Pillow Sizes Chart: Which Pillow and Comforter Fit Your Bed

Bed pillows come in three sizes that differ only in length.

What are the standard pillow sizes? There are three for a bed. A standard pillow is 20 by 26 inches. A queen is 20 by 30, and a king is 20 by 36. All three measure 20 inches from the top edge to the bottom edge. Only the length grows. The queen adds four inches to a standard, and the king adds six more. The Sleep Foundation's pillow size guide lists the same three, along with a 20 by 54 inch body pillow.

A travel pillow is smaller again. Ours is 12 by 16 inches. It fits behind your back in a car or on a plane, under a child's head, or behind you when you sit up to read. It is an extra for the bed rather than the pillow you sleep on.

A queen pillow is four inches longer than a standard.

What is the difference between a standard and a queen pillow? Four inches of length, and nothing else. Both are 20 inches the other way. The extra length gives your head room to move before it reaches the end, which helps if you turn from your side to your back in the night. The Sleep Foundation makes the same point about queen pillows and sleepers who change position.

A king pillow is ten inches longer than a standard and six longer than a queen. It is the size to lean against a headboard when you sit up in bed. It needs a king case, since a queen case stops short of the ends.

Size and height are two different choices.

Size is how much room your head has to move. Height decides whether your neck stays straight, and that depends on how you sleep. A pillow's job is to keep your ear, shoulder and hip in one line. On your side, the gap between shoulder and ear is widest, so you need the most height. On your back you need less, and on your front almost none.

Every Circadian pillow arrives full, about a third more than most people keep. Open the side zipper, take some out, and stop when your ear sits level with your shoulder. The guide to setting the height of an adjustable pillow walks through it one sleep position at a time.

Image: Circadian

Match the pillows to the width of the mattress.

What size pillow goes on a queen bed? Two standards or two queens. Two pillows sit side by side, so their combined length should come close to the mattress width without going past it. The Sleep Foundation's mattress size chart gives the widths.

Two sleeping pillows fit a queen bed.

How many pillows go on a queen bed? Two, for sleeping. Two queens fill the 60 inches from edge to edge. Two standards leave about four inches of mattress showing at each side. A third pillow for sitting up works best in the travel size. It rests behind your back without crowding the head of the bed.

King pillows hang off the sides of a queen bed.

Can you put king pillows on a queen bed? You can, but they will not sit side by side. Two kings measure 72 inches against the queen's 60. That leaves 12 inches to hang over the edges or to overlap in the middle, where two people's heads meet. The Sleep Foundation pairs king pillows with king and California king beds. On a queen, choose queen pillows for the extra length, or standards for a little room at each side.

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Every Circadian pillow comes in all four sizes, so feel decides.

Every Circadian pillow is sold in travel, standard, queen and king. Once you know the size your bed takes, the choice left is how you want the pillow to feel under your head. Here are the six, from softest to firmest.

• Wild-Harvested Kapok Pillow, the softest. It feels like down, light and cloud-like, and it comes from a plant. Kapok is the lightest natural fiber on Earth, because each strand is a hollow tube that is mostly air.
• Tree-Tapped Latex Pillow, soft with a bounce. It gives under your head and then lifts back, with none of the slow sinking of memory foam. The latex is shredded into small pieces, so air moves through it and you can take pieces out to set the height.
• Organic Wool Pillow, springy and medium. It keeps you one temperature all night, so you stop waking up hot and then cold. Warm, humid air is what makes a pillow feel hot. Wool takes that humidity into the fiber, up to 30 percent of its own weight, and the heat leaves with it.
• Organic Cotton Pillow, dense and familiar. It feels like a pillow is supposed to feel from the first night, supportive with nothing to get used to. Cotton is the most tightly packed of our fiber pillows, denser than wool or kapok, so your head stays up instead of sinking in.
• Buckwool Hybrid Pillow, firm on one side and soft on the other. Two chambers share one cover, buckwheat hulls in one and organic wool in the other. Flip it to the hulls on the nights your neck wants holding, and to the soft, silent wool on the nights it does not.
• Buckwheat Pillow, the firmest. The hulls move to the shape of your neck and then lock in place, so your head stays where you put it all night. Air moves between the hulls, so the surface stays cool. People who love the hold of buckwheat and also want a soft, silent side for some nights often end up on the Buckwool Hybrid.

A king in any of the six holds more material than a standard, so it is heavier and takes a little longer to shape. If you are not sure which feel is yours, the 30-second pillow quiz asks how you sleep and points you to one.

Travel, Standard, Queen and King

Organic Cotton Pillow

Dense and supportive from the first night, and your head stays up instead of sinking. Set the height through the side zipper.

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Handmade in New Jersey · Free shipping · 60-night trial

The standard body pillow is 54 inches long, and ours also comes in 72.

How long is a body pillow? Most are 20 by 54 inches, the length the Sleep Foundation gives as typical. The Circadian Body Pillow comes in that length and in 20 by 72 inches. Both lengths come in organic cotton, wild-harvested kapok, organic wool and tree-tapped latex, each with an organic cotton cover.

The 54 inch pillow is long enough to hug, to tuck between your knees, or to hold a pregnant belly while it wraps under the bent leg. The 72 inch pillow runs from your shoulder to past your feet, so it rests along the whole length of you. It fits any adult bed lengthwise, since even a twin is 75 inches long.

Width is the part people forget. A body pillow takes up 20 inches of the mattress beside you. On a queen that leaves 40 inches for you and a partner, and on a full it leaves 34. On a twin it leaves 18 inches, which is tight for one adult. In a shared bed, the 54 inch length is usually the easier one to live with. On a woman 5 feet 5 inches tall it runs from about her shoulder to her feet, and the 72 inch pillow is longer than she is tall.

Each length has a case cut to match. The Organic Cotton Body Pillow Case comes in 20 by 54 and 20 by 72, and choosing a body pillow and its case covers why a short case rides up by morning.

20 x 54 or 20 x 72 inches

Body Pillow

Something to hold, to tuck between your knees or to rest a pregnant belly on, in cotton, kapok, wool or latex, with a side zipper to set how full it is.

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Handmade in New Jersey · Free shipping · 60-night trial

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A pillow protector is cut to the pillow, never to the bed.

What size pillow protector do you need? The same size as the pillow. A protector zips all the way around the pillow, under the pillowcase, so a standard pillow takes a standard protector on any bed. One that is too big bunches under your cheek. One that is too small squeezes the pillow and pulls on its zipper.

The Circadian Waterproof Organic Cotton Pillow Protector comes in every size we make a pillow in. That means travel, standard, queen and king, plus Body JR at 20 by 54 and Body at 20 by 72. It keeps sweat, spills and skin oils from soaking into the pillow, which helps the cotton, wool or kapok inside last longer.

The protector is GOTS Certified Organic as a finished product, under license GOTS-10229 through Oregon Tilth. GOTS, the Global Organic Textile Standard, is the organic standard that covers a finished textile and not only the fiber, and it keeps PFAS, formaldehyde and pesticide residue out of the cloth. The protector also carries GREENGUARD Gold, the low-emission tier used for schools and childcare. Do pillow protectors really extend pillow life? covers what it does for the pillow inside.

Travel through King, plus Body JR and Body

Waterproof Organic Cotton Pillow Protector

Zips around the pillow under the case, so sweat and spills stop at the cloth instead of soaking into the pillow.

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Handmade in New Jersey · Free shipping

A comforter should hang past both sides of the mattress.

What size comforter fits a queen bed? One at least as wide as the mattress plus twice its depth. That is the rule in the Sleep Foundation's comforter size guide for covering both sides. A 60 inch queen mattress that stands 15 inches deep needs a comforter 90 inches wide. So measure the depth of your mattress as well as its width before you buy.

The Circadian Organic Cotton Comforter and Organic Wool Comforter come in the same three sizes. Each is a duvet insert. It slips inside a duvet cover and ties in at the corner loops, and our organic cotton sateen duvet cover is cut to the same three sizes.

How far it hangs is the comforter's width minus the mattress width, split between the two sides. Extra length is the comforter's length minus the mattress length, with the top edge at the head of the mattress. Mattress sizes from the Sleep Foundation's mattress size chart.

Our queen comforter is wider than most.

Most queen comforters are 86 to 90 inches wide, according to the Sleep Foundation's size chart. Ours is 92. On a queen bed it hangs about 16 inches past each side, which covers the sides of a mattress up to about 16 inches deep. On a full it hangs about 19. Two people can each pull their share toward them in the night and neither side of the mattress comes bare.

Our king comforter hangs about 10 inches past each side of a king bed.

A king mattress is 76 inches wide and our King comforter is 96, so about 10 inches hang past each edge. That covers the sides of a mattress up to about 10 inches deep. On a deeper king, the lower few inches of each side will show below the comforter, where the fitted sheet is. On a California king, which is four inches narrower, it hangs about 12 inches at each side.

The King gives its extra in length. At 110 inches it runs about 30 inches past the foot of a king, enough to tuck under the mattress or fold back at the top. The duvet insert size guide covers the King and California king question in more detail.

Cotton and wool come in the same sizes and different weights.

The size chart is the same for both comforters. The weight is not. The organic cotton comforter weighs about 7.5 pounds at Twin, 12 at Queen and 13.5 at King, and it feels like it has real weight while it still breathes. The organic wool comforter weighs about 6.5, 9 and 11.5 pounds, lighter than you would expect for how warm it is, and it keeps you one temperature through the night.

Twin, Queen and King

Organic Wool Comforter

Warm without the weight, and one steady temperature all night, so you stop kicking it off and pulling it back.

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Handmade in New Jersey · Free shipping · 60-night trial

Twin, Queen and King

Organic Cotton Comforter

The down alternative comforter without the polyester, with real weight to it that still breathes, hand-tufted so the cotton stays where it was put.

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Handmade in New Jersey · Free shipping · 60-night trial

Four sizing mistakes show up again and again.

The first is buying pillows by the name of the bed. A king bed takes king pillows, but a queen bed does not take kings, and two of them crowd each other in the middle. The second is a case or protector one size off. A standard case on a queen pillow squeezes it, and a king case on a standard leaves ten inches of loose cloth under your neck. What size pillowcase do you need? covers case sizes brand by brand.

The third is forgetting how wide a body pillow is. It takes 20 inches of the bed, and on a full or a twin that is a lot of the room you have. The fourth is buying a comforter by the name on the package. A queen comforter 86 inches wide leaves the sides of a deep queen mattress showing, so measure the depth and check the width in inches.

Three common beds show how the numbers work out.

A queen bed for two people who turn in the night. Two queen pillows cover the full 60 inches, so neither head runs off an end. Two queen protectors go under two queen cases. The Queen comforter hangs about 16 inches past each side, which covers the sides of a mattress up to about 16 inches deep with room for both people to pull at it.

A California king for a tall sleeper. Two king pillows fill the 72 inches edge to edge. The King comforter hangs about 12 inches past each side and runs 26 inches past the foot, enough to tuck in at the bottom.

A full bed in a guest room, with a pregnant guest. Two standards cover 52 of the 54 inches. A 54 inch Body Pillow gives her something to hold and still leaves 34 inches of mattress. The Queen comforter fits a full and hangs about 19 inches past each side.

Measure the bed once, then buy every piece by the inches.

Which size should you buy? Start with a tape measure. The width of the mattress picks the pillows. The pillow picks the case and the protector, whatever the bed. The width and the depth together pick the comforter, and the comforter picks the duvet cover. Write the three numbers down before you shop, because size names on packages vary from brand to brand and inches do not.

Every Circadian pillow comes in travel, standard, queen and king, and the protector comes in all of those plus Body JR and Body. The comforters come in Twin, Queen and King, with a duvet cover cut to match. The whole range is in the organic pillows collection.

Frequently Asked Questions