I made an ultralight pillow!

Why did I do this?

Every pillow on the market has one (or more) of these issues:

1. Too heavy – I could just bring something like the Thermarest Compressible, but that’s a whopping 10 ounces. Plus it doesn’t pack down super well.
2. Too small – I move around a lot, switching back and forth between lying on my side and back before falling asleep, so I need a wide enough pillow. Something like the REI trailmade pillow is just too small for me.
3. Air pillow feels weird – You may have noticed the above two options were both compressible options. That’s because I want my pillow to feel like a pillow. Primarily air based pillows have that resting my head on a balloon feeling. Something like the Nemo Fillo Elite has this issue. And the Nemo Fillo pillow may mitigate that, but at 9 ozs…see issue 1
4. Too thin – Applies for a lot of the pillows. I even feel this way about the Thermarest Compressible. And there’s no good way to augment those pillows by stuffing your extra clothes in them just to thicken the pillow up.
5. Too lumpy – This is a major problem with the ultralight approach of just stuffing a pillowcase with clothes. No matter how you do it, it’s not going to feel like a pillow. I also don’t carry that much extra clothing anyways. I once tried stuffing a Zpacks medium pillow with all my clothes plus a Large Flexair Pillow as the bottom layer to make it thicker, and it just didn’t satisfy me.
6. Uncomfortable pillowcase – I don’t like the synthetic material used on backpacking pillowcases. They tend to make my skin sweat…I understand this is likely a me problem but I prefer natural fibers. For example the fleece of the Zpacks medium pillow was sweat-city for my head.

My approach

I decided to combine the great aspects of all the existing backpacking pillows plus my own personal touches. I also wanted to shoot for a max weight of 5 oz.

Inside the pillowcase I would have three layers (from top to bottom):

1. A thin pillow layer. This is to mitigate the lumpiness issue of the clothing layer underneath. Since this layer is closest the head, it needs to be thick enough to make the “pillow” actually feel like a pillow.
2. A clothing layer. This is to add thickness, and mitigate the issue of the inflatable layer underneath. This also isn’t included in the overall weight of the pillow, since I’d have these clothes with me anyways.
3. An inflatable layer. This is to add thickness.

The nice thing about this approach is layer 2 and 3 can be customized to my comfort levels and to what extra clothing I have on me. Not enough clothing? Inflate the pillow more. Plenty of clothing? Don’t even bother with the inflatable layer.

All these layer would be wrapped in a mulberry silk pillowcase because silk is the best fabric in the world.

The parts

Pillowcase

I found the smallest Silk Pillowcase they sell online. It’s 12″x16″ and only weighs 1 oz! It’s also amazingly comfortable. I use silk pillowcases at home too, so it’s always nice to get that feeling of home when you’re on the trail.

Thin Pillow Layer

This is the only DIY part necessary, and depending on your tastes, it’s not really necessary. Since the pillowcase and the inflatable layer will add up to 2 oz, I had 3 oz left for this layer. FYI you could buy this, which is comfy enough, weighs 5 oz. and call it a day, but that was 2 oz. more than I would like. I also tried some other toddler pillows, and took the filler out to get it to the weight I needed, but I was left with a floppy uncomfortable mess.

So this thin pillow layer really is just two parts: a pillowcase and stuffing. For the stuffing I decided to use this Silk Recycled Filling because silk is the best fabric in the world. It’s expensive and way more filling than I needed, but I used all the extra to make a second all silk filled pillow.

For the pillowcase, I decided to make my own out of Cheese Cloth, which I’m pretty sure is one of the lightest cotton fabrics you can buy. This pillowcase ended up being only half an oz (the lighter this is the more stuffing I can use!). You could sew it together, but I was lazy and used Fabric Glue. I added a horizontal “stitch” in the center of the pillowcase because it would even out the roundness of the inflatable bottom layer to make a relatively flat surface on the top.

Clothing Layer

These are the clothes I don’t wear while sleeping, which if it’s warm enough is all the clothes -wink-wink-. See lighter pack if you’re curious what those are. The Mountain Hardware Airmesh Crew adds some serious juice. If it doesn’t feel too gross, I would even stuff the clothes I wore during hiking in there.

Inflatable Layer

I’m using a Large Flexair Pillow. Flexair pillows are the lightest inflatable pillows you can get. The large one weighs .9 oz (mine actually came out to only .81 oz) and the small only weighs .56 oz. Part of me thinks I should’ve gotten the small since it’s lighter and the large is a bit wider than the pillowcase. Though the benefit of the large is that it makes for an overall flatter sleeping surface and when combined with the upper layers, eliminated any balloon feeling.

You inflate these pillows with a straw. The straw came out on my scale to 0.00 oz, so maybe I should’ve made a pillow out of straws instead.

Conclusion

I’m very happy with how this turned out. I took a nap with it at home and did not feel wanting of my normal pillow. And when weighed, it actually came in a bit below my target weight with a weight of 4.83 oz (maybe I could’ve used more stuffing, damn it!).