PillowFacts / Problems / My shoulders and my pillow disagree / I have broad shoulders and every pillow is too flat
I have broad shoulders and every pillow is too flat
The gap your pillow has to fill is set by your shoulder. A broader shoulder means a bigger gap, and the retail market clusters at 5 to 6 inches because that suits the middle of the range. If your measurement lands above that band, most pillows on the shelf are genuinely too low for you and no amount of trying them will change it.
Measure before you buy anything else. A reader in this situation has usually bought several pillows already, all from inside the same narrow band, and concluded that pillows do not work for them.
What the pillow has to do
- loft in measured range — Pillow loft within the range your own measurement implies. This is first for every constraint in this cluster, because no surface is soft enough to rescue a pillow your head has already flattened.
- high loft required — A loft above what most retail pillows offer. Broad shoulders on a firm mattress can need more than the 5–6 inch band the market clusters at, which is why the shelf feels wrong rather than you being wrong.
- position tolerant support — Support that does not depend on hitting one exact spot, so rolling over does not mean re-finding a position in the dark.
How people ask this
- Best pillow for broad shoulders side sleeper
- Highest loft pillow for big shoulders
- Pillow too flat for my shoulders
- What loft do I need for wide shoulders
The pillows indexed here
| Pillow | Loft | Opening | Trial |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cushion Lab Deep Sleep Pillow | 5–5.5" | No | not published |
| The Pillow With A Hole Ltd. The Original P.W.A.H® V2 | 3.5" | Yes | 14 nights |
| Coop Sleep Goods Original Adjustable Pillow | not published | No | 100 nights |
| Blissbury Ear Pillow | 4–5" | Yes | stated two ways |
| Elviros C1 Adjustable CPAP Pillow | 2.4–4.1" | Yes | 100 nights |
| Pillow Cube Side Cube Original | 5" | No | 60 nights |
| Purple Harmony Pillow | 5.5–7.5" | No | 30 nights |
| Cushion Lab CloudLoft Pillow | 8" | No | not published |
| Cushion Lab Neck Relief Ergonomic Cervical Pillow | 4.3" | No | not published |
| Layla Kapok Pillow | not published | No | 30 nights |
| Coop Sleep Goods Eden Adjustable Pillow | not published | No | 100 nights |
Work out your own loft first → Loft comes before everything else on this list.