See through different eyes
What Floaters looks like
Drifting specks and threads across your view
≈7 in 10 people experience them · NEI · Learn more
What it is
The vitreous, the clear gel filling the eye, is mostly water held in a collagen scaffold. With age that scaffold clumps and strands together, and the clumps cast shadows on the retina. What you see is not something in front of you but a shadow inside your own eye.
What it looks like day to day
Specks, threads and cobweb shapes that drift across vision and lag behind when you move your eyes, then settle. They are far more visible against bright, plain backgrounds such as a clear sky, a white wall or a blank page, and effectively invisible against a busy scene. Most people stop noticing their own floaters, because the brain learns to ignore a shadow that never changes.
What helps
For ordinary age-related floaters, usually nothing: they fade from attention rather than from view. Surgical options exist but are reserved for severe cases because of the risks involved. A sudden shower of new floaters, particularly with flashes of light or a shadow at the edge of vision, is treated as urgent by eye doctors because it can indicate a retinal tear.
Who it affects
Around 7 in 10 people experience them. They become more common with age, and earlier in people who are short-sighted or who have had eye surgery or injury.
Related conditions
Explore every condition or learn about color blindness.
This is an approximation, not a medical diagnosis.