Best Cooling Pillows

There’s nothing worse than waking up too hot in the middle of the night. It’s not just a sweaty mess, it’s a major disruptor in the middle of the night that prevents you from having a satisfying sleep. As we all know, maintaining a healthy sleep schedule is a vital component to a healthy lifestyle. You need to find a way to keep cool as you sleep, and there are few better options than a cooling pillow.

There are steps you can take to help keep you sleeping comfortably and cool, and much has to do with the choices you make surrounding the materials and fibers in your bedding. Many people are aware of how their mattress choices play into their overall comfort, but did you also know your pillow is almost as important to getting enough sleep? Not only does it support your sleep position, a pillow can help eliminate heat retention and provide you with a more ideal sleep temperature.

Some pillows are heat traps that seem designed to pull as much sweat out of your face as possible. Others are carefully designed to be breathable throughout the night, ensuring you get a full and satisfying sleep. Of course, it can be a little tricky to find the right cooling pillow to suit your lifestyle. Thankfully, you’ve come to the right place. Here at The Sleep Judge, we’ve rounded up the highest rated cooling pillows and put them through a series of trials to help provide you with our honest opinions. Our results confirm why these are some of the best in the business. Keep reading for all the details!

The Best Cooling Pillows

Cooling Pillow Claims

Cooling pillows help to better regulate your body’s temperature each night while you sleep. As we sleep, our body naturally drops in temperature and significantly reduces its regulation. This is so our bodies may properly take advantage of the associated drop in blood pressure, increase in circulation and many physical and neurological healing processes that occur while we sleep each night.

When our body heat is retained close to us, our body is less likely to drop in temperature, thus interrupting this important part of the sleep process. As our body attempts to cool itself, we may wake up sweating, or feeling overheated – causing us to kick away our covers or reach for a cooler feeling surface. That’s why a cooling pillow can be such a valuable sleep tool. It helps alleviate this issue by encouraging the cool down process your body needs to sleep soundly throughout the night.

Fiber and Material Choices

Materials and fibers don’t create a colder temperature, but they can and will help create a cooling sensation due to how air naturally flows and through heat conduction. Pillows that feel cooler to the touch do so for a variety of reasons, many of which surround the choices of fiber and materials used in their construction.

Any pillow that includes the variables explained below will often feel cooler to the touch each night. However, cooling pillows depend on multiple factors to ensure you’re getting a very specific cooling effect. The best cooling pillows mix and match a variety of techniques to ensure that they provide that sweet cooling solution that you crave.

Natural Fibers vs Synthetic

Natural fibers, such as cotton and bamboo, are known to breathe better than synthetic fibers or blends. This is because natural choices have larger cellular structures and allow for increased airflow. They also help absorb moisture from your skin and allow it to dissipate, which helps keep you cooler. Artificially manufactured fibers tend to be too dense for this to occur.

Synthetic fibers are usually made from a polymer, which is a plastic by product. Naturally, these fibers don’t breathe well since they’re structurally not built to do so, and therefore they don’t allow as much air to flow through. These are still great fibers for insulation purposes when you need to keep warm – or cool – air closer to your body. But, they don’t always work well for heat release purposes. This is something worth keeping in mind as you seek out the best cooling pillow for your needs.

Casing Thread-Count

The fabrics used to cover these pillows as covers, casements, or protectants, also need to be breathable in nature. High thread-count materials may feel heavy and soft to the touch, but no matter what type of fiber it’s made from, the higher the thread-count, the less airflow will be available. Thread counts lower than 400 (and the lower the better) allow for a free exchange of air through its surface, and helps prevent heat retention.

Fiber Fills

The fiber fills used in many pillows are often of a synthetic or synthetic blend. These types of fills are preferable because of their small structure, and their ability to keep their shape and not compress as easily over time. Polyester and poly-gel blends help your pillow keep its loft, and this allows for air to flow through the pillow. Gel in particular is able to help pull heat from your body as well as help it dissipate.

Memory Foam

Memory foam is a popular choice used for personal comfort and proper posture support. Unfortunately, it also may create a heat sink due to the low breathability of the viscoelastic polyurethane it’s made from. The addition of varying other layers in cooling versions helps to increase air flow, so you can get the best of both worlds. In general, any sleep product that’s primarily constructed from memory foam will sleep hot. That’s just the nature of the foam, and there isn’t much that can be done about it.

Gel

Gel layers have become an increasingly popular material in the use of bedding materials. Gel draws heat away through the process of conduction and pushes it away from the surface of your body. Although it’s affected by the ambient temperature of a room, gels work as a great addition to other temperature control variables to help keep you feeling cooler.

Controlled Variables That Affect Your Sleep Temperatures

As mentioned, there are many variables that can affect your sleep temperature comfort. For example, the clothes you’re wearing to bed can have a major impact on how well heat is able to escape your body. Synthetic fibers and tighter weaves can act as insulators to keep both heat and body moisture from escaping. While cooling pillows will make a huge impact on improving your sleep, this isn’t the only factor so it’s important to consider other variables as well.

This also pertains to your choice of sheets and bed coverings. Anything that’s unable to breathe freely can cause a heat sink and make you feel too warm for comfort. Your room temperature and humidity also plays a part in your overall sleep temperature. A warm room naturally keeps you from cooling down, and humidity holds heat in the air rather than allowing it to disperse.

These are controllable as you can easily – and very affordably – find sheet sets of 300 thread-counts or lower. You also can adjust your thermostat, or if AC is not an option, use a fan to help draw heat away, or create an increase in airflow around your body.

Pillow Case Choices

With all of the details provided above, your choice of pillowcase is important. If you use a material that inhibits airflow, then you negate the properties your pillow can provide. Using a 100% natural fiber case combined with a low thread count will ensure you get the full cooling effect the pillow claims. Be sure to keep this in mind, because there’s no point in spending money on a high-quality cooling pillow to place it inside a pillow case that will negate the pillow’s cooling properties.

You also won’t be able to use an additional waterproof pillow encasement. If protecting your pillow is a priority, consider purchasing one that’s machine washable, or layer breathable casings to keep them better protected from accidents, body oils and moisture.

What to Consider When Choosing a Cooling Pillow

Do you normally sleep hot?

If you have a natural tendency to feel warm, no cooling pillow in the world will help if you’re not paying attention to the many other variables that are included to help you get a cooler night’s sleep. This includes your choices of mattress or mattress pads, sheets, pajamas and room temperature.

What is your sleep position?

Stomach sleepers need a softer, flatter pillow surface for proper cervical alignment. Back sleepers also need a flatter, but often more firm pillow for proper neck support and to help keep undue strain upon the back. Side sleepers need a higher loft, and a firmer pillow that’s able to properly support the neck and head.

Can you control your room temperature?

A hot room can interrupt the cooling sensation your pillow provides. Many products depend on heat transfer, and a hot room can transfer to the materials keeping you from reaping the full benefits. Even if your room is warm, applying a fan to increase air circulation will help with dissipating heat from your body and allow you to sleep easier.

What pillow case choices do you have?

As mentioned, your choice of pillowcase can completely interrupt the way your pillow is constructed. If you want a cooling effect, you need to look for a natural fiber, low thread-count case.

Conclusion

Each of our top picks provide a noticeable cooling sensation in just about every situation thrown at them, and each has its own comfort level to fit a variety of sleep positions. They also have their own list of benefits, especially when used with the correct pillowcases.

Our suggestions surrounding your best pick starts first with sleep comfort. You sleep posture is the most important part of your sleep health, and is incredibly important to getting a good night’s rest. Choosing your cooling pillow starts with sleep position recommendations, and then should be based on your personal preferences of cooling needs.

Additional Resources

• What’s the Best Mattress Topper to Keep You Cool?
• What’s the Best Material For Sheets to Keep You Cool?
• Layla Pillow Unboxing

Recent Updates

August 23, 2022: SleepBetter Iso-Cool Gusseted Pillow has been removed due to unavailability, replaced with the popular Snuggle-Pedic Original Memory Foam Pillow. Original photography and links to our hands-on review have also been included for this product.