Pillow with Ear Hole Review: Solving Side Sleeping Ear Pain

My journey to find the best pillow for side sleepers with ear pain started because of a snoring problem. My wife has sleep apnea and snores loudly. We tried a new motorized bed so she could lift up, but that didn’t help at all. The feet started flying off the belt at the bottom of the bed, and she never picked them up. She wasn’t happy when she woke up.

First Attempt: Earplugs and the Ear Pain Problem

I first tried Max Ultra Soft earplugs. They’re great at blocking noise—very, very good. Too good, actually. I couldn’t hear anything when I had these on, including my alarm or fire alarm. Plus, they made my ears really sore. Not just the one I lay on the side, which was extremely sore, but also the other one after leaving them in all night long.

I decided to do something about the side that was on the pillow. I started looking around and found out there are at least two pillows with ear cutouts, so you wouldn’t have the pressure on the ear. There’s the Lumpy (W-O-M-F-Y) and Pure Comfort. I believe W1P was first. The Pure Comfort had Amazon Prime and was less money, so I got that one first.

The Game Changer: Bose Sleepbuds

Before these pillows even arrived, I’d also ordered something called the Bose Sleepbuds, which I highly recommend. These little sleep buds are like a little white noise machine that goes into your ear and stays there all night. They work for nine hours before the battery runs out. Ten different sounds are all built in. I use one called Warm Static. It’s a low-pitched white noise type of sound that just blocks out everything.

They performed really well. This moved me back into the master bedroom. It had gotten so bad that I had moved into the guest room. Once I was ready to go to sleep, I just couldn’t get any sleep. But these solved that problem.

Even though they’re really small and disappear in your ear, the middle part is hard plastic. Laying on my side on the firm pillow like I do, there was still a lot of pain by morning. When these pillows with ear cutouts for side sleepers came in, they worked very well with the sleepbuds.

Comparing Two Pillows with Ear Holes

If you are a side sleeper, you can also buy a piercing pillow to solve this problem.

Pure Comfort Pillow Review

The Pure Comfort has much bigger ear holes. Your ear is supported all the way around, but there’s no pressure at all on your ear. This would have been great even before I started using the sleepbuds. One of the problems with me keeping her up was I sleep on my side.

I sleep on a firm pillow so my neck doesn’t hurt and to keep my spine in a neutral position. I would flip over every 20-30 minutes because my ear would start hurting from pressing on the pillow.

That doesn’t happen with these pillows. You don’t have as much pressure on your ear, so you don’t turn over as much. I’ll go half the night, sometimes the whole night, just on one side.

The Pure Comfort pillow has professional construction. The pillowcase has a zipper. The riser that comes with it looks well-made. It’s thick spongy material with a very well-sewn seam all the way around it. It comes with two spacers so you can adjust the size to whatever you need.

Lumpy Pillow with Ear Hole Review

The difference between the two: Pure Comfort has huge ear holes, while the Lumpy’s are not so much. The Lumpy’s ear hole is about an inch and a half across, maybe three inches tall. The material around it isn’t all that stretchy.

It didn’t work for me using the sleepbuds. It still put pressure on them. My ear had to be positioned so exactly to not put pressure on it, and then it would hurt the rest of the ear.

Between the two, the Lumpy is more like a homegrown type thing. It almost looks like it was made in a garage. I know it probably wasn’t, but if you flip it over, the pillowcase just goes on like a sleeve versus the zipper on the Pure Comfort.

The riser that comes with the Lumpy looks to me almost like it was cut out with a pair of scissors. It’s just a piece of sponge, and you only get one. You have to decide what size you want before you order it. There’s a one-inch and a 1.35-inch, I believe. There’s only one included.

One thing I do like better about the Lumpy is it’s a little firmer. The Pure Comfort is firm enough to keep your head in the right position, but the top layer is very soft. Whenever I lay down with my ear here and my nose here, it curls up and tends to block my air passage a little bit. I mean, you can move around on it and adjust because you have a lot more play area with your ear. But I’ll probably end up shaving some of that off myself with a pair of scissors just to make it easier to sleep on.

The Lumpy is firmer, and when you lay on it, it doesn’t curl much into your face. But even with the sleepbuds positioned here, this pillow didn’t work for me.

The Cooling Layer Feature

One reason I was interested in the Lumpy was it had a cool layer—a blue cool foam layer on the top. But it made no difference at all. It’s blue, but I still would get just as hot throughout the night.

Height and Adjustability Comparison

The pillows are approximately the same height at the moment. I have one less riser than I could put in the Pure Comfort to make it a little bit taller. Now that it has compressed down a little bit, you can tell I was sleeping more on this one than the Lumpy.

Return Policy Differences

With the Lumpy, if you aren’t happy, there’s less of a return policy. If you bought it directly from the individual, you get a discounted rate back. You don’t get the whole amount back, and you don’t get shipping back.

The Lumpy seller was saying he couldn’t resell returned pillows. He has to donate them, and it costs him a lot of money to make these. He broke it down on his website and Facebook page about how much everything costs him. He offered me an even more discounted rate to keep the pillow and make this video. I may end up experimenting with it and cutting out the holes a little bigger to see if that works. But as of right now, I don’t use this one at all.

Compared to My Old Contour Pillow

The pillow I used to use was a contour pillow. It’s the kind where you use either side. Usually people use this side with your neck here and the back of your head here if you sleep on your back, which I don’t. So I always flipped it over this way and put my head here, my neck here, with my body going this way.

I thought I would see if the ear holes worked on this pillow. I started carving one out just experimenting. But so far, I’ve gotten used to the ear hole pillows being higher up. This contour pillow feels too low down now.

Final Recommendation

For anyone dealing with side sleeping ear pressure solutions, the Pure Comfort pillow with ear cutout for side sleepers is my clear recommendation. The larger ear holes, better construction, professional design, adjustable height with two spacers, and excellent return policy make it the better choice. When combined with Bose Sleepbuds, it completely solved my ear pain problem and allowed me to sleep through the night on one side without constantly flipping over.