10 Best Cooling Pillows of 2021 for Side Sleepers

The best Cooling Pillows are the new cool. Why? Because they are cool! Pardon my humor; but honestly, they are really cool. I would often wake up at night all hot (no, the other one) and sweaty. My pillow would be like the inside of an oven. My pillow would be piping hot, and I would have to get up and change its side. But that wouldn’t last that long either; the other side would start grilling in no time. I didn’t care much about it in the start because who doesn’t like being hot.

Best Cooling Pillow 2021

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Following is our guide for the best cooling pillows to help you get the best sleep you have had in your life. Our reviews are based on the narrations from the first-hand owners and users and also a plethora of research and dedication. So scroll down for the best cooling pillows you can treat yourself with and that too with all the details.

1. Coop Home Goods Hypoallergenic Shredded

Best Cooling Pillows Gel

A lousy pillow can be as dangerous as a good girlfriend: both can keep you up all night, but pillows take away the comfort too. Oh, wait. Cooling pillows are the new hot. How ironic.

But how is it a cooling pillow then? Well, it has been infused with a cooling gel that absorbs all the heat from your body and doesn’t just keep it trapped. It lets go… just as Elsa (from Frozen) did.

It releases the heat through the shredded area. In short, it is speedy, comfortable, and performs a double function.

The cooling gel absorbs the heat from one’s body, which is released into the shredded area and thus vents out.

But this is not all. Coop Home Goods have radiant confidence in their product and its quality and have, therefore even announced a hundred-day money-back guarantee; no questions asked. How better can it get? Hands down, this is the best cooling pillow for everyone!

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2. PineTales Organic Buckwheat Hulls Pillow

Premium Choice

Buckwheat pillows are my personal favorite. They are certainly not made for pillow fighting because of the excessive weight and hardness.

However, these buckwheat filled pillows have their characteristic comfort, which feels a bit weird to sleep on at the start, but once you have settled, there is no going back.

This buckwheat pillow is for the ones who want to go premium without compromising on anything. These are for the winners because you wake up fresh and active with all of your stress taken care of.

Furthermore, this pillow is totally organic! The hulls of buckwheat are used for the filling and bamboo pillowcase. Things just cannot get better than this at all. You get to sleep closest to nature in a comfortable setting and don’t even have to worry about the heated pillows at all.

The hulls of buckwheat have an aeration friendly shape. In other words, it is super easy for air to circulate round in the pillow and help you stay cool. You wouldn’t even want to wake up at mornings with this pillow.

This pillow is perfect for ones who want to stay closer to nature and have a peaceful sleep at the same time.

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3. Supportiback Comfort Therapy Orthopedic Pillow

Mr. Doctor

Choice of a pillow might not seem like it, but it can cause a lot of problems; especially for your spinal area. A wrong or a bad pillow can disrupt your posture and soon result in back pain.

Things get even worse for the hot sleepers because also if they go for orthopedic or medicated pillows, they cannot have the luxury of sleeping cool. It is a loss both ways.

However, Supportiback saw this shortcoming and has subsequently delivered. This orthopedic pillow is not only the one best suited for the people with backaches but has also managed to grab itself space in the top three of our top 10 best cooling pillows.

The medicated design of this pillow makes it the best choice for the people suffering from backaches and is even more suited for people who have backaches and ALSO sleep hot.

It has memory foam as its filling, which can adjust along with the sleeper’s head position, and the orthopedic design takes all your back pains away.

In addition to this, there is a cooling gel sheet which keeps the sleeper all night. It can absorb all the heat from the sleeper and dissipate it into the surroundings without waking up the sleeper due to excessive heat. For the people who sleep hot and have issues with their back, this is the best you can treat your nights with.

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4. Beegod Bed Pillow – The Asian Expert

We all love Chinese food, and so does Chinese stuff; mostly because it is super cheap and convenient and thoughtful. Trump might not be wrong if he claims that a significant part of our economy is taken away by others. Most of the top brands are either Asian or non-American, but why? Mostly because they are good at it.

Beegod is an Asian brand, Chinese to be specific and has made quite a good reputation in the pillow and similar industries. Beegod’s Bed Pillow is not just a simple pillow.

In addition to all of this, this bed pillow by Beegod is also capable of releasing the stored heat because of the cooling gel balls in the filling. They absorb the heat and circulates it all over, making it suitable for the hot sleepers as well. Furthermore, the down filling does not let you compromise on the softness and fluffiness of the pillow in no case.

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5. Classic Brands Reversible Cool Gel – Memory Foam Double-Sided Pillow

Memory foam pillows might seem a bit sturdy and hard, but once they absorb your body heat, they get really soft and fluffy. Or it can also go like that memory foams can know a person’s body and adjust accordingly.

Things get even better when this memory foam is coupled with an orthopedic friendly design for the people with a backache, especially sciatica.

The medicated design allows the person to sleep without pain and wake up even fresher, without any sort of shoulder, neck, or back pain. I call this a magic pillow because it helps in all.

Now the thing that we hear the most is that foams, especially the memory foams, tend to heat so much that they become unbearable for a person to sleep on and disrupts the sleep.

Even more, the heat-absorbing tendency of the foams makes the heat emission slow. But this pillow by classic brands is the best cooling pillow of 2021 because it has a cooling gel sheet attached. Interestingly, this cooling gel is not connected just to a single side but is on both the sides, which allows the person to use any side of the pillow they like.

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6. The Coldest Pillow – THE COLDEST PILLOW!

I love Italian (FOOD) but what I love even more about Italy is this pillow. This pillow is straight from the Naples, Italy and is literally one of the coldest pillows I have ever used.

It might seem like I am exaggerating things but trust me… this pillow is surreal; out of this world. This pillow is cool! And it doesn’t just stop at being cool, and it stays cool for hours.

Unlike other gel-filled pillows, which absorb all the heat and causes the temperature to rise, this pillow absorbs all the heat but stays cool unconditionally. It incorporates all the excessive heat from your body, cools down your muscles after a tiring day and just simply lets you be you; in peace with peace.

But the question is, how does it even do it? Well, it does not have gel or any such thing for sure.  This pillow is kept cold by the fusion weaving technology which does not only make the pillow cool but also keeps it cool over the years.  

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7. ComfySleep Organic – Buckwheat Hull Pillow

 I don’t think I have much to explain about it; the name says it all: ComfySleep!

Everything in this pillow is US grown and totally organic, which easily makes ComfySleep’s Buckwheat pillow the best pillow for nature lovers and the people who love originality.

The buckwheat hulls are aerated enough to absorb all the heat from you and replace it with the indescribable comfort.

This pillow can keep you cool all night and even for longer because of the spacious hulls of the buckwheat and also by the cotton pillowcase which keeps the pillow aerated at all times.

The buckwheat hulls seem a bit hard at first, but once you are used to these, you simply cannot go back to anything else. Furthermore, these pillows are equally good for the people who have back issues as well.

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8. Serta Stay Cool Gel – Memory Foam Pillow

Memory foam is considered to be the premium filling for the pillows, and Serta is the premium brand for your pillow needs. Do you think things can become anymore premium?

Well, yes… Stay Cool is the new Serta memory foam pillow where the memory foam is infused with the cooling gel sheet which can absorb your body heat and keep you cool for the nights.

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9. Firm Exquisite Hotel Luxury – Alternative Pillow With Gel Fiber

You spend around half of your life sleeping, and there is no reason you have to spend this half in agony and discomfort.  Your choice of pillow is what you should consider because honestly, that is what you will spend half of your life with.  

This pillow takes care of all your sleeping worries because of its firmness and cooling properties. It has down alternative which not only makes it cheaper than the real down but also more comfortable with the unique down texture.

This down alternative is kept cool by the cooling gel fibers which spread all over the pillow and make it extremely convenient to sleep on, even in hot summers for hot sleepers.

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10. Gel Memory Foam L-Shape – Pillow for Side Sleeping Comfort

Sleeping on the back is outdated and way too overrated. I have slept for almost every night of my life and can tell you by sheer experience that there is no way sleeping on your side can be thrown off the throne.

During my sleeping on the side time, I have found regular pillows to be incompetent and incomplete for the said position because of their shape.

This ergonomically designed pillow not just makes your side sleeping even more comfortable but also keeps you cool all night. This pillow is filled with memory foam which knows you and can mold itself as per your desires.

Furthermore, to keep you cool all night long without having any back issues. The foam is infused with cooling gel dough, and hence you don’t have to wake up in the morning all sweaty.

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Guide to Buying the Best Cooling Pillow

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We have all read about Goldilocks and her quest for ‘the perfect.’ The extra hot soup or the super-soft mattresses were all a no for her because they were a bit too extreme.

Similarly, the heat of the pillow can also be catered in the same category where a snow-cold pillow will be a torture, and a hot one will be nothing less than a trip to hell. Regular pillows have air locked in them, which is almost identical to a prison.

You can enter the pillow, but you will not be leaving it any time soon. Cooling pillows, however, are innovation and a solution to this heated up pillows. In cooling pillows, the materials that have been traditionally used in the conventional pillows have been replaced by the new ones.

These new materials allow the pillow to act something like a heat exchanger. The heat stored in the pillows is moved out because of the now more ‘penetrable materials.’

These porous materials are simply referred to as the breathing materials because they allow the air to come in and go out; as it happens in the usual breathing cycle.

The advent of cooling pillows is another example of technology coming to our aid at the hour of need. The modern era realized the problems of the past and decided to tackle them with innovations.

Out of all the solutions, a cooling pillow is one and one of my favorite ones for certain.

These innovative pillows are for the ones with sleeping problems and are made up of materials that we now call breathable.

Breathable can easily be explained as something that can exchange the air in and out.  The list of these materials includes polyester, latex, memory foam, feather, down, down alternative, and buckwheat.  

This is rather an impressive number of alternative fillings we have found, but things get tricky here as well. Well, let us do the honor of explaining the properties of each so that you can know what you need. But before that, let us explain in detail how these pillows work.

Working

We have mentioned it above as a summary of how pillows get hot and why you need to get cooling pillows, but now let’s please the nerds in ourselves.

The working of each cooling pillow is different and is dependent upon the fill they have.

Breathable Cooling Pillows

Just as it is said in the name… these pillows can breathe. They absorb the heat from your body, especially the one accumulating in the head like all other pillows.

But what they have different is that they don’t just keep the air trapped in themselves. In the traditional pillows, the air gets trapped between the cotton fill, and soon the cotton absorbs the heat from the air because it cannot find another way out.

Since cotton is an insulator itself, the heat is locked in it for quite a while, and you cannot just get rid of it that easily.

This is simple elementary grade physics where heat moves from one point to another, but in this case, to the other air since the hot air is not trapped itself.

Cooling Gel-Infused Foam

Cooling gel is a chemical that matches the temperature of the room, and therefore, when you sleep on it, it tends to absorb the heat from your head and emit it to maintain its temperature. In this case, cooling gel is used in the form of a thin layer packed in a sheet.

This is because rather than allowing the air to change or rotate, cooling gel cool pillows do not depend on air at all. They use an extra layer of thin gel to keep you cool throughout the night.

Phase Change Material (PCM) Beads Infused Foam

Phase Change Material, more commonly known as PCM is something that has been delivered to us by the mighty NASA itself! PCM is not just able to simply absorb the heat from you but also to release it as well and hence make your sleep a peaceful one.

PCM is used in the form of beads that not only increases the surface area for absorption and emission by several folds but also makes it possible to rotate or fold the pillow without causing the gel or water to leak out.

Water Cooling Insert

We all know how good water is when it comes to taking one’s heat off. Scientifically speaking, water has a very high specific heat capacity. In simpler terms, we can also call it as water needs high amounts of energy to bring small changes in its temperature.

It is about half an inch thick padded bag which contains water. But it is not just water, though. This bag is filled with a thin layer of polyester foam and water.

This not only spreads the water evenly around but also prevents the water from squishing to the other side when one puts his head on the ­pillow.

The water absorbs the heat from one’s body, and in result, a very less change in temperature is observed.

Filling Materials

The cooling, heating, and soothing properties of a pillow are in a direct relationship with the material used. The material used in a pillow has a linear effect with the ease it is heated.

The materials that are used commonly as a filling for the pillows include:

• Buckwheat
• Latex
• Memory Foam
• Feather
• Down
• Down Alternative

Buckwheat

Buckwheat is one hell of a nutritious feast, but its uses are not just limited to that. Astonishingly, it is used in the pillow industry as well.

Hulls of Buckwheat are used as a pillow filling, especially for the cooling pillows, and they do one marvelous job. Buckwheat hulls are the hard shells around the kernels.

They are hard and therefore, uneven which doesn’t allow them to settle over each other. This gives them the space needed in the cooling pillows. Air can move easily across the pillow and not just get trapped or accumulated at a single point.

I know using hulls sounds ridiculously uncomfortable because of the hardness, but the results are even surprisingly different. The shells of buckwheat have this unique ability to conform to the shape and size of the one using it and are also provide excellent support for your neck and head.

Buckwheat pillows are one of their kind because they might not give you that cooling sensation, but they do not drop the temperature either like the other modern, technology-based pillows.

Down

Down is the fluffy, feathery fuzz that is found beneath a duck’s feathery coat. It is soft and fluffy, to begin with, and provides the neck and head with an extremely comfortable, relaxing, and a soothing sensation.

Down-filled pillows are heaven to sleep on; have very much in common to the Mama Bear in the Goldilocks story.

Down is capable of absorbing the heat from one’s body, but its release does take a while, which causes the pillow to have a rise in temperature. This said rise in the temperature is low for the regular sleepers but can get a bit uncomfortable for the hot sleepers.

Therefore, to make up for this change in temperature, water cooling inserts can be used in combination with the down as a pillow filling.

Down Alternative

Down alternative, as the name suggests, is an alternative for the real down. It is a synthetic material that is manufactured from the polyester puffballs and is designed in such a way that imitates the properties of the original down.

Unlike the original one, the alternative to down has a lower temperature. This suggests that the down alternative has better cooling properties than the real down.

Where real down is known to trap the air within, the alternative to down allows a gentle circulation within the pillow to keep you cool all night long.

The even more amazing thing about this alternative for down is the price. Usage of down alternative is more pocket-friendly than the real one, thus making it a better option than the original down itself.

Feather

 We all know what feathers are. Feathers have been the standard filling in the pillows from ages and have been symbolized by the movies.

The feathers used in the pillows are of ducks and geese. And since these feathers are not responsible for insulating the birds, they have a better flow and circulation throughout.

Feather pillows have a characteristically unique feel which is second to none. Feather pillows are firmer than the down-filled pillows and even tend to stay cooler for longer periods.

Latex

Most of the people know what latex is but often confuse it with other forms of plastic or rubber. Latex is a stretchy substance derived from the fluid of rubber trees.

Application of rubber for cooling purposes almost sounds ironic, but the fun part is that if it is appropriately designed, it can provide cooling as well.

Polyester

On behalf of all the nerds, scientifically speaking, polyester is a macromolecule of esters and is really soft and resembles foam itself. For a layman, a macromolecule is when a long chain of a substance is formed and hence the prefix ‘poly.’

Polyester has synthetic microfibers which absorb and trap a certain amount of heat but is not enough to raise the temperature of the pillow to uncomfortable.

 High and even good qualities of polyester have fair temperature neutrality but can get warm enough to be uncomfortable for many of the sleepers. Polyester pillows are however low cost and are, therefore, one of the most chosen ones.  

Memory Foam

Memory foam is what that seems closest to the apex of the foam making. These foams are a bit harder than the usual ones, but they get softer once they are warm or record a rise in temperature.

However, just like other foams, memory foams also can absorb and trap heat inside, and its release is a very lengthy procedure.

To make memory foams friendly and usable for the hot sleepers, the foam either has to be shred or is infused with cooling gel. This infused gel keeps the foam from becoming too hot.

The same purpose is also served by shredding because it allows the air to flow in and circulate. Hence, the temperature stays relatively lower than the regular, traditional pillows.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Conclusion

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Aren’t cooling pillows the best? Especially for the flashes. Even I am a hot sleeper as I have mentioned before and things have gotten pretty scary for me. Before I knew about cooling pillows, my sleep was short-lived, and I had no way of getting it back. However, cooling pillows have changed things for me.

They let me sleep at night with peace. Cooling pillows are not only advanced in providing one with a soothing, cooling effect but also provide an improved and enhanced support to your head and neck. We have sorted the best cooling pillows for the hot sleepers and have also separated the best cooling pillow of 2021, best cooling pillow with memory gel and the best comfortable cooling pillow.