The Best Cooling Pillows to Help You Stop Sweating and Start Snoozing
The Best Cooling Pillows to Help You Stop Sweating and Start Snoozing
Getting a great night of sleep should be no sweat, but that's not always the case. If you happen to have a pre-existing condition that causes night sweats, you sleep in a stuffy or hot environment, or you find yourself tossing and turning night after night, deep sleep can feel frustratingly elusive.
Luckily, cooling pillows have emerged as a potential solution. Although no two brands are exactly alike when it comes to construction and efficacy, their unique, refreshing feel can help provide some sweet relief, especially if you tend to sleep hot.
The Best Cooling Pillows
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What to Consider
Each cooling pillow you'll find is a little bit different, but when it comes to choosing the best cooling pillow for you, these are the most important things to consider:
Pillow shape
The best cooling pillow shape depends largely on your main sleeping position. Stomach sleepers should opt for a soft, airy pillow, side sleepers need a flat, firmer pillow, and back sleepers are best suited with something in the middle. A cooling pillow should keep your head and neck in total alignment on its own and not need any added bolsters to provide adequate height for you.
If you like the feel and weight of your current bed pillow, start your cooling pillow search with one that has a similar construction.
Fill material
Most cooling pillows are either filled with memory foam or down-alternative material. Memory foam provides ample support, but it tends to be a little weighty and heat-retentive. To counteract this, many cooling pillow brands use perforated foam, shredded foam, or other design features to help push out the hot air.
Conversely, down-alternative fiber tends to be lighter and airier than foam, but it doesn't provide the same reactive feel, and it has the potential to lose its puffiness over time.
Cooling element
The main cooling element of most of these pillows is in the outer cover. Some cooling pillows are made with cool-to-the-touch fabrics such as lyocell or Outlast, while some use materials that are completely proprietary to the brand. There are also a few products that feature heat-wicking gel as a part of the pillow’s inner fill construction.
Much of this particular choice comes down to personal preference, but one important thing to keep in mind is that no cooling pillow stays ice-cold after hours of sleeping on it. This is why you need to consider the total package, inside and out. A cooling pillow's inner airflow design is just as important as its cool-to-the-touch cover.
How We Tested
We curated this guide to the best cooling pillows to help all types of sleepers get their most satisfying sleep, selecting products that we've personally tested or that are beloved and well-rated by hundreds of reviewers. The cooling pillows we tested were slept on for 3-week periods by our editors, who were asked to give feedback on the pillows' cooling covers, ability to regulate body temperature through the night, and general comfort level.
Ready for cooler nights and more refreshed mornings? Read on to find out how these six cooling pillows stacked up.
Learn more about how we test products, from the questions we ask our testing team to the types of products we feel are actually worth testing to the overall time we put into our testing process.
1) Shredded Memory Foam Pillow
Qutool
amazon.com
$26.99
Key Specs
- Main Cooling Element: Bamboo-fiber cover, gel-infused foam filling
- Fill Type: Shredded memory foam
- Sizes: Queen and king
If you're new to the world of cooling pillows, we suggest starting with the affordable and adjustable Qutool Shredded Memory Foam Pillow. This huggable pillow is great if you like having the support of memory foam but need something that feels fluffy, too.
Containing gel-infused shredded memory foam, this cooling pillow has a dual-sided bamboo-fiber cover — one side of it is smooth while the other is cooling, so you can get the best of the cozy and cool worlds. This pillowcase that holds the foam also unzips, so you can insert or remove foam as needed to get it as lofty as you'd like.
Users love this one because it's airy and breathable, and the cover is soft and not slippery. This is also great if you live in a hot climate — says one reviewer, "It's been over 100 degrees here in Arizona and I am not waking up with a sweaty head or neck. Great support for sleeping on my sides."
More: The Best Cooling Sheets for an Even More Refreshing Night's Sleep
2) UltraCool Pillow
Slumber Cloud
slumbercloud.com
$69.00
Key Specs
- Main Cooling Element: Outlast-fiber cover
- Fill Type: Down-alternative
- Sizes: Standard and king
The Slumber Cloud UltraCool pillow has something that very few other cooling pillows have: Outlast technology in its cover. This NASA-developed material has been shown to absorb excess heat and then release it to help the sleeper maintain a comfortable body temperature.
Users love its soft, foam-free, and “fluffable” down-alternative fill. Not to mention, its special materials actually help wick away heat throughout the night — as one reviewer sums it up, "Cool, supportive, and just the right amount of stuffing. No more stiff neck!"
Although this pillow is actually available in both soft/medium and medium/firm versions, we think the softer option sets it apart from countless others that err on the firm and weighty side. But it’s nice to have the choice.
3) Foam Pillow With Snow Technology
Casper
casper.com
$139.00
Key Specs
- Main Cooling Element: Phase-changing materials, perforated foam
- Fill Type: Memory foam
- Sizes: Standard and king
Casper's Foam Pillow with Snow Technology is at once cooling, supportive, and low-loft. Its shoulder-hugging height also feels perfect for side sleepers. I've found this pillow to be on the firmer side, providing a great bolster for both upright reading in bed and a surface for laying your head upon afterward.
It features a multilayered foam interior, replete with perforations and channels for air to flow through. This lends this otherwise solid pillow some nice flexibility, and it enhances its proprietary cooling technology. It's covered with a smooth polyester/spandex cover that hot sleepers can remove in order to enjoy even more coolness against the skin.
4) Hybrid Pillow
Leesa
leesa.com
$125.00
Key Specs
- Main Cooling Element: Tencel/Frio-nylon cover, cooling gel beneath surface
- Fill Type: Quilted polyester microfiber
- Sizes: Standard and queen
The Leesa Hybrid Pillow pulls double duty. One side is layered with cooling gel, and the other is made up of cushy quilting that allows air to circulate without your head or neck getting overheated. In testing this cooling pillow, I've found that the cover fabric is also temperature-regulating, feeling much more refreshing on contact than cotton.
This is a very comfortable pillow for side/stomach sleepers, as it isn’t excessively lofty but is still adequately spoonable. It's a very well-made, long-lasting pillow that hasn't gotten shabby or misshapen at all in my time testing it.
5) Storm Performance Pillow-Size 1.0
Bedgear
wayfair.com
$199.99
Key Specs
- Main Cooling Element: Proprietary Ver-Tex fabric cover
- Fill Type: Memory foam
- Size: Standard
We know it's super pricey, but trust us when we say that this is the coldest cooling pillow we have ever tried. Bedgear’s materials and construction are entirely proprietary to the brand and engineered for the most restful night of sleep possible. The Storm 1.0 pillow is expensive, but its chilly, unique feel is in an entirely different tier of sleep products.
The pillow’s Ver-Tex fabric cover is woven in a textured, geometric pattern that feels pleasingly smooth against the skin — our tester Stefan Vazharov also described it as "heat-deflecting." He touted the pillow for its balanced firmness and effective cooling sensation that seems to work for hours through the night.
The Storm 1.0 is part of a four-pillow Storm Series collection that are all the same apart from the heights of their ventilated border gussets.
6) Breeze Pro + Advanced Cooling Pillow
Tempur-Pedic
tempurpedic.com
$219.00
Key Specs
- Main Cooling Element: Proprietary SmartClimate cover and interior gel layer
- Fill Type: Memory foam
- Sizes: Queen and king
Tempur-Pedic’s Breeze Pro Cooling Pillow comprises proprietary TEMPUR foam layered with cooling gel on both sides, and it's covered with a removable SmartClimate cover that also feels cool to the touch.
It comes in a "hi" and "lo" height. Tester Ashley Phillips touted the "lo" pillow’s flat, slow-responsive-foam shape, as well as its exceptional neck support, saying, "It's easy to tell that you're sleeping on a fancy pillow."
Though firm and slightly weighty, the shape of this pillow is perfectly comfortable for sleepers that change position in the night. She notes, “I sleep on my side, but always wake up on my back. It worked well for me because I like to fall asleep with my arm under the pillow. So the fact that it’s layered with cooling gel on the bottom, too, feels extra comfortable.”
In case you're looking for a cooling neck pillow, we've also tested the TEMPUR-Pedic Breeze Neck Pillow. It has the same heat-wicking cover and cooling gel-layered foam inside, only it's shaped to be more accommodating to those who need more neck and back support.
We tested top-rated cooling pillows from different brands to gauge how well each brand’s cooling claims held up with nightly use. Here are our favorites.