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Weighted Pillows – Improving Your Life Everyday

Weighted Pillows – Improving Your Life Everyday
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1. Calmforter Weighted Pillow

Our favorite and best-reviewed weighted pillow is created by Calmforter – a very appropriately named company. At 12lbs, it’s perfect for use on the couch, the bed, or anywhere else in your home.

Giving Heart Weighted Pillow

2. The Giving Heart Weighted Pillow

The most conventional and lovable weighted pillow on our list, the Giving Heart makes for as good a gift as it does a personal treat for yourself.

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3. Busy Fingers Weighted Sensory Pillow

At 4lbs and nothing but glamorous, this weighted pillow by Busy Fingers is sure to calm anyone that beneath it. Reasonably priced and well designed, it’s definitely worth a second look.

If you’re new to the idea of weighted pillows, you might not understand the sheer range of uses they can have and the huge amount of improvements they can bring to your life. Although a relatively new concept, they’ve been gaining massive popularity over recent years thanks to the efforts of a few major companies.

Designed to help treat a wide range of issues and make your life far more comfortable, weighted pillows bring all the benefits of a weighted blanket, at a much more wallet-friendly price tag. There are plenty of different styles and varieties to choose from which make them the perfect gift idea as well.

If you’re already set on getting a weighted pillow, you’ll find some of the best ones available below. Otherwise, scroll a bit further down to find out which pillows are right for you, and how each one can help improve your life.

1. Calmforter Weighted Pillow

Designed like a large orthopedic recovery or sleep pillow, the Calmforter is a huge piece that’s not going to replace your normal pillow, but has some serious uses when it comes to bedtime.

Calmforter created the first premium weighted blanket on the market. Then they realised that there was no weighted pillow to go along with it, so created this, the first weighted body pillow.

Each 53-inch-long pillow weighs around 12lbs, and is full of Calmforter’s Cloudsoft polyfill, and a whole bunch of glass beads. The outside is minky fabric, with built-in sensacool dots that increase air flow and keep you cool even when you’re wrapped up tight. Despite the size, there aren’t any internal pockets either. All the weight is evenly distributed throughout the inside of the pillow, so it keeps its shape and stays comfortable, no matter how much you move it around.

Body pillows like these are designed to hug close to your body as you sleep, sitting between your legs and arms, helping to align your spine and make for a more comfortable night’s sleep. The added weight in this pillow adds an extra dimension, helping to relieve anxiety and other problems by triggering the release of serotonin and dopamine.

Made in the USA, Calmforter products are only available online, so you’ll never find these in stores. In case of issues, 7-day customer support and a full guarantee keep you covered.

2. The Giving Heart Weighted Pillow

The most conventional pillow on our list, the Giving Heart makes for as good a gift as it does a personal treat for yourself.

Soft and knitted, it’s textured and gentle to the touch, while still having some tactile elements. The weights are plastic, rather than the usual glass, which is a shame, but it does help to bring the cost down.

Heart-shaped, it sits comfortably in the lap, but also works incredibly well as an actual pillow. The shape allows it to fit around the neck, meaning that you can use this as a neck support, and it can also be used as a lap pad.

But the best thing about the Giving Heart pillow is how nice it is as a gift. It comes with a gorgeous gift box and a written tag, with a choice of three different colors. It’s the perfect choice if you have a friend who could benefit from a weighted life, but hasn’t taken the plunge yet.

3. Busy Fingers Weighted Sensory Pillow

Created specifically to appeal to and help with ADHD and autism, this pillow also has multiple benefits that can help you with your calm or focus.

First off, the look. It’s gorgeous, with a shimmering scale fabric that’s two color and responds to touch, adding a tactile element to the pillow that will hold the attention of almost anyone, young children especially. Light sparkles against the scales, which means that this looks fantastic when paired with a night light, or even just left on the couch.

The pillow itself weighs 4lbs, which means this can take the place of a lap pad, and can easily be used when studying, reading, or when sitting in the car for a calming, therapeutic touch.

Lab-tested, it meets all safety standards, and is ideally suited as a sensory stimulation aid for your child, this pillow is safe and effective, helping with co-ordination, motor control, mood, attentiveness, and more.

4. Therapedic Weighted U Neck Pillow

Resembling a standard travel neck pillow, this is the purchase if you’re looking for a pillow that has multiple uses, and can be taken with you everywhere you go.

Weighing in at 3lbs, it’s designed to hug around your neck, providing support while still being flexible. The outer is made from a soft, supple, but easy to maintain 50% cotton/50% polyester mix that can be spot cleaned, and feels great against the skin.

Unlike standard travel pillows, the Therapedic doesn’t stay plump around your neck. Instead, the glass bead weights lay itself flat around your neck and across your shoulders, adding therapeutic pressure to the area and helping to take the strain.

It’s not just useful when you travel, either. At home watching TV, when sleeping, even when you’re doing chores around the house, this weighted pillow can comfortably be used for all of it.

It’s also incredibly cheap, and despite that, has a limited lifetime warranty. Flexible and simple, if you’re unsure about whether you want a weighted pillow, this is a great starting point and tester, and if you know the power of weighted support, this is a great little variable tool that you’ll grow to love and rely on.

Your 2022 Guide to Weighted Pillows

Weighted Pillows: Benefits

A weighted pillow offers many of the same benefits as a weighted blanket. The calming, therapeutic effect of a weighted pillow includes:

  • Help with insomnia
  • Aid with anxiety
  • Fight against stress
  • Improve focus for ADHD
  • Help with restless leg syndrome
  • Deal with chronic pain
 

Weighted pillows are also the ideal size and shape to act as a lap pad, which help by stimulating deep pressure therapy to create a proprioception effect on someone’s legs as they sit.

This makes weighted pillows the ultimate tool for travel, especially if you regularly use a weighted blanket and want to retain the benefits. A weighted pillow can be used on your neck, to cradle and improve posture, be used in a car, truck or bus, on planes, and more.

Woman-enjoying-her-sleep-with-a-weighted-pillow

Because the beads in most pillows are made of glass, you can also put a weighted pillow into a freezer, then use it to soothe sore muscles or cool yourself down on hot days.

Some surgeons are even using weighted pillows to help their patients more!

Who are Weighted Pillows For?

Weighted pillows were originally designed for people who had issues with sleeping, because they help with posture and correct spinal alignment, as well as offering help with things like restless leg syndrome and insomnia. This is also a big reason for the rise in popularity of weighted stuffed animals has been exponential over the past few years.

Smaller pillows also have a secondary use as a lap pad, which we touched on above.

But honestly, weighted pillows are for anyone. The sheer variety of uses, whether it’s to help with your sleep, around the house, when travelling, or for therapeutic use, means that everyone can find some sort of benefit from a weighted pillow.

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Factor in how cheap most weighted pillows can be, and you’re looking at a versatile tool that’s a great entry into the benefits of weighted bedding.

On a side note, if you want to take your sleeping experience to the next level, consider getting a weighted sleep mask. We constantly hear praise from almost all customers who purchase one.

The Difference Between a Weighted Pillow and Blanket

At first glance, this question might sound like it has a clear answer, but the differences between weighted blankets and pillows are greater than the obvious.

It comes down to uses.

A weighted blanket really only has one use, as a blanket, either replacing your standard bedding, or on the couch. It’s something that you’re going to use regularly, to replace an existing blanket.

A weighted pillow, on the other hand, has multiple uses, which we’ve already touched on in this article. Sleep aid, therapeutic helper, treatment for physical pain, or just a comfort thing, weighted pillows come in a wide variety of styles, with a wider variety of uses.

It’s like comparing children’s weighted vests to weighted sippy straw cups – the end result they provide is similar, but they’re used in completely different settings.

Conclusion

A weighted pillow is the perfect starter point if you’re looking to test out whether weighted products are right for you, because they’re such a small and relatively inexpensive investment.

Hopefully our guide has helped you understand what weighted pillows are for, and how they can benefit your life.

If you’re interested in purchasing a weighted blanket to go alongside your brand new pillow, you should check out our guide on weighted blankets here.

Have some more questions you’d like answered before you dive in? Send us an email or leave a comment!

Mike Horton (head of Weighted Living)

by Mike Horton

Mike is one of the lead editors at Weighted Living and the author of this article. He's become fascinated with weighted products (a bit too much we think) and loves to see all the different ways they can improve our loves. He's written quite a few weighted product guides as well.

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