Organic pillows, made in New Jersey
It is the single question that separates the shelf. Most organic pillows are certified on the cloth outside and unregulated inside, which is the half your head rests on for eight hours a night.
Buy the Organic Cotton pillow if you want the strongest claim in the range, because it is certified as a finished product, which covers the cotton inside as well as the cover. Buy the Organic Wool pillow if you also wake up warm or damp, since it carries the same certification and moves moisture off your skin. Both are under licence GOTS-10229 issued by Oregon Tilth. Our other four pillows are natural, described by exactly what is in them, and they do not carry that certification, which we say on their pages rather than letting the word organic stretch across the whole catalogue.
Two carry the certification. The rest are described by exactly what is in them. Both of those are honest positions and only one of them is a certificate.
Texas-grown organic cotton as the fill and the cover, certified as a finished product. Dense, silent, medium firm, and the shape holds for years without upkeep.
Best for most people, and the strongest certification we hold
New Zealand organic wool under the same finished-product certification. Holds up to 30 percent of its weight in moisture, so you wake up dry.
Best for night sweats, warm rooms, dust mite allergies
Wild-harvested rather than farmed, so it sits outside organic standards entirely, and nothing is applied to the fiber at any point between the seed pod and your bed.
Best for chemical sensitivities, and replacing down
USA-grown hulls cleaned by air jet and sterilized with ultraviolet light rather than chemistry, inside an organic cotton cover. The firmest pillow we make.
Best for neck pain and hot sleepers
Organic wool on one side, buckwheat hulls on the other, split by an internal cotton divider. The pillow itself sits outside our certified scope.
Best for anyone torn between firm and soft
Pure tapped Dunlop sap tested to the strictest OEKO-TEX tier, the one written for infant products. No organic claim, and a different certificate that is worth as much.
Best for people leaving memory foam
Organic cotton on both faces with a bio-based film between them. Skin oil and moisture are what age a fill, and this keeps both out of it.
Best for making any of these last longer
| Organic CottonFrom $89 | Organic WoolFrom $99 | Wild-Harvested KapokFrom $79 | BuckwheatFrom $89 | Buckwool HybridFrom $99 | Tree-Tapped LatexFrom $89 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firmness | Medium | Medium-soft | Soft | Firm | Firm (buckwheat side), medium-soft (wool side) | Soft, with bounce |
| How it feels | Dense, medium firm, completely silent | Medium soft with a gentle spring | Light and soft, feels like down | Flexes to your neck, then holds that shape all night | Firm one side, cushioned the other | Buoyant, springs back as you move |
| Temperature | Breathable, does not trap heat like foam | Keeps you dry, wicking up to 30% of its weight in moisture | Naturally cool, kapok fibers are 80 to 90% air | Air moves between the hulls all night | Air moves through the buckwheat side, the wool side keeps you dry | Open-cell structure breathes, runs cool all night |
| Best sleep position | Back sleepers, side sleepers | All positions, especially hot sleepers | Stomach sleepers, back sleepers | Side sleepers, back sleepers | Combination sleepers, side sleepers | Back sleepers, side sleepers |
| Certification | GOTS certified organic, entire pillow (GOTS-10229) | GOTS certified organic, entire pillow (GOTS-10229) | Organic cotton cover, wild-harvested kapok fill | Organic cotton twill cover, natural USA-grown fill | Organic cotton twill cover | OEKO-TEX Standard 100 Class 1 latex, FSC-certified rubber-tree source, organic cotton cover |
| Expected lifespan | 2 to 4 years, longer with a fill refill | 3 to 5 years | 3 to 5 years | 3 to 5 years per hull load, then refresh the hulls and keep the pillow | 3 to 5 years | Up to a decade |
How to judge an organic pillow
Organic is a regulated term in food and considerably looser in bedding, where it is often applied to a whole product on the strength of a certificate covering one component of it.
1
A real certificate, correctly issued, covering the woven cloth on the outside of the pillow.
2
Which is where most of the material sits, and which is the part your face is against all night.
3
Legally defensible, widely done, and it describes a fraction of what you are buying.
4
So the only way to know is to ask for the certificate and read what it covers, which almost no shopper does.
Two questions cut through all of it. Does the certification cover the fill or only the cover? And which specific products does it apply to? Ask us both and we will answer with a licence number and a document. Ask the same of anyone else you are considering.
What ours covers
Certification is issued at levels, and the level is the whole story. Certified fabric means the cloth qualifies. Certified finished product means the object you receive qualifies, fill included, and the two are described identically in marketing copy.
Under licence GOTS-10229, issued by Oregon Tilth and audited in person every year, the cotton inside our Organic Cotton pillow and the wool inside our Organic Wool pillow are both covered, along with the covers on each. Our duvets and bedding carry the same.
Why it changes the product
People assume organic means grown without pesticides and stop there. That matters, and conventional cotton growing uses 42 million pounds of pesticides a year in the United States alone. It is also only the first stage, because a fiber can be grown cleanly and then bleached and finished into something quite different.
The standard bans chlorine bleaching outright and permits only oxygen-based methods, restricts dyes and finishes, and requires wastewater treatment at every wet-processing facility the material passes through. What that adds up to for you is that the air closest to your face for eight hours a night is just fiber.
Where we stop short
Wild-harvested fiber falls outside farming standards, because those standards are written for farms. The hulls in our firmest pillow are cleaned with air and ultraviolet light and the pillow sits outside our certified scope, as does the hybrid. Our latex carries a different certificate entirely, OEKO-TEX Standard 100 Class 1, the tier written for infant products.
Two of those four are among our most popular pillows. Stretching a certificate issued for cotton across a pillow full of hulls would be untrue, and the entire value of a certificate is that it means something specific.
After you choose
Every pillow here opens at a full-length zipper and arrives about a third fuller than most people keep. Take material out on the first night until your head sits level with your shoulders, and keep what you removed.
Years later, when the fill has settled, a refill bag of the same material puts the height back rather than sending a perfectly good cover to landfill. That is the part of buying organic that nobody puts on a certificate and that adds up over a decade.
Including the four that carry no organic certification, because that is the column most brands leave out.
| Pillow | What it can claim | What is inside it |
|---|---|---|
| Organic Cotton | Certified organic as a finished product | Texas-grown organic cotton, fill and cover |
| Organic Wool | Certified organic as a finished product | New Zealand organic wool, organic cotton cover |
| Wild-Harvested Kapok | No organic claim. Wild-harvested, not farmed | Kapok fiber with nothing applied, organic cotton cover |
| Buckwheat | No organic claim | USA-grown hulls, air-jet cleaned and UV sterilized |
| Buckwool Hybrid | No finished-product claim | Organic wool, hulls, organic cotton cover |
| Tree-Tapped Latex | OEKO-TEX Standard 100 Class 1 | Pure tapped Dunlop sap, organic cotton cover |
| Pillow Protector | Organic cotton faces | Bio-based TPU film between two cotton faces |
| A typical organic pillow | Certified cover, unregulated fill | Ask the seller which, and read the scope |
The Organic Cotton pillow. Certified as a finished product, dense, silent, and the shape holds for years with no upkeep at all.
Organic Cotton Pillow ›The Organic Wool pillow. Same certification, and it moves moisture off your skin so you wake up dry instead of clammy.
Organic Wool Pillow ›Kapok, and it is worth knowing why: no certificate covers it, because nothing was done to it that a certificate would need to permit.
Wild-Harvested Kapok Pillow ›Any of them, with a protector under the case and a refill bag when it settles. The cover outlasts several changes of fill.
Pillow Protector ›Our Organic Cotton pillow for most people, because it carries the strongest claim in the range and suits the widest set of sleepers. It is certified as a finished product, which covers the cotton inside as well as the cover cloth, under licence GOTS-10229. If you also wake up warm, take the Organic Wool instead.
No, and we would rather be clear about it. Two of the six carry a finished-product organic certification: the Organic Cotton and the Organic Wool. The other four are natural, described by exactly what is in them, and make no organic claim. Four of them are excellent pillows and two are among our most popular.
Two things. Whether the certification covers the fill or only the cover, and which specific products in the range it applies to. Most organic pillows on the market are certified on the outer fabric alone, which is the smaller half of what you are buying, and almost nobody volunteers that.
It depends what you are buying it for. If it is what you breathe against for eight hours a night, then knowing the fill was grown and processed under a restricted standard is worth something real. If you are buying it to last, the more useful features are the zipper and the refill, because those are what keep a pillow out of a bin.
It bans chlorine bleaching outright and permits only oxygen-based methods, restricts dyes and finishes, and requires wastewater treatment at every wet-processing facility the fiber passes through. It applies at every stage rather than only at the field, which is the part people usually assume it means.
Yes. Write to us and we will send it. That is the most useful question you can put to anyone selling certified bedding, ourselves included, because the answer tells you both whether the certificate exists and how wide its scope runs.
Because kapok is wild-harvested rather than farmed, and organic standards are written for farms. There is no field to inspect, nothing rotated and no input list to audit. What we can tell you instead is that nothing is applied to the fiber at any point between the seed pod and your bed, which for a lot of people is the stronger statement.
No, and the two get used interchangeably. Organic is about how the fiber was grown and processed, under a standard with a licence number behind it. Non-toxic is an unregulated marketing term that can be printed on anything. Ask what the mechanism is: ours is the fiber itself, and we will name the certificate behind any claim we make.
Not because they are organic. Ours last because of construction rather than certification: a zipper so you can set the height and refill it, a dense fill that settles slowly, and a cover that outlives several changes of material. Cotton runs two to four years and longer with a refill, wool three to five, latex up to a decade.
Cut, sewn, filled and inspected by hand in a small workshop in New Jersey, which has been making pillows since 1981. The cotton is Texas-grown and the wool is New Zealand-grown and processed in the United States.
Ask us, and ask everyone else you are considering. Sixty nights to be sure, handmade in our New Jersey workshop.
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If you've sent more pillows back than you've kept, you're our customer.
“I have owned more pillows than I have owned houses and I have owned 12 houses.” This is by far the only pillow to use if you don’t want to wake up with sore shoulders or neck. I have replaced all the pillows in my house with this pillow.
I have compressed discs in my neck, and I have spent hundreds of dollars over the past 6 months trying to find one that will help me sleep. Every pillow I bought caused me to wake up in even more pain than the night before!! The buckwheat pillow is life-changing!! I have slept through the night and wake up with no pain!!
I was leery to try another expensive pillow without some sort of trial period after being very let down by a different company's natural fiber pillow… I don't hear anything at all with the buckwheat! It does stay fresh and cool as well, but most importantly it actually holds my head/neck up and in place. Which allows me to actually get rest instead of always adjusting.
I've been a buckwheat pillow customer for the last 7 years and I can say that Circadian has the highest standards of quality paired with incredible customer service. Very very impressed and would not hesitate to send anyone their way.
I have spent years searching for a pillow that feels supportive and comfortable all night. I have finally found it. I absolutely love the Buckwool pillow. I removed a bit of the material to get it to exactly how I want it… I rarely wake up with neck pain now.
I find myself switching between the two and loving the feel of both. I haven't woken up with a sweaty head with either and that's an amazing feeling especially in the AZ summer. The buckwheat side is a lot quieter and more comfy/soft than others I've tried in the past.
I have tried at least 10 different pillows in the last 3 years. Nothing has worked out except for this wool pillow. I have chronic neck pain which has been greatly reduced. I am very happy with my new pillow.
I have pretty bad chemical sensitivity (housebound most of the time)… I try to only buy totally safe, non-toxic products. I found this pillow to be very safe and non-toxic, and the packaging was fragrance free which is always a huge plus.
I ordered this pillow to replace my very old (but beloved) down pillow and I'm so glad I did. It is heavenly!… I advise you to heed the recommendation given by the quiz. I ordered cotton initially despite the quiz giving me kapok as a result… the quiz was right.
The quality craftsmanship and materials is evident… when I asked if extra stuffing were available for the second one I'm using as a knee pillow, they not only pointed me to the right place on their site, but also created a new, smaller 1-lb. refill size based on my request.
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