Pillow? Did someone say pillow? 
Someone hasn’t been snooping around TMU lately, LOL. What can I say, I’m such a wise guy.
Hi Mg-FA,
Funny you should mention pillows. Here’s my pillow collection.
So, first of all, there are different pillows for different types of sleepers: side, back, or stomach. There are a few general rules for each, though nothing is set in stone, everyone’s a little different. Here’s the shortcut:
- Side sleepers need higher loft pillows. Not just prefer, need. The right loft depends on the distance between your ear and the top of the mattress. A firmer mattress (where you don’t sink in much) typically requires a loftier pillow. But remember: your pillow isn’t a brick, it compresses, depending on the fill, so you need to factor that in. If your mattress is softer and you sink in more, you’ll need to reduce that loft compared to the firmer mattress baseline to maintain spinal alignment.
- Back sleepers usually don’t need as much loft. Many prefer cervical-style or more structured pillows. The goal is to keep your head level with your spine, able to breathe well and not dropping below the shoulders. Again, mattress firmness plays a role here.
- Stomach sleepers often do best with a low-profile pillow. You want to keep everything aligned, nothing that arches your neck up too high, or you’ll end up with strain in the upper, middle, and lower back. Funny how pain travels faster than a speeding bullet and hurts more than being hit by a locomotive (okay, maybe not that much, but you get the idea).
I’ve found that even being off by just 1.5 inches in pillow loft can ruin a night’s sleep. Will everyone be that sensitive? Probably not. But I’m a fairly resilient 65-year-old, and the older I get, the more obvious the effects become.
There are all kinds of pillows out there. I’m not big on gimmicks, gels, grids, peanuts, french fries (who knows what they’re stuffing pillows with these days). But there are some solid fill options: Feathers, Down, Latex, Wool, Cotton, Silk, Cashmere, Kapok, and Horsehair (I have four of those!). And yes, there are synthetic choices like Memory Foam, Polyfoam, and even some quality natural fill alternatives or blends.
The key thing, when you keep it simple, is that it’s easier to fix.
At first, I was all about my Tempurpedic pillows, the medium-firm to firmer ones with a bit of loft. I’d tried some solid latex pillows, but they were too squishy, too bouncy, and not supportive enough. It made falling asleep harder, not easier.
Back in the day, feather and down pillows were all I knew. But in those days, I could’ve stacked my sneakers under my head and called it a night. Now? I need structure, support, and comfort. A mattress… for the head. Funny how that works out.
On a recent trip to California, I stopped by @EuropeanSleep. “Okay,” I said, “show me this Latex Oxygen Pillow thing.”
Holy schmolly. Did I mention earlier that I didn’t like latex pillows? Gulp. Apologies, Mr. Latex, Sir!
It may have taken a few tries to get the right version dialed in, but, wow, that pillow rocks. The latex was much firmer than anything latex I’d ever tried in a pillow, and its unique design took me about 60 seconds to get used to. After that, I was sold. I told them to ship one to NJ.
While chatting pillows with Steve (the big boss over there), I mentioned that I usually don’t like shredded latex pillows. I had tried one made with uniformly cut noodle-shaped latex (the cozypure baa-noodle), and surprisingly, I liked it. It made me realize, when it came to shredded pillows, that it wasn’t the latex I didn’t like, it was the randomness of the shredded fill. Too inconsistent for me.
So I told Steve, “I wish someone would make a firm latex pillow with evenly cut pieces that you can add or remove to your liking.”
Steve goes, well he did not go anywhere, but did say: “Funny you should mention that, we’re working on one right now.”
Fast forward, a couple months later? Project done. Packed, shipped to NJ. Timing couldn’t have been better. Pricey, who cares, when it works, I cant take it with me anyway, or perhaps maybe someday down the road, hopefully very far down the road, I might.
Just like there’s more than one mattress that can check all the boxes for someone, there’s also more than one pillow that can do the job, and sometimes, you need the right one for the right situation.
Case in point: I ended up blowing out a few discs in my back about 60 days ago (long story), couldn’t walk for several days, and was in a world of pain. Suddenly, my beloved Oxygen pillow, my nightly companion, was no longer cutting it. I had to (begrudgingly) set it aside, and in came the pillow with the uniform, cube-shaped latex fill. And guess what? Even with the herniated discs, I got a great night’s sleep. That’s the beauty of having options that work. Reenter the Oxygen pillow. The Oxygen pillow that sits on my base pillow (I like two pillows stacked), then allowed me to put the cube pillow in a portrait position to the landscape position to the Oxygen stack and I could actually lie back on my bed in a comfortable angle to watch TV.
Yeah, I know, long boring story, but sometimes listening to the experience of others may trigger some familiarity that helps solves issues that were never given a thought in the past.
Hopefully, this helps a bit. If you do have any specific pillow questions, I promise, I will keep the non-fiction novel down to a short story.
All the best on this Father’s Day,
Maverick
There are some BiB’s that you could never distinguish from a convention mattress. But no worries, there are plenty of traditionally designed mattresses with all the necessary components to go around.
)that they used 100 years ago. Seriously, they are still using factory tools, machines and methods, literally the same machines where the work is done by mattress artisans with true personalized hands on craftsmanship from an era where quality meant something and was expected.
