Yeah, I know, my wife complains all the time about the pillow factory in the house. That is so funny that you had a Sealy Posturepedic pillowtop. When I moved into my new townhouse in 2011, I bought a fairly expensive Sealy Posturepedic Pillowtop Ultra Firm. Traded it in just over a year ago for a Brooklyn Bedding Plank Luxe. That was before I joined TMU. It is actually a very good mattress, probably BB best mattress, if you like firm.
My 2 king wool pillows are wool fill. It is not balls, or layers of batting, just fill like cotton fill, but wool. They are actually quite comfortable too, but when the pillow compresses down, it gets hard and sometimes will give me a headache. I need a two-pillow stack for when I sleep on my side most of the night. When I stacked the TempurPedic Procloud HI on top, it was actually pretty good. But the tempur pedic soft and conforming under the cloud combination worked better. People don’t realize the pillow/s are basically mattresses for your head. I have my upper (comfort layer pillow) and the bottom (support) pillow.
I bought some 100% cotton zippered liners to use for the “chambers” of the pillow and I use the BioSleepConcept for the pillow covers (only for my horsehair and horsehair 2 chamber creations) The BSC iris pillow covers are amazing in that it masks any lumps that might get created when filling the liners.
An interesting thing is, I use my laptop in bed and sit it on top of a pillow for extra height. When I put it on a TempurPedic pillow, the pillow gets hot in 10- 20 minutes due to the heat retention. When I sit it on a horsehair pillow, it is barely warm after hours of working on the laptop.
The horsehair pillows compress too, but it is different, they are a bit springy, not like the pushback you get from latex, but when you lift your head off of the pillow, it slowly pops back up. I am able to subconsciously, flip the 2-chamber pillow at night when I roll from my back to my side and wake up on my stomach. My best combination is still the TP base pillow with the all horsehair on top of it. I end up using the 3rd pillow (the 2 chamber) as an armrest when I am on my side.
I bought these pillow liner/protectors (it does not have any water-resistant lining) that are just plain breathable cotton with a zipper for the chamber filling ([Pillow Liner Zippered] (Amazon.com) They have worked well and I fill them about 2-2.5" thick for each chamber and it works great. I am waiting on a new latex fill to experiment for a new chamber.
The one thing that is rarely talked about, and you touched on it a bit, in your own way, is pillow position. I am finding that I have to have the pillow butt right up to my shoulders and under my neck (as if it is forming a seal from my shoulder to my head) to get perfectly comfortable. I used to lay just my head on the pillow with my neck having no support under it, and it would cause my head to angle up. Now that gives me a still neck. But when I pull the pillow tight under my neck and against my shoulders it feels very supportive and my head remains level with my body, and the stiff neck does not present itself any longer.
Good luck with your buckwheat and MF combination. If you use the zippered liners for your fillings, it will make it easier to keep changing the chambers around until you find the right combination.
All the best,
Norm