PillowFacts / Problems / Something changed, and the pillow that used to work stopped / I have very thick hair, or I sleep with it up

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 braid or a bun does it unevenly and in one spot, which tilts the head rather than lifting it. The effect is small compared with shoulder width, but it runs in the same direction as an over-tall pillow, and it is the difference between a correct pillow and a slightly-too-tall one.

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.
• 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.

How people ask this

• Pillow for thick hair
• Sleeping with hair in a bun neck pain
• Does hair affect pillow height?

The pillows indexed here

Work out your own loft first → Loft comes before everything else on this list.