How Much Does It Cost to Hem Pants? Four Price Lists, One Pair of Trousers
Every fall guide this month says the leg is getting wider. Only one of the four published price lists we read charges you differently for that.
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Four published alteration price lists went under the reader on September 9, and the job was held constant across all four: one pair of full-length trousers, shortened, nothing else touched. Every fall guide running this month tells you the leg is getting wider. The wider leg turns out to be the one thing on those lists that changes what you’ll pay, and it isn’t mentioned on three of them.
How much does a basic pants hem cost in 2026?
Three of the four lists put a plain trouser hem between $15 and $35. Alterations Express, an Ohio chain, publishes $15 to $35 and up. Tad More Tailoring in Rockford, Illinois, which also takes garments by mail, publishes $15 to $35. Imperial Alterations, with shops in Hoboken and Jersey City, starts at $18. The fourth list belongs to a store rather than a tailor, and it doesn’t behave like the others at all.
| Where | Basic trouser hem | Wide leg | Jeans, original hem kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uniqlo (its own bottoms) | Free, lock stitch, on bottoms over $20 | Same price | Chain stitch, $5 |
| Alterations Express (OH) | $15–$35+ | Not priced separately | Not listed |
| Tad More (IL, plus mail-in) | $15–$35 | Not priced separately | Not listed |
| Imperial Alterations (NJ) | $18+ | $25, or $45–$65 extra-wide | $35+, or $45–$65 wide |
Why would a wide leg cost more to hem?
Imperial Alterations is the only one of the four that prices the leg at all: $18 and up for trousers, $25 for wide trousers, $45 to $65 for extra-wide. On jeans the ladder repeats, $20 plain and $25 to $45 wide, and keeping the original hem moves it to $35 and up. Nobody else we read names a width at all. You can walk into three of these four shops with the exact silhouette every fall roundup is pushing, hand over a leg the printed price was never written for, and get quoted the straight-leg number until somebody at the counter decides otherwise. Or you won’t. That’s the point of an unpriced variable.
Can the store just hem them for you?
Uniqlo prints its own table, and the top row is free. A visible lock stitch costs nothing on bottoms priced above the threshold, $5 below it, while a hidden blind stitch runs $5 or $10 on the same split. The chain stitch used on denim is $5. The page prints two different thresholds in two places, $20 in one set of tables and $29.90 in another, with the same fee ladder underneath. Buy the trousers there and the hem is a rounding error. Buy them anywhere else and you’re back at $15 to $65.
Coats are where this gets expensive, and fall is when you find out. On the same New Jersey list, shortening a coat sleeve from the bottom starts at $65, from the top it’s $165 to $185, and shortening the coat body starts at $125. A sleeve length you can live with is worth more than a price you liked, and it’s the same arithmetic that governs what a coat costs to clean across the years you keep it.
These are starting prices, published for marketing, not quotes. Three of the four lists come from single markets, and a hem in Manhattan won’t cost what a hem costs in Rockford. Nordstrom’s alterations pricing sits behind a bot wall we didn’t try to get around, so it’s absent here rather than estimated. Nothing in this piece was carried into a shop and paid for.
Or skip it. If the wide pair you already own breaks right on the shoe, the cheapest alteration of 2026 is the one you decline to book.
