On September 01, 2026 - 1 min read
Who knew they use lasers to make jeans now?
To laser-wash jeans, a laser blasts them with intense pulses of infrared light, burning away the pigment in a mist of blue smoke. As the laser scans across the denim surface, it leaves behind a surface that looks bleached or worn, and can even artistically place rips and holes. The classic pattern is those crotch rays (there's probably a technical term for it) that make it look like the jeans are wrinkled from wear, and the videos of jeans going from new to broken-in within about three seconds are astonishing enough. But since the wear marks are just an image file downloaded to the laser scanning machine, they can basically do anything, including super complex patterns.
Video description: a 7-second video from CKlaser in which a laser scans a pair of jeans in a brief second, leaving behind a floral design. Then the laser spends another second making another crisp new pair look broken-in.
In this video you see a red laser, but that's probably just a low-power guide laser to let the operators know where the big laser is pointed. The laser that's doing the work is probably a powerful but invisible infrared laser similar to the lasers that cut wood and etch metal. This article describes a 100-600W CO2 laser that can do the job in 90 seconds (as opposed to 20 minutes for traditional stonewashing and chemical finishing) and I wouldn't be surprised if the laser in this video is using even higher powers for faster finishing.
Not only are the lasers faster than traditional methods of bleaching and stonewashing, but it also takes less water and avoids bleaching chemicals. I am honestly amazed by all the places where lasers are behind the scenes in our daily lives. Laser pants!
I checked all my jeans and I'm not sure if any of them were lasered - I don't have any with extreme patterns on them, or really any distinct pre-made wear marks at all. Do you have laser jeans?
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