Leesa Pillow Review

Jump To Outline

• Shipping & Policies For Leesa Pillows
• Overview Of Leesa Pillow Models
• Leesa Hybrid Pillow Review
• Leesa Premium Foam Pillow Review

Given that Leesa has two pillows—and we don’t know which one you’re most interested in—we thought it made more sense to do a mega review rather than two separate reviews. As such, this is a fairly length post. You can click the links above to jump to particular sections within this review.

Shipping & Policies For Leesa Pillows

Like the Leesa Mattress, the Leesa Pillows are made in the USA and comes with free shipping and a 30-night risk-free trial where you can test the pillows for yourself. This should be more than enough time to make a decision as to whether it’s the pillow you’ve been looking for or you should consider other pillow options.

In the event that you don’t love the pillow you chose, for any reason, or no reason at all, you can return it within those first 30 nights for a full refund. In fact, Leesa will ship you a pre-paid label so that you can send the pillow back at no extra charge to you.

If you keep it, however, the pillow comes with a 3 year warranty, which covers manufacturing defects and issues related workmanship. You can learn more about the warranty on Leesa’s website.

Overview Of Leesa Pillow Models

Leesa currently offers two different pillows; one luxury pillow and a more affordable, quality memory foam pillow. They’re two completely different pillows, but they each have a little something to offer. Here’s a brief overview of their two pillow models, and feel free to check out the Leesa website for more info.

• Leesa Hybrid Pillow — This pillow is a down alternative, constructed with removable inserts so you can adjust the firmness and loft to your liking. It’s also a little pricey, and will cost you around $100.
• Leesa Premium Pillow — This pillow is still high quality, but it’s slightly more affordable than Leesa’s alternative model. It’s constructed with one solid slab of memory foam, but it feels like a responsive, neutral-foam pillow.

Leesa Hybrid Pillow Review

The Leesa Hybrid Pillow is the company’s high-end pillow, similar to how Leesa Legend is Leesa’s premium mattress. It’s not any better, per se, than the standard Leesa Pillow, however, it does incorporate more technology. In this post we will cover the pros and cons with the Leesa Hybrid Pillow, and we’ll touch on their Premium Memory Foam pillow as well.

Given that this is Leesa’s higher end pillow, it has an unsurprisingly steep price tag. Here you go:

We’ve seen a few promotions from Leesa on the pillow, and occasionally they’ll bundle in pillows when you purchase a mattress.

Sizes, Dimensions & Weight

As previously mentioned, the pillow comes in two sizes. The standard model is best suited for a Twin to Queen size mattress, while the queen pillow is your best bet if you have a King or California King bed. Given that a King bed is much larger than a Queen, it just makes sense to get a longer pillow to take up more real estate on your bed. It’s too bad that they don’t offer a properly long King pillow. The standard size is 16W” x 24L” and the queen is 16W” x 28L”.

The pillows also start at 3.9 lb, which is relatively heavy for a pillow, but still quite a bit lighter than the 10.2 lb Purple Pillow.

Materials & Construction

The Hybrid Pillow is reversible and adjustable with a quilted, soft, down-like top and cool, textured underside. The top side is made of a polyester microfiber and feels more like your traditional pillow in that it’s fluffy and soft.

The underside is made of memory foam and has cooling gel pad. It also has a textured pattern, which is subtle, but still quite pleasant when you lay your head on the pillow. This side is clearly designed for individuals that sleep hot. Otherwise, you should stick to the quilted top side.

The cover of the Leesa Hybrid Pillow is made of 60% Tencel Fiber and 40% Nylon. It’s stretchy and soft, yet relatively thick (i.e. it has a premium feel).

Feel & Firmness

The top side feels more like a regular pillow. It’s a familiar, almost comforting feeling. It’s soft, but not feather-soft. The underside feels like memory foam, but not so much that you’ll get lost in the pillow or feel stuck.

The memory foam tends to be more firm than the polyester fibers on the quilted side. As such, it means you won’t nestle in as much, but it also lets in more airflow. It really ends up being quite cool. And if you’re into that, you’re in luck. I personally, prefer the quilted side because I don’t need a super-cool pillow. The top side stays plenty cool for me.

Adjustable Loft & Sleeper Type

When it comes to selecting a pillow, you need to identify first what type of sleeper you are.

For example, side and back sleepers tend to prefer a pillow with more loft to be keep proper alignment, while stomach sleepers generally need a thinner pillow that doesn’t kink their neck.

Fortunately, the Leesa Hybrid Pillow is adjustable in that it has a removable pillow insert inside.

Keep in mind that there are a number of factors that affect whether the pillow is right for you. These include body type, head size, and more. In general, the larger you are, the thicker the pillow that you can accommodate.

If you’re smaller, you’ll generally need a much thinner pillow because your neck is shorter. If you find yourself gravitating to the front or side edges of the pillow, it probably has too much loft for you. You’ll either need to break the pillow in further or switch pillows all together.

All you do zip open the pillow and pull out the pillow insert. From our measurements, this takes the loft of the pillow from around 4.75” (compressed) to about 3”. This depends a lot of the size, shape, and weight of your head, but you can see that there’s a big difference with and without the pillow insert.

This is a relatively novel concept to have an adjustable pillow, but we do think it’s a good move. And as a bonus, if you technically get a second pillow if you remove the insert (makes a great knee pillow).

Side and Back Sleepers

You have two options. If you like keeping the insert in, great. Do that. If it’s comfortable, keep the pillow as is.

If you’re petite, however, you may actually prefer if the insert is removed. It all depends on your body type, head size, etc., but in the end you should do whatever is most comfortable for you. Side sleepers need to keep their head propped up, but not too high such that it kinks your neck.

A good rule of thumb is to make sure you can follow a straight line from your nose down your spine. If your nose is too high or low, you’re out of alignment. For back sleepers, you need to keep a proper “C” curve in your neck. The one thing that you need to pay particular attention to is whether the pillow pushes your head forward.

Once laying on your back with your head on the pillow, open your eyes. If you’re looking forward, the pillow has too much loft. If you’re looking upward and you’re comfortable, then it’s probably keeping the proper “C” shape that you’re looking for.

How about for Stomach Sleepers?

As mentioned previously, there’s an option for stomach sleepers, if you remove the insert. I can’t imagine anyone keeping the insert in if you’re a strict stomach sleeper, unless you lay your head along the edges.

If you rotate positions throughout the night, you maybe also play around with taking the insert out. If you end up on your stomach for any significant amount of time and you haven’t removed the insert, I suspect you’ll get some neck pain. So just keep that in mind if you get the pillow.

Caring for your Leesa Hybrid Pillow

If you remove the pillow insert and gel pad, the actual cover itself is machine washable. Leesa recommends that you wash on a warm, gentle cycle with like colors.

You should not bleach it and you should tumble dry on low heat. The pillow insert apparently is also machine washable, under the same conditions. The gel pad, however, should just be spot cleaned as necessary.

Leesa Premium Foam Pillow Review

Materials: The construction of the memory foam pillow is pretty basic, especially when compared to the complexity of the hybrid pillow. Essentially, the pillow is comprised of a slab of 100% polyurethane foam wrapped up in a cover made of Leesa’s iconic grey twill material.

The foam is pock marked all over with ventilation channels which allow for more airflow and keep the pillow from generating too much heat. The soft cover comes right off with a zipper and can be easily machine washed.

Feel: Unlike true memory foam, polyurethane, or “neutral” foam doesn’t provide the same viscous, contouring feeling. The pillow feels more supple and responsive, cradling your head much the same way that traditional memory foam does, but without the lingering indentation which is so emblematic of memory foam. If you are a fan of traditional memory foam, the Leesa Premium pillow might surprise you a bit as it is softer and lighter than what you may be used to.

Sleeper type: Because the interior of the pillow is comprised of just a single slab of foam, there is no option to adjust the loft of the pillow. The pillow is a bit less lofty than some other foam pillows that we’ve seen. Additionally, the neutral-foam, although it is pretty springy and responsive, might be a bit too thin for heavier side and back sleepers for whom the pillow might sink too much and provide insufficient neck support.

Don’t get us wrong, Leesa claims that this is a pillow that’ll provide great support for every sleeper type, and it certainly could be the perfect pillow for any sleeper — but body type definitely comes in to play. Since this pillow is a bit less lofty, we think it would be especially good for stomach sleepers or petite to average size side sleepers. 

Price: The Leesa premium foam pillow is available in both standard and king sizes. This pillow is a bit cheaper than the Leesa hybrid, understandably so, as it has fewer bells and whistles, but we still wouldn’t consider this a “budget buy.” The standard size runs around $80 while the king size comes in at about $100.