At the end of the day, your pillow’s job is to provide you with a good sleep. It does this by providing support for the head, aligning your neck with your spine and providing you with a soft and smooth surface to rest your face on, in harmony with the bed system, which also consists of mattress and slatted base.
On average, if you think about it, your pillow “works” about 2920 hours a year, taking into account that on average you sleep 1/3 of the time, or the equivalent of about 120 days a year.
One of the biggest downsides to bad sleep is the wrong pillow.
After the mattress and the bed surface, the pillow plays a fundamental role in guaranteeing you a correct rest. It can literally “ruin” the investment you made in a good mattress and bed surface due to these 2 factors:
- it is not the right pillow for you;
- the pillow is right but it is worn.
These 2 causes, when combined, are the recipe for ruining your sleep, and if you suffer from neck or back pain, to guarantee the onset of such problems.
But how long does the pillow last?
The pillow, unlike the mattress which has very thick layers and even 2-3 coverings between the external and solid wood cover, usually has a light non-padded cover like that of the mattress which has the purpose of making the pillow itself “function” efficiently.
For this reason we want to focus your attention on the fact that the pillow is in more direct contact with your sweat and therefore requires a greater frequency of washing. Having a higher washing frequency, it wears more than the mattress: therefore our advice is to change the pillow thicker than the mattress, which is usually replaced every 8-10 years.
The test to find out if your pillow needs to be replaced.
- Is it a feather pillow? Place the pillow on a table and fold it in half to let the air out. Let go of the pillow so that it returns to its original shape. If it returns then it means that the filling still provides enough support and the cushion is not to be changed. If it does not return then the feather pillow has lost its “support” and must be replaced with a new one.
- Is it a synthetic pillow? If you have a polyester, microfiber, memory, latex pillow, place the pillow on a table, fold it in half and place a small weight of about 300 grams on it (for example a book or something similar in weight / size). If the pillow returns to its original shape even with the weight placed on it then it still provides enough support, if not, seek out a specialist pillow dealer!
Then?
Do not allow a bad pillow to ruin your sleep: a good pillow can be one of the best investments you can make, an investment whose consequences you will feel the consequences day after day, waking up after waking up.