WALL SPACE IN your optical or exam room doesn’t have to be limited to frame displays or anatomical diagrams. This is prime real estate for creativity — yours, your staff’s and your community’s. From showcasing local art to celebrating practice milestones, blank walls have the potential to be transformed into conversation pieces, brand builders, and even revenue generators. Take a cue from the 8 businesses below and let your walls tell your story, connect with patients, and elevate your space.

Corner Optical
Glenview, IL
At Corner Optical, a space on the wall above their frame displays was blank and needed some love. “So we made a shrine to me,” gloats optician and frame maker Kevin Count. The display features an image of the master optician creating one of his trademark custom frames. But Count has been gracious enough to share the glory: Elsewhere on the wall is a photo of his dog Dave sporting a pair of Say-Oh dog frames.

Pend Oreille Vision Care
Sandpoint, ID
Owner Dr. Nathaneal Harrell has a big workshop in the back of Pend Oreille’s main office, so empty wall space is constantly being used to showcase his latest creations. The current trend is a set of tabletops he made last year, featuring bathymetric maps of local lakes, to scale. “While they have the option of having legs attached to them, they are beautiful wall hangings in the meantime,” says practice manager Jen Heller. “When we are running pre-testing equipment, patients love looking at the topographic details and pointing out where they live along the lakesides.” And for the right price, they can even take one home with them!
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Urban Optics
San Luis Obispo, CA
Here’s a great use of space, with a great story to go with it. Exhibiting the flair and creativity that define this chic Central California practice, owner Dr. Dave Schultz paneled two walls at Urban Optics with reclaimed oak that had previously been used in barrels to age red wine. One is used to display original art — mostly faces wearing glasses — the other left blank to take photos of patients picking up glasses, then posted on social media.

Vision Center South
Dothan, AL
What better way to honor your practice’s history than to turn it into art? That’s just what the team at Vision Center South did. As optical merchandising manager Colby Spivey explains, “We created a timeline showing off the opening, flourishing, merging, and ultimately the moving of our largest optical office,” all of which was planned and/or executed by the founder of the original practice, Dr. Calvin Denney. Could your walls be telling your story?

Mill Creek Optical
Dansville, NY
Jenny Leuzzi would love a blank wall, but her shop is small and they’ve long since utilized every inch of it. Having said that, what is a ceiling if not a wall suspended in air? “We do have a mural on our waiting room ceiling!” she says. And, in a typically creative touch, “We hid some items in it so kids can search for them while their parents shop.”

A Proper View
Winston-Salem, NC
When a practice as tastefully decorated as A Proper View devotes wall space to you, it means something. So we’re thrilled they’ve framed INVISION’s profile of them from August 2021 — after they won first place in our America’s Finest contest that year — and displayed the pages in the hallway leading to the exam rooms. “Patients comment on it a lot!” says optician Kelsey Bredice. “We won America’s Finest back in 2021 and people still get so excited about it for us! It’s very sweet.”

Urban Eye Care
Phoenix, AZ
After being fitted in their new glasses, Dr. Jason Klepfisz’s patients immediately have something stimulating to feast their eyes on. “We fill our shop with art from local artists in our community as well as the lens cloth designs we’ve had local artists create over the years,” he says.

EyeStyles Optical and Boutique
Oakdale, MN
If you’ve got wall space to fill, having an artist in the family sure comes in handy. Throughout her store, Nikki Griffin, owner of EyeStyles Optical and Boutique, displays original artwork that her husband, painter Michael DeMeglio, has for sale between galleries and shows. “He usually has big pieces that work behind the desk, or series that make a great gallery wall.”
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Beatty Eyes Optometry
Missoula, MT
What better use of extra space than to showcase your favorite patients? “We turned our blank wall into a ‘Hall of Frames’ where we post Polaroids of our pediatric patients — with parent/guardian approval — in their new glasses,” says Beatty Eyes Optometry’s Whitney Head-Potter. Besides which, Polaroids are just fun and lend an optical a certain vintage charm.

Sea Eye Care
Norfolk, VA
At Sea Eye Care, photos of team members’ irises — shared with us by Rialeigh Yoder —brighten the wall, start conversations about ocular anatomy and serve as a reminder of the sheer beauty of the human eye.

Dumas Vision Source
Dumas, TX
At Dumas Vision Source, owner Dr. Tory Moore combines his twin passions of optometry and travel by displaying photographs taken on his globetrotting travels, which have been printed on canvas and mounted in his exam room. His patients get crystal-clear vision and a window to the world, all in one visit, while Moore gets to prove that he’s one optometrist for whom having a good eye extends well beyond the exam room.