Original Wayfarer vs New Wayfarer

The verdict first. If you came for the material, buy the Original Wayfarer RB2140 — Ray-Ban lists it as acetate, and it is the frame the Wayfarer reputation is built on. If a Wayfarer has always looked like too much frame on your face, buy the New Wayfarer RB2132: it is lighter, shallower and narrower at the bridge, and Ray-Ban lists its frame material as nylon rather than acetate. That is the whole decision, and almost nobody searching for this comparison has been told the material part.

The figures Ray-Ban publishes

Everything in this table comes from Ray-Ban’s own listings, read on the date in the sources below. Lens height is the row most comparisons omit and the one that actually predicts whether a frame will swamp a face.

Read the first and third rows together and the real difference appears. At its smallest published size, the Original is 41 mm deep. At its largest common size, the New Wayfarer is 40.8 mm deep. In other words, every New Wayfarer is shallower than every Original Wayfarer, even though two of the New Wayfarer’s stated eye widths are numerically larger. A frame’s eye size alone will mislead you here; our guide to reading sunglasses sizes explains why the three-number fitting needs the fourth number to make sense.

Acetate vs nylon: what actually changes

Cellulose acetate is cut from solid sheet, then milled, tumbled and polished — the process our page on how acetate sunglasses are made walks through. Nylon frames are molded. Three consequences follow, and they are the reasons to prefer one or the other.

Weight and thickness. A molded frame can be made thinner for the same rigidity, so a nylon Wayfarer front is slimmer and lighter than an acetate one. If weight on the bridge is your limiting factor, that is a genuine advantage, not a downgrade.

Color depth. Acetate can be laminated in layers, which is why a havana tortoise on an acetate frame has pattern running through the material and catches light at the edge. A molded frame carries its pattern more superficially. This is the difference people mean when they say a frame looks expensive, and it is covered in why acetate sunglasses are expensive and acetate vs plastic.

Adjustability and repair. Acetate softens with heat, so an optician can change how the frame sits on your face — see adjusting acetate frames. Molded frames tolerate that far less well, which means an acetate frame that does not quite fit can often be made to fit, while a nylon one is more or less what it is. Against that, an optometry frame-materials reference we cite notes the honest counterpoint about plastics in general: they break more easily than metal and can fade over time, so neither material is maintenance-free. Our comparisons of acetate vs propionate and acetate vs polycarbonate cover the molded-plastic family in more depth.

Which one fits your face

Start from lens height rather than eye size. If a Wayfarer has always sat on your cheeks or buried your eyebrows, you need a shallower frame, and the New Wayfarer at 52-18 (37.6 mm) is the shallowest in the family. If Wayfarers have always looked slightly undersized on you — common on longer and broader faces — the Original at 54-18 (47.2 mm) is the deepest, and it is also the one we would choose for an oblong face.

Then look at the bridge. The small Original has a 22 mm bridge against the New Wayfarer’s 18 mm, which is a substantial difference in how wide the frame sits across the nose. A narrow nose in a 22 mm bridge slides; a broad one in an 18 mm bridge pinches. If frames have historically slid down on you, our guide to sunglasses that slip runs through the fixes, and Ray-Ban’s F-suffix low-bridge versions exist for exactly the face a standard bridge sits badly on — the RB2140F in 52-22 and 54-18, the RB2132F in 55-18. Our low nose bridge guide covers who those are for.

Finally, temples: 150 mm on the Original against 145 mm on the New Wayfarer. Five millimeters sounds trivial and is not — a temple that is slightly too short pulls the frame forward and presses behind the ear, which is the complaint most often mistaken for “the frame is too tight.” Our guide to how sunglasses should fit explains how to check it against a pair you already own.

The budget question

If the honest reason you are comparing these two is price — the New Wayfarer typically lists below the Original — then it is worth knowing you are paying less for a different material rather than for less of the same one. At that point the comparison worth making is not RB2140 against RB2132, but RB2140 against a budget acetate frame. Our Wayfarer alternatives roundup ranks those, and SOJOS vs Ray-Ban and CARFIA vs Ray-Ban take the two biggest budget acetate brands head-on. Several of those frames are polarized as standard, which neither classic Ray-Ban lens is.

One last distinction worth filing away, because it catches people out in the same way: the Clubmaster RB3016 is not a full acetate frame either — it is an acetate brow over a metal lower rim. If a Ray-Ban listing does not say acetate, assume it is not, and check before you buy. Our Ray-Ban review goes model by model.