Everything You Need to Know Before Buying Down Pillows
This post will serve as the end all of information and guides on what to know about down pillows. This guide will help you understand all the specifications and characteristics you should be looking at when taking care of and buying any type of down pillow.
First, there are three types of down filling that a down pillow can be filled with: goose down, duck down, and eiderdown. Whatever type you buy, consider storing the bedding in a white wardrobe so as to prevent unnecessary cleaning. I don’t recommend you go the duck down route because you’re going to get an odor right away and that smell will last a lot longer. Yes, it’s cheaper to buy but it kind of defeats the entire purpose of buying a luxury bedding pillow.
Goose down is more expensive but insulates and warms much better and rarely has any smell. If it does, it’s usually from the factory and not the feathers themselves. Eider down is going to cost the most but separates itself by being very light weight. You really want to avoid washing or cleaning your down pillows as much as possible as every wash downgrades the quality of the pillow. More on how to clean down pillows in a little bit.
The next important classification is fill power. A good floor is 500 fill power. A fill power of 600 to 700 is extremely high quality and will retain firmness for a long time. An 800 or higher fill is beyond luxury. What all these numbers represent is varying degrees of firmness and fluffiness. Most pillows begin with good shape and form, but the higher fill power pillows keep that lasting quality better.
You know you’re getting into the really high class betting when there are different recommendations for products and type based on how you sleep. A soft label works for someone who sleeps face down into their pillow. Medium works best for traditional sleepers who stay mostly flat on their back, looking up on the ceiling. I’m actually a firm down pillow person because I lay on my side most of the time. Weirdly enough, when I’m sleeping on the floor, I work better with the soft.
There are two main sizes you can choose from: king and standard. Generally you want the standard unless you’re going to use the king for extra support or in a body pillow type of fashion. As I currently sleep, I go for two standards staggered on top of each other for some elevation and maneuverability.
On how to clean a down pillow, as I eluded to earlier, you generally don’t want to. This is why it’s super smart to get a pillow case and a cover. We all have body oils that will eventually compromise the fabric of the pillow itself so for this reason, we shouldn’t even have our skin come into contact with the pillow. However, if yours does somehow get dirty, dry clean it. You can conceivably go for a machine wash but I highly advise you not to. There’s just too much that can go wrong and even if it doesn’t, I don’t think down pillows are ever the same once someone cold machine washes them. If you do, make sure to dry on low dry and squeeze any water out beforehand.
Wait, before you go there’s a little more. When you own a down pillow, you always want to retain that pillows fluffiness. The best ways to keep a good fluff are 1) to give it a good pat and fluff when you wake up, 2) take them out in the sun and give them a little fluffing with the outside air available to be soaked in, and 3) give it a low dry in your dryer every now and then.
