A little nighttime reading

I’m not used to spending a lot for a pillow. Why should I upgrade?

Is this familiar?
In your pillow-buying experience, does this sound familiar? Imagine you’re strolling through your local department store. A special deal on *designer brand* pillows catches your eye. !SALE! Down alternative pillow - $99.99, now only $29.99! Chances are, this pillow was nowhere near worth the original price tag, but you still feel you’re getting a good deal. So you snatch it up.

Maybe you buy $20 pillows at a big retail store for your bedrooms and replace them after a year, once they’ve lost their fluff and support. Or maybe you keep them until they’re yellowed, long after they’ve flattened into a lumpy mess.  

If any of this is familiar, you may wonder -- why spend $50, let alone $100, on a new pillow when you can get something decent for way less? We get it. We shopped for pillows this way for years. And when we started to dig in more, we realized it made sense to consider stepping up to a better pillow experience.

Not all pillows are the same in comfort
91% of Americans believe that a comfortable pillow is important to a good night's sleep. And most of us know what it’s like to have a bad pillow ruin a night of sleep. So it makes sense to us that a pillow deserves more of our attention. Why be fine with “good enough” when instead, we can have 8 hours every night of fantastic?

A pillow may seem like a simple item -- just a piece of cloth stuffed with some filling -- but the difference is in the details. Like the difference between European goose down and Chinese duck down. Or Talalay latex vs. Dunlop. Flattened vs. intact buckwheat hulls.

At Slumbr, we've felt hundreds of pillows, and there is a vast difference in quality, feel, construction and durability, even among pillows made with supposedly the same materials and specs. You can feel the difference in the suppleness, resilience and consistency of the fills. We believe it’s worth taking time to find a better pillow.

You often get what you pay for
Now not all expensive pillows are worth it, but we have found that in general, you get what you pay for. Most pillows available on the market are filled with inexpensive, polyester fill -- churned out by a factory overseas in large quantities. These types of pillows tend to feel decent (even nice) at first, but quickly lose their support and fluff. The fill will start to degrade within months, leaving you with clumps and flat areas.

We also find in our research that most people fail to use pillow protectors with their pillows, leaving them to accumulate dust mites, oils and dirt over time. Have you ever seen a pillow past its prime -- yellowed and lumpy? Yeah, it’s time to throw those away. ;)

Why buy a premium pillow?
Premium pillows made with higher-quality fills and properly cared for can retain their support and feel for years. These pillows tend to:

  • Keep their loft longer and resist degradation over time
  • Be made of unique fills with comfort qualities ideal for various sleep needs
  • Stand up better to washing or do not need washing 
  • Be sourced from ethical and/or environmentally-conscious suppliers
  • Contain materials that are cleaned and sanitized according to high standards

More economical in the long-run
Given that you’ll have to toss a cheaper pillow out much sooner, if you do the math, you’ll likely end up spending just as much (and maybe even more) over the years than if you’d bought a premium pillow instead. And keeping durable, high-quality pillows for longer also means fewer pillows filling up landfills over time.

Compared to costly mattresses, getting a new pillow is a very cost-effective way to improve your sleep environment right away. Given how precious sleep is these days, we figure it's worth it!

 

Ready to upgrade your pillow and sleep better? Slumbr offers high-quality, comfortable pillows. Take the Slumbr Pillow Quiz today to find your fit.