Motorcycle visor tint and finish index
Visor tints are sold under names, not measurements. A listing offers “smoke” or “iridium” or “photochromic”, and the name is doing two jobs at once: describing what the visor looks like, and implying something about where it may be used. The first job it does adequately. The second it does not do at all, because the name of a tint carries no information about whether that particular visor may be used on the road.
This page sets out the 4 tint and finish families used across the published ClearLine listings: what each name denotes, the rule by which a product variation is assigned to it, how many published listings offer it, and the road-use position for that family in Great Britain. It also sets out what the index does not cover, which for a taxonomy matters as much as what it does.
Scope: Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales. Compiled 2026-08-05.
The families
A family is assigned from the option name on each product variation, not from the listing title. A listing therefore appears in the index once for every family it offers, and its title may not name every finish it carries. Of 476 published listings in the index, 233 offer a choice of more than one family, so the per-family counts below overlap and must not be added together.
| Family | What the name denotes | How a variation is assigned to it | Published listings offering it | Road use in Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clear | An untinted visor. The name describes the finish only. | a variation option containing “clear”, unless it also names a mirror or a colour (revo, iridium, gold, silver, purple, blue, pink) | 282 | Decided by the approval marking on the individual visor, not by the tint name. These are unbranded aftermarket visors and we cannot confirm the marking on any individual item, so we do not offer them as authorised for road use. |
| Smoke | A fixed grey or black tint. The name spans everything from a light tint to a dark one; it does not record how much light the visor actually transmits. | a variation option containing “smoke”, “dark” or “tinted”, or named exactly “black” | 118 | Decided by the approval marking on the individual visor, not by the tint name. Dark-smoke finishes transmit too little light to be legal for road use in the UK. We cannot confirm the marking on any individual item, so we do not offer these as authorised for road use. |
| Iridium | A mirrored or colour-shifting reflective coating over a tinted base. | a variation option containing “iridium”, “revo”, “rainbow”, “chrome” or “mirror” | 235 | Mirrored and iridium finishes transmit too little light to be legal for road use in the UK and are intended for off-road, track and closed-course daytime use. |
| Photochromic | A visor whose tint darkens on exposure to ultraviolet light and clears again without it, so its light transmittance is not a fixed value. | a variation option containing “photochrom” or “transition” | 169 | Decided by the approval marking on the individual visor. Because the tint varies with ultraviolet light rather than sitting at one fixed value, no single transmittance figure describes it. We cannot confirm the marking on any individual item, so we do not offer these as authorised for road use. |
Why the tint name is not the legal test
In Great Britain a visor may be used on the road only if it is a prescribed type under the Motor Cycles (Eye Protectors) Regulations 1999: a BS 4110 grade marked on the visor together with an approved certification mark, or a UNECE Regulation 22 approval marking. Both are physical properties of the individual visor. Neither is a property of the word in the product name.
This is why the road-use column above leads with the marking in every row, including the rows where a reader expects a simple yes or no. Two visors can both be sold as “smoke” and carry different markings, or none. The widely quoted light-transmission figure derives from UNECE Regulation 22 rather than from any statute, and it is a property of the visor as tested, not of the tint family it was listed under.
The wording below is the position published across this catalogue, reproduced here without alteration so that the reference page and the product pages cannot drift apart:
Whether a visor may be used on the road depends on the approval marking it carries — a BS 4110 grade with an approved certification mark, or an ECE 22.05 approval — not on its tint. We cannot confirm the marking on an individual item, so we do not offer these as authorised for road use; check the marking on the visor you receive and your local law. Mirrored, iridium and dark-smoke finishes transmit too little light to be legal for road use in the UK and are intended for off-road, track and closed-course daytime use.
One frequently repeated claim is worth correcting directly, because it is repeated in rider forums and in retail copy alike: an offence under section 18 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 is non-endorsable. A conviction under that section does not put an endorsement on the rider’s licence, contrary to a figure widely quoted online.
What this index does not cover
A taxonomy is only citable if its edges are stated, so here are the four limits of this one.
- Published listings only. The index is built from products with published status. Listings held as private or draft are invisible to it, so every count on this page is a count of published listings and never a count of the catalogue.
- Unrecognised finish names are absent, not counted. The classifier assigns a variation to one of these families or to an unclassified remainder, and the remainder is not written to the index file. A finish whose option name matches no family therefore cannot be counted from the index at all, and the 4 families here should not be read as an exhaustive list of the finishes in existence.
- Families overlap. A listing offering clear and smoke variations is counted in both. Only 476 is a total.
- No family is a measurement. “Smoke” spans a light tint and a very dark one, and the family records neither the light transmittance of the visor nor its marking. Nothing on this page reports a measured transmittance, because we do not measure one.
Sources and method
The family counts are counted at compile time from the baked tint index that the storefront renders its tint pages from, which is itself generated from the variation options of each published variable product. The assignment rules in the table are the classifier’s own rules, reproduced rather than described. The legal wording is reproduced from the position already deployed across the catalogue. The governing instruments named are the Motor Cycles (Eye Protectors) Regulations 1999 and section 18 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. No figure on this page is estimated, and where a quantity could not be derived from a file it is described in words instead of being given a number.
Helmet and visor model names are the marks of their respective manufacturers and are used only to identify what a visor fits. ClearLine is an aftermarket retailer and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or supplied by any helmet manufacturer.
How to cite this page
ClearLine, Motorcycle visor tint and finish index, clearlinemoto.com/visor-tint-index/, compiled 2026-08-05. Corrections are welcome; if any statement here is wrong we would rather fix it than defend it.