Everyone has opinions on the best pillows, all skewed by their highly specific body type and sleeping preferences: Any hunk of fluff can be vetoed for a myriad of reasons: not soft enough. A tad too soft. Not supportive. Overly firm. There’s no such thing as a perfect pillow for everyone, but we set out to find out anyways.
The Best Pillows, at a Glance
- The Best Pillow for Most People: Coop Home Eden, $96
- The Best Pillow for Stomach Sleepers: Amerisleep Dual Comfort, $130
- The Best Adjustable Pillow for Back and Side Sleepers: Tempur-Pedic Tempur-Neck, $119
- The Best Wedge Pillow: The Company Store Down-Alternative Reading Wedge, $40
- The Best Luxe Pillow: Saatva Latex Pillow, $165
- The Best Budget-Friendly Pillow: Beckham Hotel (2-Pack), $50
- The Best Organic Pillow: Birch Organic Pillow, $119
- The Best Down Pillow: Brooklinen Mid-Plush Down, $119
- The Best Down-Alternative Pillow: Sferra Arcadia, $90
- The Best Gel Pillow: Purple DreamLayer, $199
- The Best Buckwheat Pillow: Hullo, $109
Because no amount of research can beat trying one out at home, we’ve had staffers with all kinds of sleeping preferences take home dozens of types of pillows over the past few years to suss out what’s worth buying and what’s better off shelving. All of these factors considered, here are the best pillows for every kind of snoozer.
The Best Pillow for Most People: Coop Home Eden
Coop Home Goods’ “Eden” pillow balances even support and just the right amount of sinkage for comfortable sleeping. It’s accommodating for most people whether they sleep on their back, side, or stomach—or are a bit of everything, combination sleepers. Shredded memory foam pillows are the new standard for good general pillows: As with a bean bag, the smaller pieces of foam make the pillow easier to mold around your weird head and provide perfectly even support. Compared to a big block of memory foam, that means it stays cooler and is easier to adjust until things are just right. Plus, it’s hypoallergenic, no feathers here!
The Coop Home also includes a little baggie of extra fill, and it’s easy to add more (or remove foam) until you’ve achieved the perfect amount of height. The adjustable loft is ideal, especially if you’re still trying to figure out what your actual ideal sleep position is in the first place. The gusseted outer cover, made of bamboo and polyester, keeps the pillow cool, negating the one big downside of most memory foam pillows. At this price on Amazon, and with a 100-day guarantee and a five-year warranty, it’s a no-brainer pillow to buy right now.
Tested and Reviewed by Lori Keong
Tested and Reviewed by Lori Keong
The Best Pillow for Stomach Sleepers: Saatva Latex
Some people want huge, fluffy, soft pillows, and who am we to stop them? This Saatva latex pillow is just like one of those large, glorious hotel pillows—wide and luxurious and what you’d imagine kings and queens slept on. It’s got an inner core of shredded latex and an outer core made up of synthetic fiber that actually feels something like the best down pillow, without the allergens. This GQ Home Awards 2021 winner beat out the competition for its hotel-like plushness that felt like it was cradling your head in the most un-weird way possible. If you’re a stomach sleeper, this will be your dream. (And you’ve got 45 days to test, plus a one-year warranty.)
The Best Adjustable Pillow for Combination Sleepers: Amerisleep
Variety is the spice of life, as they say, and Amerisleep’s dual-sided pillow (one side is firmer and steeper than the other) has plenty of it. This handsome gusseted number is intentionally slimmer so it won’t restrict your breathing when you’re starfished on your belly, but still supportive thanks to its perforated memory foam innards. The firm side feels dense but not overly brick-like, and the softer end of things is plush and contours around your head without that telltale sinkage. That’s not to mention you can choose between two loft heights, 5 inches or 6 inches, when you purchase yours. Our tester appreciated that “the band around the side feels like a loom-spun, seamless T-shirt without any pointy edges or corners,” and all that customization helped earned this fellow a nod in this year’s GQ Sleep Awards.
The Best Down Pillow: Brooklinen Mid-Plush Down
Brooklinen makes a lot of the best gear we’ve tested for getting a good night’s sleep, including excellent sheets and down comforters. Accordingly, the company comes prepared with three options depending on your sleep habits, from a plushy low-loft style to a firmer rise. Among the three, the most versatile is its mid-plush option, which is supportive enough for side sleepers, yet still squishy enough for someone who sleeps on their stomach. It gets this unique medium firmness level from its hybrid construction, which includes an inner layer of long feathers and an outer layer of down clusters. The center-most layer is more densely packed, providing support, while the more loose outer layer gets you that soothing “ahhhh” sink. But ultimately, depending on your personal preference, any one of Brooklinen’s three pillows is going to be a winner.
The Best Down-Alternative Pillow: Sferra Arcadia
With ample cushioning and a decent amount of loft, the Arcadia pillow makes a great down-alternative pillow for those who get the sniffles around real feathers. The brand’s Italian-made bedding and pillows have become the go-to luxe brand for wedding registries and five-star hotels, and they’re available for us plebes who want to sleep like royalty. The Arcadia pillow—available in three firmness levels, multiple sizes, and ranging from $80 to $90—features a down-alternative fill that’s reasonably downy compared to the real stuff. The Arcadia pillows are also a better choice for those who want the brand’s top tier quality at a budget. Our tester found that this style was comparable to Sferra’s much more price-y $600 Cardigan pillow.
The Best Wedge Pillow: The Company Store Down-Alternative Reading Wedge
Wedge pillows serve multiple important, sorta-embarrassing purposes. Maybe you’ve got acid reflux (relatable), you want to stop log-sawing at night (also relatable), or you just have a bad cold and need all that mucous to drain out so you can breeeathe (gross, right?). Among the few wedge pillows out there, the Company Store’s down-alternative one is our clear favorite.
It offers solid head and neck support no matter how you’re sprawled out, enough to curb our tester’s GERD-related night coughing. Compared to other options out there (sorry, Helix), the medium wedge we tested is also roughly the size of a standard pillow, meaning you can slip your usual pillow cases on it. As a reading or working wedge, there’s not quite enough support to prop up your back while you tinker away at an email from bed. But for $40, it costs significantly less than most other options on this list, and far outperforms some of its pricier peers.
Tested and Reviewed by Lori Keong
Tested and Reviewed by Lori Keong
The Best Budget-Friendly Pillow Set: Beckham Hotel
At just around $40 for a set of two, these Beckham Hotel Collection pillows (no relation to David, Posh, and/or any of their unusually-good-looking children) might seem too good a deal to actually deliver. And yet, over 100,000 five-star Amazon reviews cannot be wrong! Here’s what those shoppers—and GQ’s own tester, who loved his initial set of two enough that he shelled out for another pair—fell in love with: They’re soft and comfortable, but still firm enough to not lose their shape; packed with a cooling down alternative fill that won’t cause your allergies to act up; and just the right height to sleep with one alone or stacked, depending on your preference. If you’re looking for a simple, no-fuss pillow—either for your own bed or to dress up your guest room with—this is the ticket.
The Best Organic Pillow: Birch Organic
Birch is a brand for the CSA-supporting, organic-only shoppers in the produce aisle who want to sleep on something just as thoughtfully produced. The brand’s organic pillow uses an all-natural crushed talalay latex core that comes wrapped in organic wool from New Zealand, one of the best of the best wool suppliers. The temperature-regulating wool is both breathable and moisture-wicking, while the organic, eco-friendly production also nixes the kind of chemicals that keep you up at night.
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