The Best Pillow for Side Sleepers

To stay comfortably aligned, most side-sleepers should look for a pillow that has 4 to 6 inches of loft, or height, and provides the right combination of softness (to cradle the neck) and firmness (to hold it in place). Those who sleep on their side need more support than those who favor any other sleep position; that’s because when people sleep on their side, there is a larger gap between their head and the mattress. As a result, if you have broad shoulders, you need a loftier pillow. The goal of any pillow should be to keep your head and neck in roughly the same position as they are when you’re standing straight.

Terry Cralle, a registered nurse and clinical sleep educator, told us that keeping your body correctly positioned at night is crucial to your physical health and the quality of your sleep. “Your sleeping posture is just as important as your waking posture,” she said. “Your head will be angled downward if the pillow is too thin and angled upward if too thick. Aim for neutral, to keep the head, neck, and spine in alignment.” And your neck isn’t the only part of your body that needs support. Cralle also told us, “If you are a side-sleeper, a thinner pillow placed between your knees can help make you more comfortable and help keep your spine in a neutral position.” We also recommend using a body pillow to get full-length support while you’re on your side.

We spoke to a number of experts while researching our guide to bed pillows, and they all emphasized the same thing: A pillow is an extremely personal choice. Bodies are different, it’s as simple as that. Some side-sleepers feel perfectly comfortable with one pillow, while others may need two. Several of our staffers like to use a shredded-memory-foam pillow, such as the Xtreme Comforts or Easy Breather, as a base layer, with a thinner down pillow on top. Figuring out what works for you will likely involve some trial and error. That’s why we think it’s important to buy a pillow with a good return policy—of at least 30 days—so you can try it at home before committing.

We’ve been testing pillows for our full pillow guide since 2016. After considering promising models, we asked a panel of people (including several side-sleepers) to spend a month testing roughly eight to 10 pillows that suited their sleep position. Each person slept on each pillow for at least three nights (unless they found it too uncomfortable—we didn’t ask them to sacrifice sleep). And they gave us their feedback.

We were looking for a pillow that was supportive and comfortable, well -constructed, and affordable. But it was equally important for us to find a pick that came with a good warranty and a generous return policy. A pillow may not be the most exciting purchase you’ll ever make, but the right one will be worth the search.

The Nest Bedding Easy Breather Pillow offers side-sleepers stellar support and two types of customization—moldable texture and adjustable fill—plus, it’s smooth and comfortable. The Easy Breather’s thicker, Tencel-blend cover does a better job of camouflaging shredded memory foam’s inherent lumpiness. But it’s also expensive.

The Easy Breather looks very tall and lofty when it arrives, which can seem overwhelming, but the fill is adjustable. You can remove clumps of the shredded foam until you get the loft just right (and maybe save those pieces in a bag for future adjustments); we think this makes it a flexible, work-with-your-body choice for many people. One back-sleeper told us, “I realized after all these pillows that I like a really understuffed pillow, and this one, after I took a third of the stuffing out, was perfect. My ideal pillow.”

The Easy Breather is fully machine-washable. The shredded foam is encased in a zippered inner pouch (so you can remove stuffing); this allows you to toss the cover and the stuffing in the washer—rare for foam pillows. The inner pouch is basically a very thin cotton pillowcase. But that makes removing the outer cover to wash it much easier than it was with past versions of the Easy Breather (which got very messy).

You can also throw the sealed insert into your washing machine on a cold, gentle wash, with a low-heat dryer cycle to clean the foam (the company suggests using a safety pin on the zipper opening to make sure the inner pouch stays closed). We put our tester in the laundry and had no problems with escaped foam or damage to the pouch. But the foam did expand considerably, and it took some wrangling to stuff it back into the cover. You may need to remove additional foam after a wash to get it back to the right loft for you.

The Easy Breather’s thick Tencel-blend cover is very soft, with a stippled surface that masks the slightly lumpy texture of the shredded-foam fill (testers have noted they can feel the clumps on other foam pillows we’ve tried). It’s not uncommon for memory foam to smell when it’s brand-new, but in our tests the Easy Breather smelled much better than other pillows we tested that can have a chemical odor. We’ve had no complaints of stinky pillows from our Easy Breather sleep testers in the past, although we did receive one Easy Breather that had a faint unpleasant odor; it faded after a few days.

The Easy Breather comes with a 30-day return policy (which should be long enough for you to make sure it’s the right pillow) and a two-year warranty covering manufacturer defects. That’s the longest warranty of our picks, though Sleep Number offers a 100-day return window.

Over multiple years of testing, the Xtreme Comforts Shredded Memory Foam Pillow (standard) has consistently outperformed many pricier pillows. But in past testing, two of the four Xtreme Comforts pillows we tried had a strong chemical odor that made them unusable (they are returnable). However, in the past few years, we haven’t seen complaints from readers or staffers about a chemical smell, so we think the problem may have been resolved. If you get one that doesn’t smell, it’s a great pillow that typically costs about less than half the price of our favorite shredded-foam pillow from Nest Bedding.

It offers comfortable neck support without being too stiff, a problem with many loftier pillows. The breathable, micro-perforated cover, a bamboo viscose and polyester blend, keeps hot sleepers cooler, and the removable shredded-foam fill makes the pillow easy to adjust for your body. It is lumpier than the Easy Breather, and the texture took some getting used to for some of our testers, but most of our back- and side-sleepers—as well as a few stomach-sleepers—have liked it over the years. “This pillow gives much better support for my neck than any down/synthetic down pillow I have owned in the past,” one side-sleeper told us.

According to our experts, side-sleepers need the most support, and the Xtreme Comforts offers plenty of it. The pillow is lofty enough (about 6 inches high) to keep your head and body aligned and comfortable while you’re lying sideways, but its shredded fill avoids the stiffness that comes with most single-piece memory-foam models. One tester told us she loved the soft support: “For me, the Xtreme Comforts beat out pretty much all feather pillows because I need the volume in order to support my head and neck. I used to use some solid latex pillows, which were okay too, but they can be too solid, too high.”

Although it may seem counterintuitive, many people find the squishy, moldable fill even more supportive than solid pillows. Picture your head being cradled in a custom fit, rather than propped up by a one-size-fits-all molded pillow (you’ve likely seen versions molded with a cylindrical lump meant to wedge under the neck). Another side-sleeper told us their Xtreme Comforts felt “significantly more supportive than the solid memory foam they were using before.”

The Xtreme Comforts pillow also ranked much higher with side-sleepers than pillows containing other types of fill. A tester who previously used feather pillows said she was more comfortable after switching: “I’ve been sleeping with Xtreme Comforts for a few years. It needs fluffing from time to time, but so far has been helpful for keeping my head and neck supported. I was a feather-pillow user before, and sometimes think about going back, but whenever I do, it doesn’t have as much support as the Xtreme Comforts.”

This pillow is customizable in two ways: You can adjust the support by kneading the shredded foam until it molds to your head and neck—it holds its shape better than others we tried. And you can also tailor the amount of fill inside the pillow itself, a feature we’ve seen with few other models. Just unzip the pillow’s inner cover to remove some fill and make it less lofty. For one tester, this feature was the key to getting the perfect amount of loft: “It was easy for me to continue to remove foam periodically until my pillow was as soft, but still supportive, as I wanted it to be.”

That adjustable fill allows the Xtreme Comforts pillow to provide optimal support to a wide range of body sizes and shapes. It’s also good for people who tend to switch positions during the night. The lumpy fill does give this pillow a somewhat irregular texture, even through its cover and a pillowcase. But we found that most testers adjusted to the consistency pretty quickly, and, in the end, they slept better than ever.

The Xtreme Comforts pillow’s best surprise is its low price—it’s half as much as the other shredded-memory-foam pillow we liked, the Nest Bedding Easy Breather. And despite the Xtreme Comforts’ popularity with our testers, it won’t work for every body, so a 30-day return policy gives you the flexibility to try it without risk.

If you sleep on your back or side, and you want an adjustable shredded-memory-foam pillow but don’t like pulling out messy handfuls to tailor the amount of fill, the Sleep Number ComfortFit Pillow Ultimate is a tidy package that’s worth the upgrade price. The ComfortFit Ultimate is a mix of supportive shredded foam and soft down alternative, and it was the easiest and fastest foam pillow to customize. The cover zips on three sides, so it opens like a suitcase and makes removing the three sealed layers of fill a cinch. Most of our testers were able to find a comfortable fit. One back-sleeping tester noted, “I took out one of the three inserts and it’s perfect! I love this way to adjust shredded foam.”

All of our testers liked the smooth, soft cover (made of lyocell, like the Easy Breather), which masked any lumps in the shredded foam, and the pillow didn’t cause overheating in the night. The layers of fill are wrapped in a jersey knit, so the whole pillow is soft and noiseless. Ours was also odorless, unlike the often-smelly Xtreme Comforts we tested and even one of our Easy Breather pillows, which needed to air out for a day or two. One of our sleep testers, a combo side- and stomach-sleeper, complained of shoulder pain from his old down alternative pillows. But he’s been long-term testing the ComfortFit Ultimate since fall 2019 and reports no pain whatsoever. With all three layers inside, this was the tallest foam pillow we tried, so if you need extra loft, it might work well.

There are some drawbacks to Sleep Number, though. If you need to switch sleeping positions or make adjustments in the middle of the night, opening this pillow and changing the inserts can be a little involved. But it’s still so much better than sleeping with the wrong pillow.

Sleep Number offers a 100-day return policy by mail and includes a one-year limited warranty.