Buckwheat Hull Night Pillow

Complete Support for Head and Neck

Our organic buckwheat hull pillows offer complete support for head and neck; they will soothe muscle tensions, offer relief from shoulder/neck tightness, and help prevent headaches. The buckwheat hull filling will adjust itself to the individual form and weight of your head to provide important spinal alignment.


The buckwheat hull filling traps air and when you move in your sleep the hulls shift and blow this air through the pillow. This constant ventilation keeps hull pillows fluffy and fresh. Buckwheat hull pillows are temperate, which means they do not take on heat or cold during hot or cold nights.

Advantages over Traditional Pillows

Hull pillows have a distinct advantage over traditional pillows in the way they support your head and neck during the night: The weight of your head cannot squeeze the air out of a hull pillow and this way the height of the pillow remains unchanged.

Traditional pillows (such as down, cotton, and fiber fill) collapse under the weight of your head and you have to re-fluff them or double them over during the night and you always awaken to a flatter pillow in the morning. This leads to a strain in your neck and shoulder muscles which have to continually compensate for this change in pillow height. Enter buckwheat hull and millet hull pillows: Same height. All night! Your neck muscles are relaxed and you will not wake up with a stiff neck or tension-related headaches.

Advantages over Pre-shaped Foam Pillows

Pre-shaped foam pillows (such as the Tempur Pedic memory pillows) are wonderful in the way in which they retain their height. What causes many customers to switch away from memory pillows is the limited availability of pillow heights, meaning you are expected to sleep on a pre-cut pillow whether it suits your physique or not. Unless the foam pillow has the exact measurements that fit your shoulder width and neckline, you will sleep on a pillow that is either a little too high or a little too low for your individual needs. This is when neck stiffness kicks in. Our buckwheat hull and millet hull pillows are zippered and by adding and removing hulls you are able to customize your pillow’s height to your individual needs. You have the great opportunity to sleep on a pillow that is made for YOU! By adjusting the height of your pillow to your shoulder width and neck line, you create the perfect resting place for your head and neck. How to properly adjust: Lie on your side, head resting on your hull pillow (shoulder touching the pillow but not on top of it) with your neck in a neutral position, rather than with an upward or downward curve; you add /remove hulls through the zipper until you have accomplished this neutral position.

Elastic Hulls – so Important!

In the old days, people in Japan and China had custom head rests made out of wood and stone. This may not appeal to us today yet it is this height-retaining system of neck support that led to the use of buckwheat hull pillows in Asia and the Middle East (and spelt & millet hull pillows in Europe). Buckwheat hull and millet hull pillows are not soft and cuddly, but they are elastic and this makes them firm rather than hard.

Each tiny hull is elastic! Interestingly, it is the firm feel of hull pillows that makes them immediately attractive to most first-time users. Today’s life is busy and often stressful, and we are all in dire need of a pillow that takes care of our strained shoulder muscles, our stress & tension headaches, in short a pillow that prevents yet another restless night and tired morning. Buckwheat hull and millet hull pillows will provide you with restful and deep sleep that will last all night long!

Why Martha Stewart Loves Buckwheat Hull Pillows

Martha Stewart presented traditional pillow fillings in one of her Homekeeping shows and did (as she always has) a beautiful job with it. You will realize how the topic of allergies and collapsing (and hence non-supportive) fillings comes up and again and again.

Open Martha Stewart's video about fillings in a new window.

Martha Stewart is, in fact, an adamant fan and convinced user of buckwheat hull pillows which she first learned about during a trip to Japan. She dedicated one of her shows to the use of buckwheat hull pillows. And while it may not be everyone’s cup of tea to sew one’s own pillow, you can skip through the sewing part and see her fill the pillow with fresh, crisp buckwheat hulls toward the end of the segment. If you decide to make your own pillow, please make sure to include a zipper, the single most important aspect of any hull pillow.

Click to open a new window to hear Martha Stewart speak about the benefits of buckwheat hull pillows.

Our Quality Promise Matters!

All of our Night Pillows are made with unbleached 100% cotton with double seams to counter the weight of the hull filling and to prevent wear-out. While millet hulls feel velvety and smooth, buckwheat hulls are a bit coarse. Our cotton fabric is soft yet thick enough to prevent you from feeling the buckwheat hull edges. Choose from our five different sizes the one that will suit you best.