PillowFacts / Problems / My shoulders and my pillow disagree / I changed mattress and my pillow stopped working
I changed mattress and my pillow stopped working
Required loft is your neck-to-shoulder distance minus how far the mattress lets your shoulder sink — so it is a property of the pair, not of you alone. A firmer mattress swallows less of the gap and leaves more for the pillow to fill; a softer one does the opposite. Nothing changed about your body or your pillow. The subtraction changed.
This is the clearest demonstration of why loft is not a fixed property of a person, and it is the situation that sends the most people looking for a pillow when what they need is a number.
What the pillow has to do
- remeasure after change — The measurement is a property of body AND mattress. Change the mattress and the answer changes, even though the pillow did not.
- 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.
How people ask this
- New mattress now my pillow is wrong
- Pillow uncomfortable after new mattress
- Do I need a new pillow with a new mattress
- Neck pain after changing mattress
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.