While mattress testing and reviewing underpins all of our sleep coverage at Tom's Guide, pillow testing is a natural extension of that. When testing a pillow, we rate it against key performance indicators, such as head and neck support, firmness, temperature control and overall comfort.
Based on our in-house review scores and user feedback across popular retailers, a pillow may then make it into our guide to the best pillows of the year, which is a carefully curated list of products picked and reviewed by our team of sleep experts. This pillow guide works in tandem alongside our guide to the best mattress for all budgets and sleep needs, helping you to curate an optimal sleep set up.
We select top-rated pillows for testing based on market research. Each pillows is then put through rigorous testing over two week period to evaluate its performance. Here's an overview of our pillow testing process...
Why are pillows important?
We all know how crucial sleep is for our overall wellbeing. 1 in 3 US adults admit to not getting enough rest, which can lead to sleep deprivation. The short and long term side effects of sleep deprivation include impaired cognitive ability and heightened risk of cardiac disease.
While sleeping on the right pillow for your sleep needs alone isn't enough to ensure you're getting adequate quality rest, it is an excellent place to start. Alongside sleeping on the right mattress for your sleep style, your pillow contributes to creating the right environment for your body to relax and have a peaceful slumber all night.
Our approach in testing pillows
While our in-house pillow testers and freelance reviewers sleep on every pillow to gauge how it feels, we also rely on quantitative data to try and understand if the product performs as each brand claims.
Our reviewers sleep on each pillow for two weeks. This is how long it will take to adjust to a new pillow and study its comfort, quality and support level. Since each person’s experience of using a pillow is different, we also invite a panel of testers of varied weights, heights and sleeping preferences to sleep on a pillow using individual pillow cases to ensure we do not compromise on hygiene.
We also analyze thousands of user reviews online to know how the customers find a pillow and their common concerns, if any, so our readers can make informed decisions about their new pillow purchase.
How we collect pillow testing data
- In-house pillow testing
- User reviews across retailer websites
- Bedding manufacturers
Here are the different parameters we consider when reviewing a pillow…
Pillow performance rating
We use a score system of 1-5 to evaluate pillow performance:
1: Poor
2: Unsatisfactory
3: Satisfactory
4: Good
5: Outstanding
The final score awarded to a pillow is calculated by finding the mean score across the following areas of performance:
1. Setup
Each pillow gets a score based on the shipping process, packaging and ease of setting it up ready for sleep. The first step is to monitor if the delivery takes anything more than the recommended period (which is usually up to 5-8 business days for pillows and bedding for most brands.)
Great packaging according to us is one with minimal impact to the pillow factoring in environmental and social responsibility (if its recyclable or reusable.)
While pillows are easier to set up than mattresses, we look into the expansion time and off-gassing depending on the materials used in production.
2. Comfort and support
Ultimately, it all rests on how comfortable a pillow is to sleep on. This is why we explore the performance of a pillow in two ways:
- A sink test: We place a kettle bell weighing 10lb (roughly the average weight of an adult head) onto the pillow. We then leave it for five minutes and time how long it takes to return to its original shape.
- Lying on the pillow: Each reviewer spends five minutes per sleep position (side, back and stomach), leaving two minutes between each position, and monitoring its comfort and support per sleep position.
3. Spinal alignment
It's important that a pillow helps maintain the neutral spinal alignment irrespective of the sleeping position it's crafted for. We determine this by placing a row of sticky black dots along the spine to track the spinal alignment when lying on the pillow. When we can, we also aim to use the same mattress during pillow testing since the mattress you sleep on can significantly impact your spinal alignment.
4. Temperature regulation
The temperature regulating properties of a pillow is a key indicator to determine if it suits a hot sleeper or not. In addition to sleeping on it night after night over the two-week testing period, we also subject each pillow to a temperature-control test.
For this, we first check the temperature of both the pillow surface and the testing room. We then lie on the pillow for a period of five minutes. Following this, we take a reading of the surface of the pillow. A pillow with a breathable, moisture-wicking and cooling cover in addition to the heat-transfer design will earn the highest score out of 5.
5. Build and quality
We all know that pillow needs replacing every one to two years, but depending on the type of the fill and design, the quality and durability of a pillow will differ. We track these by observing how a pillow maintains the shape and support during the two week testing period. We do this by checking if the pillow needs regular fluffing (which indicates that it tends to lose shape frequently) and if the fill is hypoallergenic and safe to be used by all sleepers.
6. Care and maintenance
Lastly, we rate a pillow for ease of care and maintenance out of a total score of 5. Our reviewer checks if the pillow is machine-washable and the time it takes to dry, if it is. We also look into whether it retains its shape and support after being washed and dried.
We go through this maintenance process keeping in mind that only specific types of pillows can be washed in the washing machine like feather or down while others either need to be spot cleaned or vacuumed (memory foam pillows for instance) regularly to deliver a refreshing and clean sleep every night.
