Coop Home Goods Original Pillow review 2021

The Coop Home Goods Original Pillow has been garnering praise for some time now and is generally considered to be one of the best pillows for people who don't know what they'd prefer to sleep on. That's because the Original is a premium adjustable loft pillow, so you can add as much or as little stuffing (to make it as thin or as full) as you need for your sleep style. 

As we explain further into our review, the Coop Home Goods Pillow is premium in terms of performance and build, but not price. It's also covered with a 5-year warranty and comes on a 100-night trial, so you'll have plenty of time to try it out for yourself. These kinds of perks are normally reserved for the more luxury sleep pillows, as well as the best mattresses sold online, so we're pleased to see them on a sub-$65 offering.

After three weeks of sleeping on our review sample of the Coop Home Goods Original Pillow, we're here to share our thoughts on whether the hype surrounding it is warranted. Here's what you need to know... 

What is the Coop Home Goods Original Pillow?

• Available in queen or king (no standard size)
• Comes with an extra 1/2lb bag of fill
• Custom fills available at no charge

Coop Home Goods is known for its range of affordable bedding, which includes mattress protectors, bedding sets and mattress toppers. The Coop Home Goods Original Pillow was released in 2013, so it's been around for a long time. As one of the brand's premium adjustable loft pillows, The Original is billed as a medium-firm offering that's best-suited to side and back sleepers seeking a balance of comfort and support. 

The Coop Home Goods Original Pillow arrives filled with hypoallergenic cross-cut memory foam and a microfiber blend. As befitting an adjustable loft pillow, it also comes with an extra 1/2lb bag of fill so that you can get to work creating a higher loft or thicker density to suit your favorite snoozing position.

Tips are included to help you achieve the right amount of fill for your specific sleep style (side, front, stomach, combo), but if you can't get it quite right, Coop Home Goods will offer a customizable foam blend free of charge. If you want a latex pillow instead, take a look at our Purple Harmony Pillow review, but keep in mind that it uses a mix of Talalay latex and polymer.

The Original's pillowcase is made of Lulltra, a bamboo-derived viscose rayon and polyester blend, while the inner pillow is lined with polyester. Both the pillowcase and the inner pillow are machine-washable. (Washing the inner pillow with the fill in-tact once a year is recommended to keep it clean while maintaining its level of support.)

The Coop Home Goods Original Pillow is available in two sizes: queen (20 x 30 inches) or king (20 x 36 inches), but sadly the standard-sized pillow (20 x 26 inches) is no longer made.

Coop Home Goods Original Pillow: Price and warranty

• 100-night at-home trial 
• 5-year warranty coverage
• Free returns and a full refund if you're not satisfied

The Coop Home Goods premium adjustable loft pillow is available to purchase direct from the brand, as well as from major online retailers such as Amazon, Target and Walmart. The MSRP is $59.99 for the queen size and $69.99 for the king. You might be able to score a deal on it during the upcoming Black Friday mattress deals (we've seen it on sale before), or you could join the free Coop Home Goods VIP Club for occasional coupons.

As mentioned earlier in our review, the Original comes on a 100-night risk-free trial. So if you aren't satisfied with it, Coop Home Goods will either work with you to create a custom fill at no charge, or issue a full refund plus a pre-paid label so you can return it. 

In addition to the risk-free trial, Coop Home Goods also offers a 5-year limited warranty on this one, which is a rarity for such a mid-priced sleep product.

Coop Home Goods Original Pillow: Performance

• Takes 10 minutes to expand in the dryer
• Achieving the ideal amount of fill takes time
• It's supportive and even... as long as you fluff it

For three weeks we slept exclusively on a queen size Coop Home Goods Original Pillow. This reviewer is a side sleeper prone to tossing-and-turning; an ideal candidate for testing this particular pillow.

The Original Pillow arrived in an oblong box, rolled-up and vacuum-sealed with a separate bag of 1/2lb fill. Following the instructions, we placed the pillow in our dryer for around 10 minutes to fluff it. To mitigate the obvious off-gassing smell, we threw in a dryer sheet for good measure.

Adjusting the pillow to suit this reviewer's specifications took some time. In the beginning, it was packed with too much fill for a comfy night's sleep. After much trial-and-error though, we settled on the ideal amount of fill (removing roughly a quarter of the original fill) for achieving good spinal alignment for us.

The Coop Home Goods premium adjustable loft pillow is medium-firm, regardless of the amount of fill you have in it. Overall, we found it quite supportive after a brief adjustment period – especially after coming from the much softer and smaller Pillow Cube.

One thing we had to to do every morning was fluff the Original in order to maintain its loft. If we didn't, we were left with a lumpy, lopsided pillow (and a less-than-ideal night's sleep). Fortunately, this didn't translate into neck and back pain, but it did leave us feeling tired after bouts of tossing and turning in the night.

What we didn't like

• Memory foam fill retains too much heat
• Finding space for excess fill may be a challenge

Our biggest issue with the Coop Home Goods Original Pillow is that it's prone to overheating. The pillowcase is made from a breathable material, but the memory foam fill has a tendency to run hot. As such, we'd often wake up feeling warm around the collar. The more luxurious Coop Home Goods Eden Pillow may be a better fit for hot sleepers since it's filled with gel-infused foam that's cooler to the touch.

Another (minor) gripe is a matter of where to place all that extra fill, especially if this Coop Home Goods pillow is too densely-packed for your tastes at first. We decided to repurpose the box the pillow arrived in as storage for the excess fill. Useful, sure, but it's also one more thing we had to make room for in our closet.

Coop Home Goods Original pillow: User reviews

• Average of 4.5/5 stars from over 40,000 reviews
• Side and back sleepers find it supportive after adjustments
• Potent offgassing smell prompted some customers to return it

In this Coop Home Goods Original adjustable pillow review, we're sharing the experience of a side sleeper of average build who tends to sleep hot. To provide you with a thorough picture of how well it performs, we've also combed through thousands of customer reviews published on Amazon and Coop Home Goods direct.

At Amazon, the Coop Home Goods Original Pillow is rated 4.5 out of 5 rating from over 43,000 user reviews. Meanwhile, it boasts a 4.7 out of 5 star rating from over 13,000 reviews published on the Coop Home Goods website.

The most positive reviews comes from side and back sleepers, who say the Original provides them with the ideal amount of neck and shoulder support following any required fill adjustments. There's also plenty of praise for the Coop Home Goods customer service, which many customers say is prompt and accommodating even when their adjustable loft pillow didn't work out for them.

The most common criticism is the potent off-gassing smell, which prompted several customers to return their pillow when the scent failed to dissipate. Other critical reviews focused on how the Original retains heat and how its hard to achieve the right loft even after several adjustments.

Should you buy the Coop Home Goods Original Pillow?

For side and back sleepers who want to create their ideal sleeping pillow, the Coop Home Goods Original premium adjustable loft pillow is a great choice. It may take some trial and error before you can achieve the ideal amount of fill for you, but once you find that sweet spot you'll be treated to comfy, relaxed sleep. Just make sure you fluff it each morning.

Aside from the performance of the pillow itself, the Coop Home Goods customer service and care is exceptional. Not only do you get a 5-year limited warranty on the Original Pillow, you can also request a bag of custom fill at no extra cost. 

Off-gassing is one of the most common complaints associated with the Coop Home Goods Original Pillow. If that gives you cause to pause, just remember that off-gassing is a common occurrence with memory foam mattresses and pillows. Read our guide to off-gassing to learn how you can stop the smell.

If you tend to sleep warm, however, the Original may not be the right fit for you as the foam fill tends to retain heat. You could instead pay a little extra for the Coop Home Goods Eden Pillow, priced $79.99 at Amazon, which has a gel-infused foam fill, or pay almost twice as much for the Tempur-Cloud Breeze Cooling Pillow.

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