How to Get Your Pillow Height Right With a Coop Pillow

A pillow that sits an inch too high does not feel like a pillow problem. It feels like a neck problem. You wake at 3am with a dull ache running from behind your ear down toward your shoulder blade, you shift, you pound the thing into a new shape, and by morning you have decided that you are simply a person who wakes up stiff and always will be. I believed that for most of a year. Then I sat at the kitchen table with a yellow legal pad and wrote down the five things wearing me out, in the order they were bothering me: noise first, light second, a sore neck third, overheating fourth, dark mornings last. The Coop Home Goods Original Adjustable Pillow was on that list at number three, and it was the only one of the five where I could not simply buy the answer, because the height had to be set.

Here is what I wish someone had said to me at the start. An adjustable pillow is not automatically the right height. It arrives fuller than most people need, on purpose, and matching it to your own neck is work that only you can do. I did that work over three evenings last October and I got it wrong on the second one, which cost me a night on a pillow that was worse than the one that came out of the box. The order matters more than the effort, so here is the order I would use if I were starting over in your bedroom instead of mine.

Step 1: Lie on It as It Arrives and Check Your Chin

A new pillow smells of foam for a few days, and mine did, though I noticed it far less than I expected to. The smell fades. What does not fade is the height, because the pillow arrives tall on purpose, so the first job is finding out how tall it sits under your head. Do that in your normal sleeping position, with your normal pillowcase on it, and nothing else propped up behind you while you check it.

So lie on it as it comes, on your side, before you touch the zipper. Mine was plainly too tall. My chin tipped down toward my chest, which is what happens when a pillow lifts your head up past the line of your shoulder. If your chin drops or your head pushes forward, you are too high, and you can go to the next step with some confidence.

One thing to know before you touch the zipper. The Coop Home Goods pillow arrives with more fill than most sleepers need, and there is a separate bag of extra fill in the box, so the pillow you take out of the plastic is the tallest version of itself. That is deliberate. Taking fill out is easy. Putting it back is easy too, but only because they sent you something to put back, and you will want that the first time you go a handful too far.

Step 2: Unzip It and Take the Fill Out in Handfuls

Unzip the end of the cover and reach in. The fill is cross cut memory foam blended with microfiber, about three quarters foam and one quarter gel fiber, so it comes out in clumps instead of one solid piece. Take it out in handfuls, not scoops. Handfuls are slow, and slow is the whole point, because nobody can judge pillow height while standing over the bed with a clump of foam in each hand.

Do it over the bed or over a laundry basket. Shredded foam clings to fingers and drops small crumbs everywhere, and a dark carpet holds on to that kind of thing longer than you would like.

Then zip it back up, shake the pillow down so the fill spreads from end to end, and give it a minute before you lie on it. Skip the shake and all of the fill sits in the middle, which makes a pillow that feels fine under your hand and wrong the moment your head lands on it. Your hand is a poor judge of this. Your neck is the only judge that counts.

Step 3: Test the Height Lying Down, in Your Sleeping Position

Do not test the height sitting up in bed with a book behind you. Lie down the way you actually sleep. I am a side sleeper, so my test is about as simple as it gets. I roll onto my side, put my head down and notice whether my neck runs in a straight line out from my spine. If my chin is dropping toward my chest, the pillow is still too tall. If my head is tipping back and my ear is close to the mattress, it is too low.

Then stay there for a couple of minutes. A pillow that feels right for ten seconds can feel wrong at the five minute mark, and that gap is the whole difference between a good night and a 3am ache.

Sleeping position changes the answer. A back sleeper wants less height than a side sleeper, and a stomach sleeper wants the least of anyone, so if you wake on your stomach, take out more than you think you need. This is where the Coop Home Goods design earns its keep. A solid block of foam is one height forever, and I had one of those from a warehouse store. It is in the closet now, because you cannot argue with it. An adjustable pillow is a height you can change, not a verdict you have to live with.

Step 4: If You Overshoot, Put a Handful Back

Here is the part I would do differently. The first evening I took some fill out and the pillow was still too tall. The second evening I took out more and went too far. I spent a night on a pillow that was worse than the one that arrived, which is a particular kind of irritating when you are the one who did it.

So stop early. Take out a little less than you think you need, sleep on it, and take out more the next evening only if you still need to. The fill needs a night under your head to settle. A pillow that feels a hair tall at nine in the evening can feel right by eleven, and one you emptied at nine can feel thin by morning.

If you do overshoot, put a handful back. I put one back on the third evening and stopped there. About a third of the fill stayed out in the end and I have not touched it since. If you find yourself rebuilding the pillow every night, you have moved past adjusting into fussing, and at that point the pillow is not the thing that needs attention.

Step 5: Bag the Extra Fill and Leave the Height Alone

All the fill I took out went into one bag on the closet shelf, and the bag that came in the box went in with it. Keep yours. It takes up almost no room, and it means that in a couple of years, if the pillow has flattened down, you can top it up in five minutes instead of shopping for another one.

The cover washes, so wash it. Cold water, gentle cycle, no fabric softener and no bleach, tumble dry low, which is what the care label says and what I have done. It has gone back on without a fight every time. An ordinary queen pillowcase fits it, so there is nothing special to buy there either.

Then leave the height alone. The worst thing you can do with an adjustable pillow is keep adjusting it. Give your neck about two weeks at the new height before you decide anything, because that is roughly how long mine took to stop mentioning it in the morning. After that I stopped thinking about the pillow at all, which is the most I can ask of one.

What Else Helps

A pillow is one piece of a night. On my list it came third, behind noise and behind light, and I set up all five things in the same week last October, which is why I can tell you which one does which job.

If light is what wakes you, a contoured eye mask does more than any pillow will. If noise is what wakes you, a sound machine on the dresser covers the furnace thump and the neighbor's pickup better than anything soft can. If you run hot, a cotton waffle blanket over the sheet helps more than a pillow with a cooling cover. If the dark mornings are what wear you down, a wake up light that brightens before the alarm does what a pillow cannot. My pillow never did anything about a truck at 5am, and a sound machine never did anything about my neck.

Two honest notes about the pillow itself. It is 3.5 pounds, which is heavy for a pillow, and it is 8 inches thick when it is fully filled, so give it a proper shake when you make the bed or the fill bunches at one end and stays there. The foam is CertiPUR-US and GREENGUARD Gold certified, which is on the label and not something I can check from my bedroom, but the new foam smell faded in a few days and did not come back. If your neck pain or your bad sleep keeps going, that is a conversation for your own doctor and not for a pillow.

One last thing about position. If you fall asleep on your side and wake on your back, set the pillow for the position you wake in, because that is the one you will be in for the last few hours of the night. Joyce and I each have our own pillow and our own answer, and we do not share one, which has saved a fair amount of argument.

About a third of the fill came out over three evenings. I have not touched it since, and the bag of it is still on the closet shelf.