Pillow Height Calculator
Most morning neck pain is a pillow-height problem. This works out the loft your neck actually needs — including how much your mattress changes the answer, which is the part most guides leave out.
Your result
How this is calculated
The goal is a straight line from ear through shoulder — the pillow fills the gap so the neck is neither propped up nor sagging down.
Support height = your ear-to-mattress gap − how far your shoulder sinks into the mattress.
Starting gap, when you haven’t measured:
| Build | Side sleeping | Back sleeping |
|---|---|---|
| Narrow | 5.0 in | 3.5 in |
| Average | 5.75 in | 4.0 in |
| Broad | 6.5 in | 4.5 in |
Mattress sink subtracted (halved for back sleeping, since less shoulder is involved):
| Mattress | Sink |
|---|---|
| Soft | 1.5 in |
| Medium | 0.75 in |
| Firm | 0.25 in |
The result is shown as a ±0.5 in range, because loft tolerance is real — being half an inch out is not the same as being two inches out.
Stomach sleeping is treated as a fixed 1–2 in, because no loft figure makes the position good for your neck.
These figures are a practical model built from pillow-loft conventions and cervical-alignment principles, not a clinical measurement. Treat the output as a starting range to test, not a prescription.
General information, not medical advice. If you have persistent neck pain, numbness, tingling, or pain radiating into an arm, see a doctor or physiotherapist — a pillow will not fix nerve compression or a structural problem.
Why pillow height matters more than anything else about a pillow
Firmness, fill material and cooling all get more attention, but height is the variable that decides whether your neck spends the night in a neutral position or a strained one. A pillow that is an inch too high holds your head bent forward for seven hours. An inch too low and it drops sideways instead. Either way the same muscles are loaded all night, every night — which is why the pain is reliably worst in the first hour after waking.
The reason so many people buy a well-reviewed pillow and still wake up sore is that loft is personal. It depends on how wide your shoulders are, which position you sleep in, and how much your mattress lets you sink. A pillow that is genuinely correct for a broad-shouldered side sleeper on a firm mattress will be roughly two inches too tall for a narrow-framed back sleeper on a soft one.
The mattress variable nobody accounts for
This is the part that catches people out. On a soft mattress your shoulder sinks into the surface, which closes part of the gap the pillow would otherwise need to fill. The softer the bed, the less pillow you need — the opposite of most people's instinct.
It also explains a common experience: buying the right pillow, then getting a new mattress and finding the pillow suddenly wrong. Nothing changed about the pillow. The amount your shoulder sinks did.
Testing your result
Give any new height a full week. Your neck adapts to whatever position it has been held in, so a correct pillow can feel mildly wrong for the first two or three nights. What you are looking for after a week is the first hour after waking — if the stiffness has eased, the height is right. If it has not changed at all, you are probably out by more than half an inch, or the problem is not the pillow.
For a fuller breakdown of the other causes, see our guide to what causes morning neck pain and how to work out which one applies to you.
Use this calculator on your own site
Physiotherapists, chiropractors, ergonomics consultants and sleep writers are welcome to embed this tool free of charge — click Embed this calculator above for the code. The only condition is keeping the attribution link. If you would like it adapted for your own patients or audience, get in touch through our contact page.