PillowFacts

PillowFacts / Problems / I do not sleep the way pillows assume

I do not sleep the way pillows assume

Pure geometry. Nothing in this cluster is about health.

I start on my side and end up on my back The two positions want different lofts. Side sleeping has to fill a shoulder-width gap; back sleeping has to fill only…I sleep on my stomach Face down, there is almost no gap to fill — the head is already close to the mattress. Loft that helps a side sleeper …I sleep with my arm under the pillow Tucking an arm under adds its thickness to the loft, so the effective height is your pillow plus your arm. People who …

What a pillow can be asked to do here

loft in measured rangePillow 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 supportSupport that does not depend on hitting one exact spot, so rolling over does not mean re-finding a position in the dark.
low loft requiredA loft below the common band. Narrow shoulders, or a soft mattress that swallows the shoulder, can leave very little for the pillow to fill.
loft compromiseOne loft that is tolerable in two positions rather than correct in one. A genuine trade-off, and the honest framing is which position you spend the most hours in.

The mechanism behind all of them →