Best pillows 2024 tried and tested for a great night’s sleep, from memory foam to feather-filled

Hybrid mattresses have been around for a while, but now Panda London has brought the concept to the pillow. We found this pillow an absolute delight, with fantastic staying power night after night. Inside is charcoal-infused memory foam, while charcoal and bamboo work together to draw heat away from your head and keep it sweat-free all night. It should also stop you getting that grim sleepyhead smell, too.

We found this pillow absolutely brilliant for those that like a fairly firm pillow. You won’t sink into it, but nor does it feel like sleeping on a brick. Even Goldilocks would be happy with this pillow.

Silentnight has created this airmax pillow for those who are, well, sweaty sleepers. The medium to soft firmness is apparently ideal for side sleepers, and it did test well. It is, however, quite quick to sink and it has the undeniable feel of a synthetic pillow. We liked that the mesh sides encouraged cool air to circulate around our head, and found we were kept temperate all night. There are bonus points, too, as it’s hypoallergenic, and you can chuck it in the washing machine at 40C and kill off any germs.

This pillow comes in soft or medium/firm. We opted for the latter, and it certainly provided plenty of support, especially for a goose-down pillow. It sat proudly in our bed – it was so filled it was actually quite hard to get in the pillowcase. It provided reassuringly firm support, too. After a night of snoozing on it, it was deflated where our head had been but it quickly plumped up again after a quick shake. Side sleepers will love that it keeps spines aligned well, and tucks in well at the neck.

We love a firm pillow, and you will struggle to find a more comfortable firm pillow than Simba’s. The folks at the brand are always innovating, and it shows in the design of this pillow.

Within the zip-up outer case are a series of fibre layers and an aerocoil layer – you can remove or add in more fibre layers to find the right loft and softness for you. There are instructions for how to do this, and you can tailor it depending on if you’re a back or a side sleeper. With all the layers in, it’s far too deep for us, but we were able to quickly adjust it to make it just right.

If that’s not enough, one side of the pillow is covered in cooling fabric, which draws heat away from your head. We found this very effective, and we didn’t wake up in a sweat once.

As neck-pain sufferers, we were keen to try out the Aeyla dual pillow, as it claims to specifically ease this type of ache. Now, we are total converts. Initially, we pondered if the pillow would be too soft – we’ve found very soft, low-loft pillows exacerbate our neck pain – but that wasn’t the case. The dual pillow is mid loft but it provided solid support while not feeling like we were sleeping on a brick. Whatever we threw at it overnight, it regained its composure in the morning and plumped up again.

It’s hypoallergenic and vegan-friendly, too, as it’s filled with microfibres – it’s also free from toxins and chemicals. The design of the dual pillow is based on an inner pillow encapsulated in a padded cover, which helps it maintain its shape. We found it adapted to our movement really well, and we found it gave us some of the best nights’ sleep during testing.

These pillows are great all-rounders, well suited to a guest bed, where you need something versatile. They’re also an absolute bargain.

We found them to be supportive and comfortable whether you sleep on your side or back. The Kally Sleep hotel pillows are bang in the middle in terms of firmness and loft, making them suitable for pretty much anyone.

They also passed the test on overheating, perhaps thanks to the 100 per cent cotton cover. The filling is polyester hollow fibre and is hypoallergenic. A big tick for these pillows is that you can shove them in your washing machine at 40C to kill off germs.

Most memory foam pillows are not going to work for back sleepers, as these types of pillow are hard and the loft is too high. However, Emma has created its original pillow so that it can be adjusted and be relatively low loft, enabling back sleepers to wake without a crick in their neck. You can also adjust the firmness of the pillow by zipping back the cover and removing the foam layers. We found all the layers combined created the best loft and firmness for us, but your mileage may vary, and that’s the beauty of this pillow.

To test this pillow, we recruited a highly fussy tester who is liable to overheating at night. M&S’s body sensor pillows have technology to help regulate your temperature. This means our tester should be warm and cosy during the cold nights, and cool during the hotter ones. They reported that these pillows were comfortable and they didn’t overheat once while using them.

Our tester said they’d be happy to use them as their regular pillow in future, which is firm praise indeed. These pillows are made from polyester inside and out, which means you can lob them in the washing machine and even tumble dry them on low.

You can select from soft, medium or firm with these Next pillows. We opted for medium but we would say they’re slightly on the softer side. The breakdown of the filling is 90 per cent feather and 10 per cent down, inside a thick cover that meant no feathers poked us in the face when we were using them. The loft is pretty decent on these, although, they do squash down and require a plump every morning – we don’t judge them for that, as we are similarly disposed ourselves. Let’s not forget that the price of these pillows is incredible for a set of two in natural fibres – particularly the prized down. Overall, these are a great, purse-friendly feather option.

Piglet in Bed has somewhat of a cult following for its trendy, Insta-friendly bedsheets. The brand also does pillows in merino wool, which is a fantastic natural fibre. Keeping you warm and toasty in winter, and cool and fresh in summer, the fibres are also incredibly fine and soft, so they won’t feel itchy.

Piglet in Bed offers both standard and super king sizes of this pillow, and options of soft, medium or firm of which we tried the latter. The filling is 100 per cent merino wool, and the casing is 100 per cent organic cotton. We found this pillow incredibly comfortable, as it has a good loft to it, yet offered a really lovely “sink” when we settled down for sleep. We found you could mould and knead it into the perfect shape and still it provides a deep level of support and springs back in the morning like nothing’s happened.

If you want a very deep loft, this Dorma pillow should go straight to the top of your list. We were hugely impressed with how darn sturdy this pillow is. It’s incredibly firm (you wouldn’t want it any firmer) and, well, big. It’s ideal if you like to sit up in bed and watch TV, sip tea, ponder life but sleeping on it was a bit of a mission. Inside, there are two layers of polyester, while the casing is made of cotton. Despite all the manmade fibres, we didn’t find it too sweaty, and it’s machine washable, which is a bonus.

This tube pillow is designed for pregnant people but is equally useful for those with aches and pains when sleeping, and for postpartum snoozing, too. The pillow is filled with beans, which provide structured yet fluid support. The inner bag slides inside a tube of fabric, which is then fastened with plastic ties at either end. This means you can adjust your tension, height and length to suit you – absolutely ingenious. We found this wildly comfortable and wondered how we’d ever weathered a pregnancy without one. It comes in a range of designs and colourways, so you can find one to suit your décor preferences.

This memory foam pillow bends and flexes as you move in your sleep, which meant we got a very comfortable night’s sleep on it. Despite the relatively low loft, we found the support it provided was excellent, and it had the power to support us all night before springing back up in the morning.

The cool gel inside is part of the pillow’s temperature-regulating features. The pillow aims to help you stay cool all night, while the outer fabric wicks away sweat. We certainly didn’t feel hot at all sleeping atop it. Should you ever get a bit sweaty, you can wash the outer cover.