A toxin-free house audit almost never reaches the pillow.
Kayla goes room by room and asks what a thing is made of before she asks what it does. A pillow resists that question, because the cover is the only part anyone can see and the fill is the part your face spends eight hours against.
Her write-up is still being made.
The wool she has, and the two worth comparing it against.
Wool answers the question a longevity audit asks first, which is what happens to the air right at your face over 8 hours. The other two answer it differently, and the difference is worth feeling rather than reading.
Organic Wool
You stay cool because you stay dry. Each fiber pulls up to 30 percent of its own weight in moisture off your skin and holds it inside the strand, so the air at your face never turns damp and your body keeps shedding heat the way it should. A cooling gel takes on your warmth for about twenty minutes and then has nowhere left to put it. Certified organic end to end under the Global Organic Textile Standard, licence GOTS-10229 through Oregon Tilth.
Shop the wool →
Wild-Harvested Kapok
Every fiber is a hollow tube 80 to 90 percent air, with a wall one to two microns thick, which is why a pillow full of it reads like down and weighs almost nothing. The outside of that wall carries a natural waxy coating that repels water, so mold has nothing to establish on and nothing has to be applied to keep it that way. The pods are hand-harvested from Ceiba trees in Indonesia. Organic cotton cover.
Shop the kapok →
Organic Cotton
Long-staple cotton compresses slowly and evenly under the weight of your head, so the height you set on night three is close to the height you have on night three hundred. It is the most familiar feel in the lineup and the one people choose when they want nothing unusual happening under their ear. Certified organic across the fill and the cover together on licence GOTS-10229.
Shop the cotton →Six natural fills, one workshop.
Every pillow shares the same organic cotton cover and comes out of the same partner workshop in New Jersey, which has been making natural bedding since 1981.
Why we built a page for Kayla Barnes.
Most of what gets called a non-toxic pillow is certified on the outside. An organic cotton cover wrapped around conventional batting, or foam, or a fill nobody names. The cover is the part that photographs, and it is also the part that is easiest to certify, so that is where the certification usually stops.
Two of our six fills carry the Global Organic Textile Standard across the finished product, on licence GOTS-10229 through Oregon Tilth. Those are the organic cotton and the organic wool. Kapok and buckwheat hulls sit outside the scope of textile certification by definition, so they carry organic cotton covers and we say that plainly rather than stretch the word to cover them. The slow-pour Dunlop latex holds OEKO-TEX Standard 100 at Class 1, which is the tier written for products a baby touches.
Six fills, and the difference between them is the whole product.
— Jacob KatzFounder, Circadian
Shape it once, and it fits you for good.
Every Circadian pillow arrives full, about a third more than most people keep, because it is easier to take some out than to wish you had more. Open the side zipper, remove a handful at a time, and stop when your head sits level with your shoulders. If you go too far, it goes back in. On the wool, peel a full sheet off the outside rather than tearing at the middle, and the pillow keeps its shape while it loses its height.
What Kayla's readers ask first
Which fill is the safest choice?
Safest depends on what you are avoiding. If the concern is what the fiber was grown and processed with, the organic cotton and the organic wool are certified across the finished pillow on licence GOTS-10229. If the concern is chemical processing of any kind, kapok goes from seed pod to pillow without a chemical step. If the concern is dust mites, wool is the one to read about, because lanolin coats the skin flakes mites eat and the dry surface keeps humidity under the level they need.
Does wool make a hot sleeper hotter?
It runs the other way, and the mechanism is moisture rather than temperature. Damp air at your face is what stops your body cooling itself. Wool moves up to 30 percent of its weight in moisture into the fiber and away from your skin, so the surface stays dry and heat keeps leaving. Nothing about it insulates your head the way a wool sweater insulates your chest.
How firm is it out of the box?
Firmer than you want on night one. It ships with about a third more fill than most people keep, because we would rather you take some out than run short. Give it three nights at the height you set, then adjust again if your shoulder tells you to.
What comes in the box besides the pillow?
One pillow, made to order, with a card that explains the fill and a care card for that specific material. Four to seven days to build, plus transit, and a tracking number goes out the day it leaves the workshop. Free shipping. Sleep on it for up to 60 nights and send it back for a full refund if it is not right.
Start with the fill that fits.
Take the quiz, find your match, and sleep on it for sixty nights.
A partnership between Kayla Barnes and Circadian.
