PillowFacts / Problems / Something changed, and the pillow that used to work stopped
Something changed, and the pillow that used to work stopped
Every page in this cluster is geometry. Nothing here is medical, and nothing here asks you to change how you sleep — it explains what a change you have already made does to the one distance a pillow exists to fill.
I started using a weighted blanket and my neck hurts
A weighted blanket presses your shoulder further into the mattress than your body weight alone does. Required loft is …I got an adjustable bed and my pillow is wrong now
Raising the head section stops the mattress being a flat plane. Your torso is now on an incline while your head sits a…I have very thick hair, or I sleep with it up
Hair sits between your head and the pillow, so it adds to the pillow's height without adding any support. A dense brai…The cat sleeps against my back and I have stopped moving at night
An animal pinning one side of you does not change your measurement — it removes your ability to turn over. A pillow th…I am sleeping in a recliner or on a sofa
A recliner supports your back and leaves your head to a headrest that was designed for sitting upright and watching so…I go to bed with wet hair
Two things change. Wet hair packs down far flatter than dry, so the small height it was adding disappears — the pillow…I flip the pillow all night looking for the cool side
Flipping is a height problem disguised as a heat problem. Memory foam softens as it warms, so a foam pillow that was t…My child has outgrown their toddler pillow
The arithmetic is the same at any size: required loft is neck-to-shoulder minus mattress sink. Children simply have sm…
What a pillow can be asked to do here
| 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. |
|---|---|
| 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. |
| adjustability preferred | A pillow whose height you can change, because the thing altering your geometry is not present every night — one fixed height cannot be right both with and without it. |