The pillow is the cheapest thing on the bed and the one most likely to be the reason you wake up aching. Almost all of that comes down to one measurement.
Height follows how you sleep
- Side sleepers need the most loft — enough to fill the gap between ear and shoulder so the neck stays level with the spine. A flat pillow bends the neck downwards all night.
- Back sleepers need a medium pillow. Too high pushes the chin towards the chest.
- Front sleepers need the flattest thing they can find, or none.
If you wake with a stiff neck on one side, the pillow is the first thing to change — before the mattress, and long before the bed.
Fill
Memory foam holds a shape and supports consistently; it is spot-cleaned rather than washed, and it holds heat unless it is gel-infused or has a cooling cover. Contour foam is shaped for one sleeping position and is excellent if that is your position and wrong if it is not.
Hollowfibre is washable, inexpensive and the easiest to live with; it compresses faster and needs replacing more often. V-shaped and support pillows are a different product — they are for sitting up, for reading, for pregnancy and for recovery, not for sleeping flat.
How many
Two per sleeper is the usual answer: one to sleep on and one to prop up with. A double bed therefore wants four, and the fourth is the one everybody forgets when they buy a "pair".
Buy them as a set so the bed stays even — two pillows of different ages are two different heights, and you will notice.
When to replace
Fold it in half. If it stays folded rather than springing back, it has stopped supporting anything. For hollowfibre that is usually one to two years; foam lasts longer but goes crumbly in the end.
A pillow protector under the case roughly doubles the useful life, which makes it the best-value item on this page.
Our memory foam pillows list their loft in centimetres, and support and V-shape pillows are grouped separately because they answer a different question.
