What Nurses Actually Need From Scrubs in 2026
We're not nurses. None of us have ever pulled a 12-hour shift on a med-surg floor. So the only honest way to answer this question was to ask people who do.
Between October 2025 and January 2026, we ran structured conversations with 60 nurses — 41 RNs, 9 CNAs, 7 LPNs, 3 NPs. Mix of urban and rural, hospital and clinic, days and nights. We paid each of them $40 for 30 minutes. None of them work for us.
Here's what we heard. I've put the things that surprised us first, because those are the ones worth your attention.
The three things that surprised us
Pocket count is overrated. We asked everyone to count how many pockets they actually used in a shift. Average: 3.4. Even the ER nurses topped out at 5. The marketing line "more pockets = better scrubs" is mostly fiction. What people actually want is one pocket that fits a phone without tipping it out, and a chest pocket they can reach across the body with their dominant hand. Past that, pockets stop being useful and start being weight that drags the hem.
We had been planning a 9-pocket cargo edition. We cut it. Five pockets, well-placed, beat nine pockets distributed by a designer who's never run for a code.
Joggers are not universally loved. Forty-three percent of the nurses we talked to said they'd switch back to straight-leg if their unit allowed it. Reasons: shoes don't slide on as easily, ankle elastic causes friction over compression socks, and on tall frames the cuff sits at a weird length. Joggers are still our best-seller — we're not pulling them — but the "joggers are obviously better" narrative is a Twitter thing, not a floor thing.
The waistband, not the fabric, decides comfort by hour 8. Almost everyone we talked to could describe the exact moment their previous scrubs got uncomfortable, and almost everyone pointed at the waistband: it rolled, it dug in after lunch, the drawstring came out, the elastic loosened by month four. Almost no one led with "the fabric was scratchy." We'd been pitching fabric as the comfort story. We were wrong about which part of the garment matters most.
The three things everyone agreed on
Color drops are user-hostile. Twelve different nurses brought up FIGS' limited-edition releases unprompted. The complaint was always the same: "I bought four sets in [color], stained one, and now I can't replace it." This is the strongest case I've heard for our 24-color always-in-stock model. We didn't fully appreciate this when we launched it. We do now.
Industrial laundry destroys things faster than anyone tells you. Seventy percent of our respondents launder at home, but the 30% who use facility laundry reported wear-out in 4-8 months on premium brands and 2-4 months on budget. If your unit uses bleach + 180°F + commercial dryers, you are not the customer most marketing copy is written for. We make a 95/5 poly-spandex blend specifically for this case. Most brands don't bother — the home-laundry buyer is the bigger market — but the floor that bleaches needs different fabric.
Fit consistency between batches is rare and noticed. Every nurse with more than two years of experience has a story about ordering the same scrub in the same size and getting a different fit. This is the one thing our QC catches that most brands' don't — we stretch every fabric lot before shipping and compare to the master spec. We don't talk about this much because it sounds boring. It's the most useful thing we do.
The two things nurses still disagree on
Length on tops. Older RNs (12+ years) want longer hems that cover the waistband when they reach overhead. Newer grads (under 5 years) want shorter, more tailored cuts. We make both. There's no single right answer; it's a generational preference and a body-shape preference combined.
Tucked vs untucked. Half tuck, half don't. The tucked-in nurses said it stopped the top from riding up. The untucked nurses said tucking accentuated the wrong part of their torso. Neither group could be talked out of their position. We design both possible — a shorter knit top that holds its shape when tucked, a longer woven top that drapes well untucked.
What we changed because of all this
Three concrete changes since we ran these conversations:
- We added a wider, flatter waistband to the V-Neck Jogger pant — 4cm deep, no internal drawstring, knit construction with shape memory. This is the change with the biggest impact on hour-8 comfort. Cost us $1.20 a unit. Worth it.
- We killed the 9-pocket cargo edition before it shipped. Cost us nothing because we hadn't ordered fabric yet. Saved us a slow-moving SKU.
- We added a "tall" length on every pant SKU, not just the joggers. The "we have a tall option" claim was technically true before but in practice you couldn't get a tall straight-leg in most colors. Now you can.
What we still don't know
The biggest gap in our research: we talked to 60 nurses, which is enough to spot patterns but not enough to know how those patterns split by specialty. ICU, OR, L&D, ED — those four are different jobs with different physical demands, and 15 nurses each is barely a foothold. The next round (running in 2026 Q3) will be specialty-specific.
If you read this and your specialty's needs aren't represented, email us. We'll fold your input into the next round of fit reviews. A real person will reply.
Hedy Nie is COO of Eipnare. Connect on LinkedIn.