When buttoning his shirts became difficult for my husband, I started looking for an easier way to fasten them. That is how we ended up trying magnetic button shirts.
We now have several Sonoma Goods for Life adaptive shirts from Kohl’s. After actually wearing, washing, and living with them, we have a much better idea of what magnetic shirts make easier — and a few things that aren’t obvious until you use one.
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What Are Magnetic Button Shirts?
Magnetic button shirts look much like ordinary button-down shirts. The visible buttons are actual buttons sewn onto the outside of the shirt, so from the front they look traditional. The difference is that most of those buttons don’t have to be pushed through buttonholes.
Instead, magnets hidden inside the shirt do the fastening. When the two sides of the shirt are brought close together, the corresponding magnets attract each other and snap into place.
That eliminates the repeated pinching, lining up, and pushing required with traditional buttons while keeping the familiar appearance of a regular shirt.
How Ours Work
On the Sonoma shirts we use, the magnetic closures run down the front of the shirt behind the visible buttons. Once the two sides are reasonably well positioned, the magnets tend to find each other. Bring them close and they snap together one after another.
Opening the shirt is also simple. The two sides are pulled apart to separate the magnets.
The shirts don’t eliminate every part of getting dressed. Arms still have to go into sleeves, the shirt still has to be positioned, and the two sides still have to be brought together. What the magnets remove is the fine finger work of fastening a row of traditional buttons.
For us, that is the part that had become difficult.
Who Might Find Magnetic Button Shirts Useful?
The main problem these shirts address is very specific: ordinary buttons have become difficult to fasten.
That can happen when pinching a small button is difficult, when fingers don’t move or coordinate as easily as they once did, or when fastening a whole row of buttons simply takes more effort than it used to. They can also be useful when someone gets some help with dressing but would still like to manage more of the fastening themselves.
What I like about magnetic shirts is that they address that one problem without looking particularly different from an ordinary button-down shirt.
They won’t make every part of dressing easier. But if the buttons themselves are the problem, replacing that repeated fine-finger work with magnetic closures can make a noticeable difference.
Fit Matters More Than I Expected
This may be one of the most useful things we learned.
Magnetic closures can eliminate the difficulty of working individual buttons, but they don’t eliminate the need to bring the two sides of the shirt together.
One of my husband’s shirts fits a little snugly toward the bottom. The magnets themselves are easy to fasten, but getting those lower edges close enough together can be more difficult — especially when trying to manage the shirt with one hand.
A more comfortable fit makes the whole process easier. So if I were choosing another magnetic shirt, I would pay at least as much attention to fit through the body as I would to the magnetic closures themselves.
There Is One Traditional Button on Ours
There is another little detail I wouldn’t have thought much about before we owned these shirts.
On our Sonoma shirts, the topmost closure is a traditional button and buttonhole. The magnetic closures begin underneath it. If the shirt is worn with the collar open, that may not matter at all. If the top button needs to be fastened, however, it still requires the same finger movement as an ordinary shirt button.
The top button can also be useful for lining up the two sides of the shirt. Once the top of the shirt is positioned correctly, the magnetic closures below tend to fall into place more easily.
It’s a small construction detail, but exactly the sort of thing I like knowing before buying something.
Do the Magnets Stay Closed?
Ours have stayed closed during normal everyday wear. The closures don’t feel as though they are constantly threatening to come apart just because someone sits down, reaches for something, or moves around. But magnetic closures aren’t permanently locked together.
If the front of the shirt gets caught on something or the two sides are pulled apart with enough force, the magnets can separate. That’s also what makes taking the shirt off easy: rather than unfastening each closure individually, the magnetic front simply pulls apart.
For our purposes, the balance has worked well. The magnets stay together when they are supposed to but can still be separated without struggling with them.
What About the Cuffs?
Our long-sleeve Sonoma shirts also have magnetic closures at the cuffs. Instead of trying to maneuver a small cuff button through a buttonhole, the two sides of the cuff are brought close together and the magnets snap closed. To open the cuff, the magnetic closure is pulled apart.
That has been another useful feature because cuff buttons can require an awkward combination of reaching, pinching, and fastening with the opposite hand.
Can Magnetic Shirt Buttons Be Buttoned With One Hand?
Sometimes — but I wouldn’t make a blanket promise about this.
If the shirt fits comfortably and the two sides can be brought close together, the magnets do much of the fastening work themselves. That can make one-handed dressing considerably easier. But fit makes a difference.
If the shirt is snug, getting the two sides close enough together can still be difficult. And magnetic closures don’t solve problems with reaching across the body, getting an arm into a sleeve, or pulling fabric into position. They solve a very specific problem: fastening the shirt once the two sides are close enough together.
For someone whose main difficulty is managing small buttons, that can still be a substantial improvement.
How Have Ours Held Up?
Ours have held up well. They have been washed repeatedly without fraying or problems with the magnetic closures. The regular shirts generally come out of the wash looking reasonably good when hung to dry.
The flannel versions are a little different. They wash well, but ours tend to wrinkle more, and I usually need to go over them with a steamer if we want them looking particularly neat.
That isn’t a deal breaker for us. It’s simply another one of those small things I would rather know before buying than discover afterward.
A Safety Note About Magnets
Clothing containing magnets deserves one important caution.
The American Heart Association says magnets should be kept at least six inches away from an implanted pacemaker or ICD because magnetic fields can interfere with some implanted cardiac devices.
Anyone with a pacemaker, ICD, or another implanted medical device should check the guidance for that particular device and talk with a healthcare professional before using magnetic clothing.
There is another warning on our Sonoma shirts that is easy to overlook. The label says to check the fabric near the magnets for tearing, rips, or loose threads. If any are found, it says not to wear the shirt and to discard the garment immediately.
What I Would Look for Before Buying a Magnetic Shirt
After using these for a while, my list is a little different from the one I would have made when we started.
I would look at:
- Fit through the body. Enough room can make it much easier to bring the magnetic panels together.
- How the shirt actually fastens. Check whether any traditional buttons will still need to be managed.
- The cuffs. On a long-sleeve shirt, magnetic cuffs can be almost as useful as the magnetic front.
- Magnet strength. The closures need to stay together during ordinary wear while still being reasonably easy to pull apart.
- Fabric and care. Some fabrics may come out of the wash ready to hang while others may need more wrinkle care.
- The actual dressing difficulty. Magnetic closures help with fastening. They don’t necessarily solve difficulties with reaching, sleeves, positioning the shirt, or a snug fit.
The Shirts We Actually Use
The magnetic shirts shown in our photos and video are Sonoma Goods for Life adaptive shirts from Kohl’s. We have several of them and have been able to see how they behave through ordinary wear and repeated washing.
Styles and availability change, so I would still look carefully at the construction and description of the particular shirt being considered rather than assuming every magnetic shirt works exactly like ours.
The shirt shown most clearly in our video is this Sonoma adaptive button-down shirt at Kohl’s.
So, Have Magnetic Shirts Helped?
For us, yes.
The biggest advantage isn’t that they transform the entire process of getting dressed. It is much simpler than that. They take away the repeated work of pushing all those little buttons through little buttonholes.
My husband still has to put the shirt on, get it positioned, and bring the two sides together. Fit still matters. There is still a traditional button at the top of ours. And magnetic closures have their own limitations. But once the shirt is in position, the magnets take over a job that had become frustrating for his hands.
And sometimes that is exactly what a useful adaptive product does.
It doesn’t have to solve everything. It just has to make one difficult part of an ordinary day easier.
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