The 9 Best Body Pillows of 2023, Tested and Reviewed
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Support your whole body, not just your head, with these comfy body-length pillows
Health / Jessica Fleming
Experiencing intermittent or chronic pain doesn’t just affect your life during the daytime—it can disrupt your nighttime, too, taking away hours of precious sleep. If you’re one of the many people who have trouble sleeping as a result of chronic pain, one simple product you can add to your “better sleep” toolkit is a body pillow.
These elongated pillows come in three general shapes and are designed to support your body along many different pressure points, like your head and neck, spine, hips, belly, and knees. Expectant moms swear by them to relieve common pregnancy aches and pains, but other people can benefit from the full-length loft of a body pillow.
Our editors tested 20 popular body pillows at home for a 30-day period. Then, we evaluated them based on factors such as quality, effectiveness, breathability, durability and value, to select the best ones.
Best Overall: Buffy Cloud Body Pillow
Why We Like It: It’s affordable, comfortable to use, and stays cool all night long.
It’s Worth Noting: You’ll want to buy your own washable pillow cover.
Like a giant hug in pillow form, the Buffy Cloud Body Pillow impressed us in testing by improving our sleep quality and staying cool all night long—and at a lower-than-average price point of $69, we couldn’t find a better overall pillow to recommend than this one.
The rectangular shape of the pillow let us position wherever we most needed it, though we used it most to relieve pesky hip pain from side sleeping. We loved literally sprawling across this pillow, but we loved the fact that it improved our sleeping posture and helped us sleep better even more. We had zero problems with this pillow overheating, even under the covers of a heavy duvet. The only downsides were that it didn’t come with a pillow cover and the instructions recommend dry cleaning; if you opt for this one, we’d suggest investing in a washable cover that can be put on and taken off for easy cleaning.
Otherwise, this body pillow offered way more in comfort than we expected based on its simple appearance, and we think it will work well for side sleepers who run hot at night.
Price at time of publication: $69
Product Details:
Dimensions: 20”W x 54”L
Weight: 88 oz
Fill: Recycled plastic fill
Cover Material: Lyocell
Best Overall Runner-up: Sleep Number Cool Comfortfit Body Pillow
Why We Like It: We fell asleep faster, woke up less often, and generally experienced better sleep while using it.
It’s Worth Noting: It’s more expensive than some of the other pillows we tried, but not necessarily any more effective.
For a luxury version of our best overall pick, look no further than the Sleep Number Cool Comfort Body Pillow, which performed equally well in testing as the Buffy (but doesn’t necessarily earn its twice as high price tag, which is why it’s our runner up choice).
Things we liked: the body-length size of the Sleep Number pillow helped align our spine and gave our neck more support while side sleeping, which translated to better overall sleep. We fell asleep faster, stayed asleep more often, and felt more rested in the morning. The pillow is also covered in a blend of polyethylene and polyester that has serious cooling properties; we never woke up sweaty or overheated, or noticed any heat transfer from our body to the pillow overnight.
Our one complaint about the pillow is that the cover it comes with, which is 100% polyester, doesn’t have any cooling properties. In other words, you have to remove the included cover to get the max benefit of the cooling feature, but then you’re stuck with a cover-less pillow (or shelling out money for a cooling pillowcase). It’s a small complaint, but considering that our best overall pick performed essentially the same for only $69, the $120 splurge here may not be worth it for everyone.
Price at time of publication: $120
Product Details:
Dimensions: 18”W x 54”L
Weight: Not specified
Fill: 25% polyester, 75% foam
Cover Material: 100% polyester
Best Budget: Utopia Bedding Body Pillow
Why We Like It: It’s a low-cost yet high-quality way to improve your sleeping position at night.
It’s Worth Noting: If you’re petite, the pillow could overwhelm you a bit with its length.
Don’t be fooled by this pillow’s low cost: we had virtually no issues sleeping with the Utopia Bedding Full Body Pillow and would totally recommend it to our friends. Not only did it make settling into bed more comfortable, it held up incredibly well during our testing process, showing no sign of wear (i.e. it was still as fluffy and cozy at the end of testing as it was straight out of the box).
In fact, this pillow helped us transition from sleeping mostly on our back to sleeping more on our side, and supported our spinal alignment so well that we started waking up with less stiffness. It never got hot while we slept, and was flexible enough for us to use it in different ways, like propping it up behind us while we worked in bed. One thing we want to note is that the pillow may feel a bit long for shorter users, but average-height sleepers and tall sleepers (who often get the short end of the stick, pun intended, when it comes to pillows) will love how it accommodates the length of their body.
Price at time of publication: $40
Product Details:
Dimensions: 20”W x 54”L
Weight: 83 oz
Fill: 100% polyester
Cover Material: Not specified
Best for Pregnancy: Tuft & Needle Body Pillow
Why We Like It: It’s the perfect amount of firmness and fluffiness to support the needs of a changing body during pregnancy.
It’s Worth Noting: It definitely skews softer rather than firmer, which some people won’t love.
We’re going to make the bold claim that no one has as much trouble sleeping as a pregnant woman and, therefore, no one needs the Tuft & Needle Body Pillow quite as badly as an expectant mother.
“[During pregnancy] your hormones change to make your ligaments more flexible, [which] changes the angle of your hips if you sleep on your side with your knees together, says Heather Swain, PT, DPT, founder of Ally Total Physical Therapy, who adds that this can also make you more prone to muscle soreness.
But sleeping with a body pillow like the Tuft & Needle can support the weight of your belly (which reduces strain on your back) and keep your hips and pelvis neutrally aligned, notes Dr. Swain. In testing, we found this to be true: wrapping our legs around this soft and fluffy pillow every night turned us into body pillow devotees. Side sleeping became infinitely more comfortable and, in spite of what we would normally recommend, the less-firm loft of this pillow is actually a selling point—as a pregnant belly grows, the Tuft & Needle can accommodate the changing size of your body since it’s not super firm.
Honestly, the only thing we didn’t like is that it doesn’t include a cover and the Tuft & Needle-specific cover for it is $50, adding to the overall expense of investing in this $95 pillow in the first place. But if you’re pregnant and desperate to sleep while you still can, we’re betting you won’t care.
Price at time of publication: $95
Product Details:
Dimensions: 20”W x 54”L
Weight: Not specified
Fill: Polyester
Cover Material: 100% cotton
Best for Side Sleepers: Bearaby Cuddler Body Pillow
Why We Like It: Put it behind you, in front of you, under your neck or between your legsthis flexible and extra-long tube can be positioned to do it all.
It’s Worth Noting: Its length is also a potential con, since the pillow is too big for standard washing machines and makes it hard to sleep with a partner.
All of the pillows on this list are good for side sleepers, so what makes the Bearaby Cuddler Body Pillow stand out? Well, it’s long and flexible design, for one—this squishy foam tube is 75 inches long, and can be twisted and turned into pretty much any shape, allowing it to function as a rectangular, U-shaped, or C-shaped body pillow at the drop of a hat.
It’s that versatility that makes it so good for side sleepers, since their pain points can vary. In testing, we found the Bearaby particularly good at relieving neck pain, and noticed that we fell asleep faster when using it thanks to how quickly we could get comfortable. We also liked utilizing the pillow in different ways, like propping it up to support us while we sat up in bed (and no matter how we manipulated it, the pillow always bounced back to its original, fluffy form).
However, we have to mention that the Bearaby’s size is both a benefit and a disadvantage. It was too big to fit in our washing machine and made bed-sharing pretty difficult. It also doesn’t come with a cover, though you can purchase one for an additional cost (but for $199, we kind of want a washable cover included).
Price at time of publication: $199
Product Details:
Dimensions: 8”W x 75”L
Weight: 141 oz
Fill: Foam
Cover Material: 100% cotton
Best for Neck Pain: Snuggle-Pedic Full Body Pillow
Why We Like It: It relaxes away muscle tension, allowing people with chronic neck pain to wake up feeling refreshed.
It’s Worth Noting: It gets lumpy pretty quickly, requiring a cycle in the dryer to get back to its fluffy shape.
Muscle tension is a common cause of neck pain, so providing enough neck support is a key quality in any pillow for chronic neck pain. Even though it just looks like a regular rectangular body pillow, the Snuggle-Pedic Full Body Pillow impressed us with its muscle relaxation properties; not only did it help us have a better and deeper night’s sleep, we actually felt more relaxed while sleeping and in the mornings after using it.
The bamboo cover of this pillow helped keep it cool all night long and, thanks to the shredded memory foam filling, it wasn’t too firm, which our tester with neck pain really appreciated. But the memory foam also causes the pillow to fall short in a couple of ways, namely in how it tends to get misshapen. We noticed the pillow getting lumpy in some places fairly quickly, though a run through the dryer to re-fluff it did solve the problem (for a while).
Price at time of publication: $80
Product Details:
Dimensions: 20”W x 54”L
Weight: 32 oz
Fill: Memory foam
Cover Material: Bamboo
Best for Back Pain: Brentwood Home Crystal Cove Charcoal Body Pillow
Why We Like It: This pillow actually reduced the strain on our back, neck, and shoulders, no matter what position we slept in.
It’s Worth Noting: It probably won’t overheat you, but it might not do much to keep you cool while you sleep, either.
Side sleepers aren’t the only people who can benefit from a body pillow; stomach sleepers and people with chronic back pain may also find the extra support useful, and the Brentwood Home Crystal Cove Charcoal Body Pillow didn’t disappoint when our tester with frequent back and neck pain gave it a try.
Though we mostly tested these pillows in a side sleeping position, the tester for the Brentwood Home pillow was a combination sleeper that changes positions during the night. But no matter how they slept, this pillow improved their sleep: they had less aches and pains, especially in their neck and back, and didn’t wake up tossing and turning all night long. The pillow was also breathable and held up well, with no signs of wear, throughout the testing process.
The Brentwood Home pillow has a few eco-friendly attributes we appreciated, like being made with vegan, CERTIPUR-US materials, but the fact that it truly reduced strain on our shoulders, back, knees, and hips during testing is what makes us recommend it so highly.
Price at time of publication: $169
Product Details:
Dimensions: 17”W x 48”L (small) or 17”W x 56”L (large)
Weight: Not specified
Fill: Memory foam and gel
Cover Material: 99% polyester, 1% spandex
Best for Cooling: The Company Store Company Essentials Down Alternative Body Pillow Insert
Why We Like It: It legit keeps you cool at night, with little pockets for airflow built into the filling.
It’s Worth Noting: It’s large and is an insert only, so you have to come with your own pillowcase.
If you like the sound of sleeping on a literal cloud, we recommend The Company Store Down Alternative Body Pillow Insert. It was somehow soft and firm in testing, helping us get deeper, more restorative sleep, and the effect it had on our spinal alignment decreased the amount of neck and back pain we felt in the morning.
But let’s talk cooling, because that was where this pillow really shined. Our tester for this pillow lives on the fourth floor, so cooling was a must-have and this pillow insert rose to the occasion, leaving this tester waking up cooler than she was when she went to sleep. The fluffy, down alternative filling is designed to let airflow pass through, and the gaps between the filling actually released little puffs of cold air as we moved around and adjusted the pillow at night.
Two things we want to mention: this is just a pillow insert—there’s no cover included—and it’s 72 inches long, so it’s pretty large. But as far as we’re concerned, side sleepers with hot rooms can stop searching for the perfect body pillow here.
Price at time of publication: $74
Product Details:
Dimensions: 20”W x 72”L
Weight: Not specified
Fill: 100% polyester
Cover Material: 100% polyester
Best Down Alternative: Parachute Down Alternative Body Pillow Insert
Why We Like It: It’s cushy and moldable, plus keeps you ridiculously cool even when you’re sweating.
It’s Worth Noting: You probably won’t be able to use and wash this pillow for years to come; it loses a little of its sturdiness with laundering.
One thing people love about down-filled pillows is their moldable qualities; down feathers are ultra-shapeable in ways that synthetic filling often is not. The Parachute Down Alternative Body Pillow Insert takes the moldability of down filling and applies it to its synthetic microfiber fill for a body pillow that’s the best of both worlds.
The Parachute pillow conformed to our body to reduce the amount of aches and pains while sleeping, while its rounded shape let us get close enough to the pillow to reap its cozy benefits without having to lie directly on top of it. And it was surprisingly cool: even when we were sweating through the night, the pillow remained a cool, comfy refuge for us to curl up with. In other notes, the pillow washed up fairly well but did lose a little of its loft; we’re not sure it would last for a very long time with frequent use. Plus, the pillow cover (which you need, since this is just an insert) was expensive—it actually cost more than the pillow itself!—and pretty uncomfortable to sleep on, so that was disappointing.
Price at time of publication: $79
Product Details:
Dimensions: 20"W x 54”L
Weight: Not specified
Fill: 100% microfiber
Cover Material: 100% cotton sateen
Our Testing Process
The only real way to assess the comfort of a body pillow is to sleep with one for several nights in a row, so that’s what we did—our testers took these pillows home and used them nightly for 30 days. While body pillows can be beneficial when placed behind the back (they can prevent you from rolling over in your sleep or simply serve as a firm surface to discourage slumping), we asked our testers to sleep with their pillows in the front for the sake of consistency.
Each night, our testers slept on their sides with the pillow between their legs (one leg over the pillow and one under it, as if their legs were “hugging” the pillow). We asked them to pay close attention to how they felt in the morning: did they have fewer aches and pains, or less stiffness? This helped us gauge a product’s effectiveness. We also asked them to note how breathable the pillow was in terms of keeping them cool at night.
Finally, we instructed our testers to wash the cover of their pillow at least a few times during the testing process, to see how durable the materials were. With all these factors in mind, testers gave each pillow an overall value rating.
We also asked an expert, Teresa Marko, PT, DPT, MS, owner of Marko Physical Therapy, to give us input during the testing process and talked to two other experts to help us identify exactly what to look for and avoid in body pillows:
Emeka Nwodim, MD, FAAOS, orthopedic surgeon at The Centers for Advanced Orthopaedics
Heather Swain, PT, DPT, founder of Ally Total Physical Therapy
What to Know About Body Pillows
Pillow Shape
There are three main shapes of body pillows, though some pillows may have slight variations on their general shape to make them stand out to consumers:
Rectangular. This is a standard body pillow: long and straight, usually anywhere between 54 and 75 inches long. Rectangular body pillows are good for people who just need a little extra support on one side of their body.
U-shaped. U-shaped pillows are long enough to wrap around both sides of your body. You’re meant to sleep with your head on the curve of the “U” and the parallel sides of the pillow supporting both your back and front.
C-shaped. C-shaped pillows provide a level of support in between U-shaped and rectangular. They only provide support for either your front or your back, but you can put the top part of the “C” under your head and the bottom part of the “C” in between your legs.
Material
There are two questions to ask about the material construction of your pillow: is the filling strong enough to support you, and is the cover compatible with your sleeping temperature?
Dr. Swain says it’s important to consider both; while the material the pillow is filled with can vary from memory foam to microfiber to polyester, it has to be supportive enough to not collapse under your weight as you sink into sleep. Similarly, she notes, your pillow’s cover can be made from a variety of fabrics, like bamboo, polyester, or cotton, but some of these materials trap heat more than others. If you run hot, look for a cooling fabric blend like bamboo or cotton.
Firmness
According to Dr. Nwodim, your body pillow shouldn’t be too soft or too firm, just like when selecting a mattress. Look for one that’s medium firm, with enough loft to stay supportive all night long but not so much that you can’t manipulate it (i.e. squish it down in some places and fluff it up in others) to fit your needs.
More Body Pillows to Consider
Yogibo Roll Body Pillow: We thought this pillow was great for lounging, but not for sleeping: the beanbag-style filling was noisy and it was too tall for us to comfortably wrap our legs around at night.
Zoma Body Pillow: This was a great side sleeper pillow, but it’s not flexible enough to accommodate other sleeping positions or support someone who changes positions frequently during the night. It only works for side sleepers.
Pluto Puff Body Pillow: It helped resolve our back and knee pain while sleeping and the quality was great, but we overheated frequently during the night while using it; it seems to trap heat, so wouldn’t be a good choice for people who tend to sleep hot.
Your Questions, Answered
Are body pillows beneficial?
For many people, body pillows can provide extra support to the parts of your body that are most prone to aches and pains during the night: the neck, back, hips and pelvis, and knees. Different sleeping positions and different stages of life (like pregnancy) can leave you sleeping without the right spinal alignment—and this not only causes discomfort, but totally disrupts your quality of sleep, too.
Some people will find a body pillow uncomfortable to use, but in general, there’s a body pillow for every type of sleeper. Dr. Nwodim says side sleepers benefit from a body pillow the most, though stomach sleepers can benefit, too.
What body pillow works best for my sleeping position?
Instead of thinking about your sleeping position, specifically, think about where you need support the most. Is it your back? Your hips and knees? Underneath your belly? If you only need support in the front or back, you may be able to use a rectangular body pillow; if you need front and back support, opt for a U-shaped pillow. If you need something in between, a C-shaped pillow will primarily support one side of your body with a little extra support under your head and between your legs.
How big should a body pillow be?
The size of the body pillow is somewhat less important than its personal comfort factor, says Dr. Nwodim, but he also suggests that a body pillow close to your height—so every part of your body, from head to toe, can be supported—is a good rule of thumb.
Who We Are
Sarah Bradley has been a freelance writer since 2017, tackling health commerce articles, product reviews, and shopping guides on everything from dry skin moisturizers and wart removers to menstrual cups and toothbrushes for braces. She has written about pillow several times, from cooling pillows and hypoallergenic pillows to the best ones for different types of sleepers, so she knows exactly what to look for when it comes to construction and comfort.
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