If you've ever stacked two pillows because one was too thin, then woken with a hot, damp cheek and a crick in your neck, this is the pillow to buy. The Woolroom Deluxe Washable Wool Pillow is a zipped, quilted cover full of loose British wool that you open up and adjust, sold direct by Woolroom, the wool bedding company. It's the first pillow in their range you can set to your own height. Lift it out of its calico bag and it's full and springy, a little firmer than a feather pillow, with a faint rustle as you turn your head. From there you take wool out, or add more, until your neck lies level. It's my wool pillow pick, and that adjustable fill is the reason.
If you're choosing between Woolroom's wool pillows, the zip is what sets this one apart. The Woolroom Classic Wool Pillow costs less and is sewn shut, with one fill weight and a dry-clean-only label, so the height you unwrap is the height you keep. The Woolroom Natural Latex Washable Wool Pillow wraps washable wool around a latex core that stays at one height and can't be adjusted. On a duvet I'd happily save the money and buy Woolroom's plainer Classic. On a pillow, the height decides whether your neck lies straight all night, so the zip is worth having.
Buy it if you sleep hot on a synthetic pillow, if no pillow off the shelf has ever been the right height, or if the two of you want the same pillow at different heights. One owner's husband sleeps on his front while she turns from side to side, and each of them kept just the wool they needed. Side sleepers get the most from it filled high and firm. Back sleepers take it a little flatter than it arrives, and front sleepers take wool out until it's thin. I'd coax you off your front if I could, and if I can't, a pillow you can thin almost flat treats your neck better than any fixed one.
Skip it if you want to put a pillow on the bed and forget about it. Loose wool settles under your head and drifts, and restless sleepers have it worst: one who turns from back to side to front all night found the filling ending up as hard lumps, and other owners wake to find it pushed to the top edge with nothing left under the neck. Your fingers fix that, but somebody has to do it, and often. If that sounds like a chore you'll never do, the latex sibling will suit you better.
You set the height, then you keep setting it
Inside there's 580g of loose British wool in little curls, which one owner said looked as they did when they came off the sheep. The cover around them is its own layer of wool, 300gsm of it quilted into a 200 thread count organic cotton shell, so even with a handful of filling out, your cheek still lies on wool. The wool is British and traceable to the farm through Woolroom's Wool ID scheme. The pillow itself is made in the EU, which surprised some owners when they read the label.
Give it a week or two of fiddling before you judge it. It starts fuller than it stays. Some owners find it too firm on the first night and pull wool out, one of them about a third of it. For plenty of others the wool beds down under the weight of a head and the pillow sits lower within days. Pulling a handful out through the zip makes it lower and softer. Woolroom's bag of Extra Wool makes it higher and firmer. Expect to open the zip more than once before you've found your amount.
Then comes the upkeep, and it's the thing to know before you buy. Wool flattens where your head lies and gathers into lumps, and the fix is your hands: unzip it, pull the clumps apart, spread the wool back out and zip it up. A morning shake brings back some height, but clumps only come apart by hand. Some owners open it every other day and some once a week, and the ones who keep at it say it springs back to how it arrived. Sunday is my fresh-sheets day, and if it's yours too, that's your moment: pillowcase off, cover open, wool teased apart by hand, zip closed.
About that zip. It has no pull tab, which one owner likes because nothing rattles when the pillow is plumped, while others find it fiddly to close and say wool fluff snags in it. Close it slowly and you'll be fine.
Wool pillow pros and cons: cooler, with upkeep
The case for wool is heat. To my mind wool sleeps cooler than polyester or feather, because it takes up the damp from a warm head and lets it go again, instead of leaving it on your cheek. That's why owners who used to wake on a hot, wet pillow keep mentioning it, some of them going through the menopause. A few owners found it ran as warm as the pillow it replaced, and one went back to a synthetic. My view on Woolroom's bedding is short: waking up clammy on synthetics is the problem wool solves, and Woolroom's is the wool I'd buy.
The case against is the upkeep, plus a couple of smaller things. Some pillows arrive smelling of sheep. Woolroom's advice is to air it for a couple of days, and for one owner the smell had gone within two, though another found it too strong for their son. You also can't punch it back into shape half asleep the way you can with down, because loose wool needs opening up, not thumping. Weigh it like this. If the right height and a cool cheek are worth a weekly unzip, buy it.
Washable means the cover: here's the routine
Here's exactly what washes. Woolroom's care steps are to unzip the pillow, tip the loose wool into the calico bag it came in, put the outer cover in the machine on a wool or delicate cycle with a wool wash, then hang it to dry. Never tumble dry it. The loose wool stays out of the machine. So when you read "washable" on this pillow, it means a machine-washable cover around a filling you look after by hand.
The cover survives the machine because of how the wool is treated. The Deluxe wool is made washable, in Woolroom's own words, by "bathing our British wool in a chlorine solution", which smooths the tiny barbs on each fibre that otherwise make wool shrink and felt in the wash. Dry the cover properly before it goes back on, as wool is slow on the line, and stick to the wool cycle: one owner found the casing shrank over many washes even so.
While the cover dries, you're a pillow short. Woolroom sells the zipped outer on its own, and a spare turns washing day into a swap rather than a wait.
The Extra Wool bag is for side sleepers and tired pillows
Woolroom's Extra Wool for Washable Pillows is a bag of loose wool for topping up this pillow, along with the Deluxe V-shaped and body pillows. It does one job: it makes a pillow higher and firmer, never softer. If yours is already too high, you don't need it. The Organic pillows take their own bag, so check you're ordering the one for the Deluxe.
Side sleepers need it, more so with broad shoulders or a heavy head, and so does anyone whose pillow has gone thin after months of use or a few washes of the cover. Too little wool is the commonest complaint about the Deluxe, and the bag is the answer to it. Owners rarely use a whole one at once. One side sleeper added about a third of a bag and stopped there, another topped up two pillows from a single bag, and others keep what's left for later, when the pillow settles. If you sleep on your side, order a bag with the pillow so you aren't waiting for a second parcel once the wool beds down.
To my mind the bag belongs in the box for side sleepers, and plenty of owners say the same. I'd rather the pillow arrived fuller and you pulled out what you didn't want. And it adds wool, it doesn't stop wool settling. One owner topped up, loved the first week, then found the pillow flat again by morning. The teasing still applies.
The quilted wool pillow protector: check the fit first
Woolroom's Washable Quilted Wool Pillow Protector is a thick sleeve of wool quilted inside unbleached organic cotton, closed with an envelope end and no zip. One owner's husband called it a little duvet for the pillow. It comes in one size, 48 x 74cm, the same footprint as this pillow, and that's the snag. One owner found it too small for the Deluxe and said it squashed the pillow, and another found pillow and protector together too bulky for a pillowcase.
It isn't waterproof. It keeps sweat marks off a pillow and puts a padded layer of wool against your face, but it won't stop a spilt drink. It washes at 30 on a wool cycle and dries on the line. Owners put it over memory foam and feather pillows that make them hot, and that's where I'd use it too. Over this pillow, whose own cover is already quilted wool, I'd skip it and buy the spare outer cover instead. If you do want one, measure your pillow and pillowcase first, because Woolroom's sleep trial covers its pillows but not this protector.
What to buy instead
For a side sleeper who will never unzip a pillow, the Woolroom Natural Latex Washable Wool Pillow is the buy: its latex core keeps one height night after night, wrapped in washable wool. It's too high for front sleepers, so they should stay with the Deluxe and thin it out. I'd pass on the Woolroom Classic Wool Pillow, which is British wool sewn shut, because the step up I'd skip on a duvet is the one that matters on a pillow: it buys the adjustable fill.
Away from Woolroom, the Hypnos Wool Pillow is the same idea, loose wool you take out to change the feel, in a plain cotton cover, and it costs a good deal more. If you want wool with no adjusting at all, the Harrison Spinks British Wool Pillow is medium to soft, fixed in height and dry clean only. Anyone who sleeps hot and will tease the wool once a week should buy the Deluxe.
