at the University of Georgia.

These studies illustrated how the Transitions Gen S lenses could reduce light stress and provide a faster vision recovery in bright light conditions, compared to clear static lenses.

Barrau highlighted the importance of these clinical studies, sharing: “It is important to speak the same language as the eye care professional.”

The clinical trial results were presented at the Transitions Academy in 2024, and the positive reception to this led the organisers to “go further,” with six professors presenting at the 2025 Academy.

“We want to infuse a bit more of the clinical conversation,” Barrau said.

As part of a brand experience during the Transitions Academy, visitors could experience a simplified version of the experiment conducted at Murcia University on the Gen S lens, exploring comfort, visual performance, and recovery time after experiencing a bright light.

It is hoped that presenting the results of the clinical studies can promote conversations into how the findings can be translated into practice to drive adoption.

“Personally, I believe that the vision benefits can drive a significantly faster adoption,” Barrau said.

In the development of the Color Touch lens, Transitions utilised a predictive software for lens colour definition – predicting the performance of the tints at every stage of activation.

Clinical trials also focused on vision performance and colour perception when wearing the Color Touch.

Research tracked eye openness and squinting to assess how the eye was affected by changing light conditions indoors when wearing the Transition Color Touch lenses, compared with static clear lenses.

A clinical trial held at the University of Mercia compared the Transitions Color Touch against static clear lenses in dynamic lighting conditions, simulating outdoor to indoor shifts. Researchers found the Color Touch outperformed that static clear lens, with 2.4 times faster contrast perception, more stable vision, faster recovery, and greater consistency.

Colour perception

Discussing the launch of the Color Touch, Barrau confessed: “The most exciting part to me is the colour perception. We always look at colours from the style perspective, which is great, but it was important for us to check that the colour perception through the lens when inactive would not affect colour fidelity.”

To explore colour perception with the new tinted lenses, Transitions worked with a French research institute, ENTPE, which performs hyperspectral imaging – a technique through which the spectrum of each pixel in an image is defined.

The spectrum of the Transitions Color Touch lenses was applied to hyperspectral images, such as of different landscapes, to simulate wearer perception of colours when the lenses were inactive compared to when they were activated.

Through thousands of computations, the impact of each colour on visual perception across different environments was explored, with researchers finding that colour fidelity was very high – meaning wearers would not recognise a difference in colour perception when the lenses are inactive.

When activated, each lens has a different level of saturation and contrast. The ‘amethyst’ lens is highly saturated, while ‘emerald’ is subtle, the ‘sapphire’ lens has a cooling effect, while ‘ruby’ is warming.

Barrau said of the hyperspectural imaging: “We tested all the comparisons and then, at the end, we have classifications to check if a perception correlates with our models. It is interesting because it changes from the colour.”

“It is ‘how I see,’ and not ‘how I am being seen,’” she added.

Defining trends

Introducing the Color Touch, Jérôme Butez, global vice president of marketing at Transitions Optical, highlighted why the new lens is a good option for Millennials and Gen Z – the 18–35-year-old digital natives who are shaping culture and influencing trends.

He emphasised: “Lenses are no longer the sidekick, they are the main event.”

Research by Transitions suggested that 83% of 18–35-year-olds surveyed felt glasses weren’t just something they wear, but a reflection of their personality, while 72% agreed that their lenses should bring some ‘flair to their eyewear.”

Barrau noted that younger generations want glasses that will match their fast-paced and tech driven lives.

“They are living 24/7 digital lives in a world where scrolling, streaming, and socialising blends seamlessly, and clear vision on the move is a must-have,” she said.

Talking to OT about the marketing of the Color Touch towards this demographic, Barrau shared that light stabilisation could be particularly beneficial for this population of wearers leading ‘phygital’ (a combination of digital and physical) lives.

Transitions drew from its Life 360 database of more than 1300 real-life light conditions to simulate the performance of Transitions Color Touch in varied environments.

This covered the lighting conditions outdoors in different seasons and times of day, and lighting indoors, using a screen, artificial lighting, and close or far from a window. Transitions found that the Color Touch lens provided greater light stabilisation, compared to a static clear lens.

Barrau explained: “We see how much the light stabilisation is important with the Color Touch – even more than Transitions Gen S, which is clear indoors.”

There is much more to explore in the links between light and vision and light modulation, Barrau believes, including light sensitivity, the impact of light on sleep and circadian rhythms, dry eye, fluorophobia, and migraine symptoms.

“There is a big field to explore, and light filtering glasses have an importance place that they don’t play today,” she said.

The new Color Touch lenses will arrive in the UK in 2026, OT understands.

The role of light

Barrau encouraged practitioners to incorporate the topic of light into discussions. She said: “Dare to talk more about the importance of light."

“It is true that in the ophthalmic industry we are super personalised because we have a prescription which is unique. But at the same time, we are asking people to switch from sunglasses to frames – it is not integrated, and they need to compensate because they don’t have the proper vision all the time,” Barrau shared.