PillowFacts / Problems / Something in my ear, and I sleep on my side / I have a healing cartilage piercing
I have a healing cartilage piercing
The requirement here is usually total contact removal rather than better pressure distribution, because the sore point is the tissue itself and not the load path through it. This is the clearest case where the hole family is the right family.
This one is not a pillow question alone. Healing piercings are an aftercare matter. Your piercer's guidance governs, and anything that looks infected is a question for a clinician, not a pillow. This page only describes how pillows are shaped.
What the pillow has to do
- contact removal preferred — An opening or cut-out that removes contact outright, rather than spreading the load. The right answer when the object cannot compress and the tissue under it is the problem — a healing piercing, or a mask frame that has nowhere else to go.
- 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.
Why this differs from the rest of the group
Unlike an earbud, this cannot be taken out for the night, the tissue is genuinely tender, and the situation lasts months rather than one night. The tolerance for getting it wrong is much lower.
How people ask this
- How to sleep on a new helix piercing
- Pillow for sleeping with an ear piercing
- Piercing pillow with a hole worth it
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 |
Work out your own loft first → Loft comes before everything else on this list.