Best cooling pillows
Cooling treatments are mostly marketing on a mattress and genuinely useful on a pillow, for one specific reason.
I earn a commission if you buy through some links on this page. It never changes what I recommend, and I publish negative verdicts on brands I earn from. Editorial independence.
On a mattress, a cooling treatment conducts heat away from your skin and then has nowhere to put it. The surface is cool when you lie down and warm by the middle of the night, and you cannot do anything about it.
On a pillow, you turn it over. That puts the unheated side against your face and the effect starts again, and most people do this instinctively several times a night without thinking about why.
So the reset is built into how the product is used, which is why a surface treatment earns its place on a pillow and rarely does on a mattress.
The picks
The pick, if you want one answer
Simba Hybrid Pillow, 7.9 / 10. Micro-springs put open structure inside the pillow rather than a treatment on the outside, and hold height at the same time.
| Product | Best for | From | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simba Hybrid Pillow | Best overall | Mid range | 7.9 / 10 |
| Rem-Fit Snow Pillow | Best cooling technology | Mid range | 7.5 / 10 |
| Origin Coolmax Latex Pillow | Best material | Mid range | 7.8 / 10 |
| Emma Adapt Cooling Pillow | Best treated foam | Budget to mid | 6.8 / 10 |
Simba Hybrid Pillow: Best overall
Mid range · 7.9 / 10
A pillow has to hold a height under a head and let air through against your face, and in most materials those fight each other. Loose fills breathe and compact; foam holds height and traps heat. A spring holds height by pushing back rather than by being dense, and the gaps between springs are open space.
Buy it if
You want a pillow that stays cool and holds its height all night.
Do not buy it if
You want to sink into a pillow.
Read the full Simba Hybrid Pillow review
Rem-Fit Snow Pillow: Best cooling technology
Mid range · 7.5 / 10
Phase change material is the one cooling technology in bedding with a genuinely different mechanism. It melts at a temperature close to skin temperature, and melting absorbs energy without the material getting hotter. Its capacity is finite, which is exactly why it suits a pillow: turning it over lets the spent side re-solidify.
Buy it if
You sleep hot at the head specifically and want a measurable effect rather than a sensation.
Do not buy it if
You want the coolest possible pillow regardless. A loose natural fill still breathes better.
Read the full Rem-Fit Snow Pillow review
Origin Coolmax Latex Pillow: Best material
Mid range · 7.8 / 10
Latex has an open cell structure with pinholes through the core, so air moves through it without any treatment at all. It also resists compression set far longer than polyurethane foam, which makes it the longest-lived pillow material in common use.
Buy it if
You want consistent height without foam's warmth, and you like a responsive feel.
Do not buy it if
You want to sink in. Latex pushes back immediately.
Read the full Origin Coolmax Latex Pillow review
Emma Adapt Cooling Pillow: Best treated foam
Budget to mid · 6.8 / 10
An honest example of the category: a genuine improvement on plain foam, and short of a loose natural fill or an open structure. Foam still retains heat; the treatment addresses the surface you turn over.
Buy it if
You want foam's consistent height and a cooler surface than plain foam gives.
Do not buy it if
Heat is your main complaint. Structure beats treatment even here.
Read the full Emma Adapt Cooling Pillow review
The cheap layer that undoes all of it
You are not sleeping on the pillow
You are sleeping on a pillowcase. A cheap polyester case is an insulating layer between your face and whatever you paid for, and it holds moisture against the skin, which is what people actually experience as sleeping hot.
Cotton percale or lyocell costs a fraction of a pillow and does more for how cool it feels than the choice between pillow types.
On a phase change pillow specifically, a polyester case wastes the most expensive component in the product, because the material only works on heat that reaches it.
What actually sleeps coolest, in order
| Type | Temperature | Height retention |
|---|---|---|
| Down or loose natural fill | Coolest. Air moves through the fill. | Poor. Needs plumping. |
| Micro-spring hybrid | Good. Open structure inside. | Very good |
| Latex | Good. Open cells and pinholes. | Excellent |
| Foam with a performance cover | Reasonable | Very good |
| Solid foam, treated | Warm after the first hour | Very good |
Read both columns together. Micro-spring and latex are the only constructions that do well at both, because both hold height by pushing back rather than by being dense. Down is cooler and will not hold a height.
Heat or clamminess? They need different answers
Most people describe both as sleeping hot, and the second is more common.
Genuine heat needs airflow: an open structure inside the pillow, or a loose fill.
Clamminess needs moisture management: lyocell, cotton or a named performance fabric such as Coolmax, which moves moisture away from the skin so it evaporates faster. Damp fabric against skin feels warm regardless of the air temperature.
If you wake up damp rather than hot, a cover change fixes more than a pillow change.
What not to buy
A cooling pillow with a polyester pillowcase over it. You have insulated the thing you paid for. Fix the case first; it may be the whole problem.
Gel-topped solid foam, expecting all-night cooling. The treatment addresses the surface. Turning it over is doing half the work, which is fine if you know that is the mechanism.
A cooling pillow at the wrong height. Height is what decides whether a pillow works at all. A cool pillow that leaves your neck tipped is still the wrong pillow.
Charcoal or copper infused foam for temperature. Infused particles are encapsulated inside the foam cells, so most of the surface area that would make them work is never in contact with anything.
Also considered, and why they are not here
A roundup is only as useful as what it leaves out, so here is what was assessed and rejected for this list.
| Product | Why it is not on the list |
|---|---|
| Tempur Pillow | Excellent height consistency and the warmest fill in the category. Dense viscoelastic foam softens in response to body heat, which means it is built to hold warmth at the surface. |
| Panda Pillow | A bamboo cover handles moisture well and the foam underneath still has nowhere to put heat. The cover mitigates rather than solves. |
| Otty Deluxe Pure Bamboo | Good cover, and cooling depends on the fill rather than the fabric over it. Check the dimensions against your pillowcases too. |
| Derila | Scores 4.8. A small fixed-loft foam pillow sold through urgency mechanics rather than on specification. |
How this list is made, and who made it
Independence
No brand pays to appear on this site and no placement is sold. Some links earn a commission if you buy, which never changes a score, an order or a verdict. Several of the lowest scores here are on products that carry commission, and several recommendations carry none.
Who writes this. Kyle Klinkradt has worked in the mattress and bedding industry for over ten years across retail, distribution and brand partnerships, and has handled, sold or assessed products from every major UK bed-in-a-box brand. Every review on this site is written by one person, so the scores mean the same thing from page to page.
What the assessment is. Construction specifications against what they physically do: spring height and where in the mattress it sits, spring count for the size, gauge, whether the base is sprung or foam, foam density where it is published, comfort layer depth and material. Then the commercial terms that decide what you are actually buying: trial against returns policy, guarantee length against the company's UK trading history at Companies House, and the regulatory record.
What it is not. This is not a laboratory. I do not publish pressure-mapping data or claim to have slept eight years on every mattress here, because nobody has and pages that imply otherwise are not telling you the truth. Where a judgement rests on construction rather than long-term use, the review says so.
What gets a product removed. Leaving the UK market, a specification change that makes the review inaccurate, or a corrected fact. Brands that have withdrawn are kept on the site with the score removed rather than quietly deleted, because people still search for them.
See editorial independence, corrections and the author page.
How these were chosen
Every product here has its own review on this site with a score out of 10, and the score is a judgement rather than an average. Nothing appears in a list because it pays more.
A score is against the market, not against its own range. The cheapest mattress in a lineup is usually priced to make the model above it look reasonable, and the flagship of a budget range has risen into a bracket where better brands compete. Both are judged against what else you could buy for the money.
Everything listed can actually be bought in the UK. That is not a given: Casper withdrew in July 2020 and Leesa no longer sells here, and both still appear in current British roundups with affiliate links attached.
I do not pad the list. Where only three or four products genuinely qualify, there are three or four. A list of seven when the category contains four good ones is a list with three bad recommendations in it.
Prices move constantly. Judge the cash price on the day rather than any percentage beside it. See every review on this site or where the real savings are.
Questions people ask
Do cooling pillows actually work?
Better than cooling mattresses, for a specific reason. On a mattress the heat conducted away from your skin has nowhere to go and the effect fades. On a pillow you turn it over, which puts an unheated surface against your face and restarts the effect several times a night.
What is the coolest type of pillow?
A loose natural fill such as down, because air moves through it, though it will not hold a height. Micro-spring and latex are the only constructions that stay cool and hold their height at the same time.
Does my pillowcase affect how cool my pillow feels?
A great deal. You are sleeping on the case, not the pillow, and a polyester one insulates while holding moisture against your skin. Cotton percale or lyocell costs a fraction of a pillow and does more.
How does phase change material work?
It melts at a temperature close to skin temperature, and melting absorbs energy without the material getting hotter. That is measurable rather than a sensation, and finite, which is why it suits a pillow you can turn over.