The 6 Best Pillows Of 2024—We Tested Over A Dozen
The best pillows can really enhance all the hours we spend in bed—which equals roughly a third of our lives. That’s why we made it our personal mission to find the best pillows for a variety of sleep positions, testing 15 different options for more than 365 nights. After evaluating each pillow across factors like support, cooling and durability, we named the Coop Sleep Goods Original Adjustable Pillow our favorite overall. After a year of sleeping on it, it’s still just as comfortable as it felt right out of the package, plus it has an adjustable fill so you can customize the firmness.
After testing pillows for over a year, we found the six best.
We also found the Amazon Basics Down-Alternative Pillow to be the best budget pillow, a surprisingly comfortable and easy-to-clean option that has remained in our rotation a year later. The best pillow for you, of course, depends on factors like filling preference, sleep position, allergies and whether you have neck or back pain, just to name a few. Below, find our in-depth feedback on each pillow, as well as tips on how to pick the right one for you. If you’re shopping for a specific need, say neck pain or side-sleeping, check out our guides to the best pillows for neck pain and the best pillows for side sleepers.
Works For Side And Back Sleepers
Of all the pillows in all the different materials I tested, the Coop Sleep Goods Original Adjustable Pillow stood out as a clear winner. This pillow uses shredded memory foam rather than a solid piece of foam, which means the materials can shift and mold to your body. It compresses when you put your head (or a bowling ball) on it, but still provides enough support to cradle your head and neck. It cooled off quickly and didn’t retain humidity, and it stood up well to washing without developing lumps, off-putting odors or frayed seams. It’s comfy without the added expense or upkeep of down.
After more than a year of sleeping on it, I found it more or less retained the original shape it had when I took it out of the box—I’ve had to fluff it a couple times, but upkeep hasn’t been onerous. I’ve also washed the pillow several times, and found that it stood up well to the wear and tear of going through my washer and dryer without distorting or taking on a weird smell.
The Coop Sleep Goods Pillow was one of the more comfortable memory foam pillows I tested. Last year, I had to shift from sleeping on my stomach to sleeping on my side to help with back and neck pain. The Coop Sleep Goods Original Adjustable Pillow eased that transition. It’s comfortable in both positions, and even worked for a spell when, thanks to a knee injury, sleeping on my back was the only way I could get any rest. My mom called it “the marshmallow pillow,” and requested that I hang on to it for her future visits to my house.
An Actually Adjustable Pillow
The best part about this pillow, however, is that it’s adjustable. It comes with an additional bag of the shredded memory foam it’s stuffed with, meaning you can add or take out fill in order to adjust the firmness to your liking (and the brand has recommended heights for side, back and stomach sleepers). In my experience, it took a couple weeks of sleeping on the pillow to figure out the correct level of filling for me. Once I got it right, I’ve only adjusted the foam filling once, when I realized that I needed a slightly loftier pillow to support my neck. The process was really easy—you just unzip the inner lining, grab a handful of the foam stuffing and pack it into the pillow.
The Coop Sleep Goods Original won best pillow overall because it’s adjustable—it comes with extra … [+]
The ease of adjustability set the Coop Sleep Goods Original Pillow apart, and it was exactly what Washington University sleep neurologist Dr. Eric Landsness suggested looking for when I spoke to him. Because finding the right pillow firmness for you is, as he put it, “a Goldilocks game,” discovering a pillow that you can also change the softness of, albeit manually through taking out and putting filling back in, was a huge draw. “Variable firmness would allow you to optimize your pillow as needed,” Landsness said. “In a pillow you’re stuck with one setting and one setting only.” But not with this pillow. Though other shredded memory foam options performed solidly in testing, this added feature is what put the Coop Sleep Goods pillow over the top.
In my testing, I noticed that many pillows took hours to dry, or smelled funny after a wash. I’ve taken to air drying the pillow if I have the time—I think it helps the memory foam bounce back to its original shape—but it also can go in the dryer on low. It takes me two or three cycles, but that’s still a lot easier to deal with than washing my down pillows. Plus, with a 100-night trial period, you can easily return the pillow if it’s not to your liking.
The 2024 Forbes Vetted Best Product Awards are here: Explore our 150 top-recommended items across categories after extensive research and testing.
To my pleasant surprise, the Amazon Basics Down Alternative Pillow consistently aced my testing, and it was the most inexpensive option I tried. I’ve been burned by very cheap pillows before—they start out fine and end up flattening out, or they provide an uncomfortably sweaty sleep experience. But the Amazon Basics is one of the pillows I keep gravitating to even a year after my initial tests. It’s also one of the pillows that both my parents liked the best in their testing, so much so that they ordered some for their house. I’ve kept these in our guest room—along with several other pillows as options—and found that most guests really like them. They haven’t flattened out or developed weird lumps even after many rounds of washing and many guests sleeping on them, and they’re a nice mixture of supportive and soft. The only complaints were from people who preferred a much firmer pillow.
Supportive And Breathable
This pillow is supportive but still has a good deal of give to it. In comparison to down options, I found it was just as soft without flattening down too much. It doesn’t end up compressing into a crumpled ball on the top of your bed, like other inexpensive pillows I tried.
Despite being one of the least expensive pillows I tested, the Amazon Basics Down Alternative was … [+]
In my tests, the Amazon Basics was more breathable than pricier pillows, too. It retained slightly less heat and humidity than the Brooklinen Down Alternative Pillow, which costs twice as much and can’t go through the washer or dryer. It also stayed cooler than most foam or down options, so this pillow could be a great choice if you sleep hot.
Easy To Clean And Quick-Drying
The Amazon Basics pillow washed and dried easily and quickly without shrinking or clumping, and required zero fluffing. That’s particularly useful for a spare room pillow, which might need freshening up between guests—I throw mine in the dryer for 20 minutes in between people staying at my house, just to refresh them. Unlike other pillows, it didn’t require an extra cycle (or two) in the dryer.
The Amazon Basic pillows, after a very thorough wash and soak in enzyme cleaner, still bounced back to their original loft, and didn’t retain any unpleasant odors. At 30 days, this pillow has one of the shorter return and trial periods—some pillows I tested offered a 5-year warranty. But these pillows are so affordable that they’re less of a risk to buy; if they don’t suit your fancy, you can repurpose them for a guest room (or give them to your neighbor).
Of all the down options that I tried, the best was the Parachute Down Pillow. It comes in three firmness options: soft, medium and firm. (For this pillow and all the down pillows that had firmness options, I tried the medium-firm one). Most down pillows I tried had these options, which is a bonus if you prefer the softness and warmth of down but would like a firmer choice.
Some Considerations For Down Pillows
Down can compress more than the other fill materials I tried, and this pillow does have a tendency to flatten down and retain the shape of your head. It’s easily fixed by fluffing it out, but it is just one extra thing to deal with. After sleeping on the Parachute Down Pillow for many months, I’ve found that it held up well to nightly slumber, though I do regularly have to do some adjustments to puff it back up after a night’s sleep. That’s pretty par for the course, according to my research and testing.
Because down comes from geese and ducks, there are also animal welfare concerns. Down is the soft coating that’s underneath the feathers of birds, so it’s difficult to separate down and feathers. As a result, there’s no such thing as a truly 100% down pillow. The Parachute Down Pillow is filled with a minimum of 85% goose down, which is 10% more than is required by law for a down product. (Down labeling is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, so any down pillow you buy has a label indicating the percentage of down that is in its filling.) By contrast both the L.L. Bean and Garnet Hill pillows had a minimum of 75% down on their tags—the actual down content may be higher for both, but you’re guaranteed more with the Parachute pillow.
The Parachute pillow also excelled in loft tests compared to other down pillows. While other down pillows sank down immediately, providing little cushion between your head and the mattress, the Parachute Down Pillow maintained a supportive structure. It has also stood up well to washing and drying, which I’ve done two or three times during my long-term testing. I’ve taken to layering it with the Coop Sleep pillow so that I find the right amount of sink and support for myself, and it’s a great combination. And it comes with a 3-year warranty, one of the best return policies of any of the pillows I tried.