Care, washing and when to replace a pillow

A pillow is the one piece of bedding that spends the night against a face, and it is the piece people wash least. This page covers how ours wash, how often bedding wants washing, and the one place a pillow should never be.

The one rule that is not about laundry

No pillow in this catalogue belongs in a baby’s sleep space. Not a soft one, not a small one, not folded under a fitted sheet. This is not a disclaimer we are adding to be careful; it is the single clearest piece of guidance in the field, and both the health agency and the safety regulator state it in the same words.

What the agencies say about pillows in a crib

The Safe to Sleep campaign, run by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, lists pillows first among the things that make an infant sleep area dangerous, alongside stuffed toys, crib bumpers, comforters, quilts, loose blankets, sleep positioners and weighted blankets or swaddles. Its summary of the right answer is that a crib containing nothing but a fitted sheet over the mattress may look bare, and is the safest option. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission gives the same instruction in its own words: bare is best, nothing but a fitted sheet in a crib, bassinet or play yard, and do not add pillows or blankets to a baby’s sleep space. Its stated reason is that many young babies cannot lift their heads to pull away from a soft object, which makes such objects a suffocation risk.

This is general safety information from national agencies. It is not advice about your own child, and it does not replace guidance from your paediatrician.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Safe Sleep Environment for Baby read 10 August 2026
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Safe Sleep: Cribs and Infant Products read 10 August 2026

Washing

Wash two pillows at a time in a front loader, or one on each side of a top loader’s drum. A single pillow on its own puts the machine off balance on the spin.
Warm or cold water, a mild detergent, and about half the amount you would use for a load of clothes. Fibre fill holds detergent, and excess is what leaves a pillow stiff.
Skip fabric softener entirely. It coats the fibre and flattens the loft, which is the opposite of what you want from a pillow.
Run an extra rinse. The detergent that is still in the fill after one rinse is the reason a washed pillow can come out heavier than it went in.

Drying, which is the part that matters

More pillows are ruined in the dryer than in the wash. The fill dries long after the shell does, and a pillow that feels dry on the outside can still be damp in the middle, which is how a clean pillow ends up smelling worse than it did before.

Tumble dry on low. High heat shrinks and mats polyester fibre, and matted fill does not come back.
Add two clean dry towels for the first cycle. They pull moisture out and shorten the whole thing considerably.
Throw in a couple of dryer balls, or clean tennis balls in a sock. They break up clumps as the fill dries, which is the difference between a pillow and a lumpy bag.
Run it longer than you think, and check the middle by squeezing rather than by touching the outside.

The shredded memory foam pillow is the exception to all of the above. Wash the outer cover and not the pillow: foam holds water, takes days to dry, and breaks down when it is agitated wet. The cover unzips for exactly this reason.

How often

For the pillow itself, two or three times a year is the usual advice, and that is about right for a fibre pillow that lives under a pillowcase. The pillowcase is a different question, and if anyone in the house has asthma or a dust mite allergy it is the one that matters.

A pillow protector under the pillowcase is the cheapest thing on this page and the one that extends a pillow’s life most: it keeps the fill clean, and it means the weekly hot wash lands on something designed for it.

When to replace one

The test is older than any of us and still the best one. Fold the pillow in half and let go. A fibre pillow with life left in it opens back out; one that stays folded has lost its spring and is not coming back, whatever a wash does for the smell.

The other signal is your neck. If you have started waking with a stiff neck and nothing else has changed, the pillow flattening under you over months is a likelier explanation than anything dramatic.

What MedlinePlus says about pillows and neck pain

The self care guidance for neck pain and spasms published by MedlinePlus, from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, includes sleeping on a firm mattress with a pillow that supports your neck, and repeats it under prevention: make sure you have a firm mattress and a supportive pillow. It also sets a line for when self care stops being the right answer, which is that you should contact your provider if symptoms do not go away within a week, and sooner if the pain is severe, worse at night, or comes with numbness, tingling or weakness.

This is general information from a public health library. A pillow is not a treatment, and neck pain that persists is a reason to see a clinician rather than to buy bedding.

MedlinePlus, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Neck pain or spasms: self care read 10 August 2026

Which loft suits which sleeping position is worked through in How to choose a pillow for the way you actually sleep, and the whole range is on Viewstar.

Care, washing and when to replace a pillow

The one rule that is not about laundry

Washing

Drying, which is the part that matters

How often

When to replace one

One pillow, worked out properly