I’ve finally found a cooling pillow that actually works – it’s taken testing over 40 pillows, but this pillow has kept me cool during three heatwaves

As Ideal Home’s Sleep Editor, I’ve tested a *lot* of pillows over the past four years, including a whole host of ‘cooling’ pillows that promise to solve one of our most common sleep problems – waking up with a hot head.

If you’ve ever flipped your pillow over at night to find the cool side, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

On the whole, I've found those cooling promises disappointing. From the copper-infused Silentnight Restore Cooling Copper Pillow to the cooling gel-filled Luff Mayfair Cooling Gel Memory Foam Pillow, and plenty more, I've tested them all, and there's been one common theme.

Despite a positive start where the pillow is initially icy cold to the touch, after 15 minutes under my head, they all heated up to become warm once more. That is, until I tested the TEMPUR SmartCool Pillow collection.

Before I began testing out the best pillows on the market for a living (what a job, I know!) I thought this type of pillow gymnastics was just part and parcel of sleeping; lie your head on a pillow and eventually it will get warm and you’ll have to flip it, right? Wrong.

After a few years of testing, and with a Certified Sleep Expert badge under my belt, I discovered that if your pillow gets too warm during the night, it’s all to do with the materials it’s made from. Once you know how to choose the right pillow for you, overheating can be avoided.

Like many of us, the pillows I’d been sleeping (and overheating) on tended to be filled with microfibre or hollowfibre polyester, and this manmade synthetic material lacks breathability.

Polyester is a material made from petroleum, which has a similar composition to plastic, and that means that when our body (or head) heat hits it, that heat is reflected back towards us.

I soon learnt that the way to avoid this was to opt for natural pillow fillings that have far better breathability.

The feather and down, and wool-filled pillows I’ve slept on have consistently stayed cool, and I’ve had no issues with overheating. However, these two natural pillow fillings have some downsides that might mean they’re not the best pillow filling for us.

Predominantly, that downside is a lack of firmness. Feather and down makes for a luxuriously squishy pillow that’s perfect if you’re a front or back sleeper. But, majority of us are side sleepers, and the best pillow for a side sleeper is one that is high enough to fill the gap between the ear and the mattress when we’re lying on our side, and dense enough to support the head without it dropping during the night.

A wool-filled pillow is denser than feather and down, but I’m yet to find one that offers the ergonomic support that a side sleeper needs. That’s why the best memory foam pillows and high-density foam pillows are so popular with side sleepers. However, in its standard form, memory foam lacks breathability, and that means we're back to overheating.

Thankfully, the TEMPUR SmartCool pillow collection achieves what other synthetic pillows have failed to do.

These are memory foam pillows, but they’re encased in what the brand dubs a ‘SmartCool™ Technology cover’, which it promises is 'cool-to-the-touch and absorbs excess heat to keep you feeling cool and fresh, from the moment you lie down’.

And, for once, I’ve found that claim to hold true. I’m a hot sleeper, but I’ve slept on the TEMPUR Original SmartCool Pillow for the past year, and, despite three heatwaves during that time, I haven’t felt too hot once.

There is still a downside, which is this pillow’s price. It’s a definite investment. But, thanks to TEMPUR’s range of pillow styles and the variety of heights on offer, I do think there’s a pillow for everyone in the SmartCool collection, and if you buy direct from the brand, you get 30-nights to test out this pillow to make sure it’s for you before you commit. For me, that makes the investment a little easier to swallow.

If you can wait to shop when there are bedding deals on, you may also be able to score one of the SmartCool pillows for less.

Shop TEMPUR Cooling Pillows

Of course, as much as we may believe an expensive pillow is worth it in order to sleep better, if our budget doesn’t stretch, it doesn’t stretch, and that doesn’t mean we have to resign ourselves to overheating. These are two of my top ‘cool pillow’ alternatives if the TEMPUR SmartCool collection is out of reach.

Shop alternatives

Hopefully, between these options you'll be able to pick up a pillow that means no more hot heads this summer, and pillow flipping can be a thing of the past!