The front desk
Level with the pavement, no step, and the place to come if you only want your glasses straightened. Nobody is asked what is wrong with them at the desk within earshot of the room.
Inside the practice
Inside Woodside Eye Care
seven rooms, on one floor, from the front desk to the bench where the lenses are actually cut.
Everything a visitor needs is on the ground floor: no stairs between the door and any of the seven rooms below. three of them are examination lanes, long enough to test distance vision properly rather than through a mirror.
The waiting room
Eight chairs, two of them with arms for people who need something to push up from, and light you can read in. Appointments here are given a real length, so the wait is usually short.
The pre-test alcove
Where the pressures and the first images are taken before you go through to a lane. It is five minutes and it means the optometrist starts the appointment with the numbers already in front of them.
The three examination lanes
Three identical rooms, each long enough to test distance vision properly rather than through a mirror. Two are used for examinations and the third is kept for the urgent list until midday.
The frame room
Open the whole time the practice is, with no appointment needed to look. Every frame in the catalogue on this site is on the wall, and the mirror is lit at the colour temperature of daylight rather than of a shop.
The dispensing table
A round table rather than a counter, because choosing glasses across a counter feels like a transaction and choosing them across a table feels like a decision. The measurements are taken here.
The optician's bench
Behind the frame room, where lenses are edged, frames are repaired and adjustments are made while you wait. Most repairs happen in the ten minutes you are standing there.
Come and see it
The frame room is open the whole time the practice is, and you do not need an appointment to look.