How Many Pillows A Bed Really Needs, And Where The Big One Goes

There is a ritual on most beds at 11 at night that takes about 4 minutes. The 2 big square pillows come off first, then the 2 in the shams, then the little lumbar one across the front, and they all go on the chair in the corner, and in the morning the same 5 go back in the same order, and on the mornings when that does not happen the bedroom looks like someone has been through it. So count what is on the bed. A queen dressed the way the shops dress is holding 7 pillows, and 2 of the 7 are being slept on. The other 5 are being carried around the room twice a day, which over a year is 2 full days of handling pillows, and at 2 in the afternoon on a weekday most of them are on the floor.

How Many Pillows A Bed Really Needs

The formula every Comfortable Bedding department sells is 2 euros against the headboard, 2 standard pillows in shams in front of them, the 2 you sleep on in front of those, and a lumbar or a bolster across the front, and the reason it looks so good in the store is that no one has to sleep in the store. The only pillows in that stack with a job are the 2 under your head, and those get chosen by how you sleep and not by how the bed looks. On your side, the pillow has to fill the gap between your ear and the mattress, which is the width of your shoulder, so it is thick and firm, and a soft one is leaving your neck bent all night. On your back it is a medium one that holds the curve of the neck without pushing the chin down. On your stomach it is thin, or nothing.

A bed holds 4 pillows and looks made, the 2 you sleep on and 2 in shams behind them, and the euros and the lumbar are the ones to lose. The euros go first, because they are the biggest, they are the ones on the floor by the third night of any week, and their only job is covering the headboard. If the headboard looks bare without them, the fix is a taller headboard, which is bought once.

Does a bed with 4 look thin? In the shop, yes, against the 7 next to it. In a bedroom with the door closed it looks like a bed that gets made, which is the look most people are after and cannot get with 7.

Where The 2 That Come Off Go Every Night

Even at 4, the 2 shams are coming off at night on most beds, and they need somewhere to be that is not the chair. The corner chair is where the system fails, because it gets bought as a reading chair and it becomes the pillow chair inside a week, then the clothes chair, and then it is a shelf with arms that no one can sit in. The place for the pillows that come off the bed is a bench at the foot of it, since a bench is flat, it is on the way, and 2 pillows lined up on it read as intentional in a way 2 pillows heaped on a chair never do. A storage bench with a lid is better again, and then the pillows are inside it and the bench is somewhere to sit while putting socks on. The euros that came off for good go into a cotton bag on a wardrobe shelf, not into the guest room, where they will be collecting dust for a year.

Where The Big Pillow Goes

Then there is the big one, and a lot of bedrooms have one now. A body pillow for a bad hip or a bad back, the U shaped one that goes both sides of the body for anyone who turns over 20 times a night, or a pregnancy pillow for the months it is needed. Whatever it is called, it is 5 feet long, sometimes closer to 6, it is on the bed all night, and at 8 in the morning it is on the floor, a pale horseshoe on the rug being stepped over on the way to the bathroom, and that is the look of the room for as long as the pillow is in it unless someone decides where it goes.

The first thing to know is what it does to the bed. A U shape lies along both sides of the body and across the top, so on a queen the person using it is in the middle with the pillow either side and the partner is on a strip about 20 inches wide. A C shape wraps the front only and leaves the other half of the bed alone, and if the bed is a queen with 2 people in it, the C is the one that keeps both of them in it. The wedge, the small foam triangle that goes under the hip or behind the back, is the only big pillow that fits in a drawer, which for a small room is the whole argument for it.

For the daytime there are 3 places that work, and the size of the room picks between them.

• The bed itself. A U or C pillow laid along the wall side of the mattress under the duvet reads as a bolster, the bed is made around it, and it never leaves and never has to be lifted. This is the answer for a small room and the only one with no lifting in it.
• A tall basket beside the bed, the laundry basket kind. The pillow is folded once and dropped in, 5 seconds, and it is hidden. The basket has to be tall, because a low one with a 5 foot pillow in it looks like a snake in a bowl.
• The corner chair, which is the one exception to the rule above. A U pillow draped over the arm and back of a chair is the one pillow that makes a chair look furnished instead of buried, and while it is there, nothing else goes on that chair.

Whichever of the 3 it is, the decorative pillows come off the bed entirely while the big one is in the house, into the cotton bag with the euros, because a bed with a 5 foot pillow and 2 shams on it cannot be made in under 10 minutes and so it will not be made at all.

Washing, Airing, And When A Pillow Is Done

The shams and the euros are dusty because no one ever washes decorative pillows, and that is fine, they are not against anyone’s face. The sleeping pillows are a different matter, and the thing that makes a sleeping pillow last is not the pillow, it is the protector, the zipped cover under the pillowcase that takes the sweat and the skin so the pillow does not. A pillow in a protector lasts about twice as long as the same pillow in a case alone. The protector goes in the wash with the sheets every couple of weeks, the pillow itself every 3 months or so, and it gets aired on the line once a week when the weather allows, which in September it does.

The test for whether a pillow is done is the fold. Fold a synthetic pillow in half, let go, and if it stays folded the fibers have collapsed and there is nothing under your head but the case. 2 years is about the life of a polyester pillow slept on every night, longer for a good down or a latex one, and a pillow that has yellowed through its protector is usually past the fold test already.

The big pillow has its own rules. The cover comes off and goes in the machine with the sheets, and the body of it never does, because a 5 foot pillow full of water does not come out of a home machine in one piece and does not dry inside a week in any bedroom. It gets aired instead, on the line in the sun on laundry day, or over the back of 2 chairs in a room with the window open in winter, and a second cover is the purchase that makes the washing possible, since it is being slept on the night the first cover is drying. The fill flattens where the hip sits after a few months, and from then on it gets turned end for end once a week.

That leaves a bed with 4 pillows on it, a bench with 2, a bag on a shelf with the rest, and 1 horseshoe on the corner chair for as long as it is needed.