Most pillows arrive with too much fill in them. That is not a quality problem. It is a sales floor decision: a pillow that feels substantial when you squeeze it in a shop (or prod it through packaging) reads as premium, and manufacturers know this. What they rarely tell you is that the fill level is a starting point, not the finished product.
If your pillow feels too high, too firm, or pushes your head at an angle, the answer is probably inside the zip. Two minutes of adjustment can do more for how your neck feels in the morning than any change in sleeping position you have been half-heartedly attempting for years.
Here is how to do it properly.
Step 1: Find the opening
Look for a zip running along one of the shorter edges of the pillow, or occasionally along the side. On Martian Dreams pillows, including the Velistra and LunaCore Hybrid, the inner fill compartment has its own zip, which is separate from the outer protector cover.
Unzip the outer cover first if there is one, then locate the inner zip. Keep both open and accessible because you will be going back in.
Step 2: Remove fill in small amounts, not all at once
This is where most people go wrong when they do try this. They pull out a large handful, test it, decide it is now too flat, and either stuff everything back in or lose half of it behind the bed.
Take out a small amount. Maybe a cupped handful if the fill is microfibre, or a few loosely packed pieces if it is shredded memory foam. Set it aside in a bowl or a resealable bag rather than on the duvet where it will migrate immediately. Then zip the pillow closed before you test it.
Step 3: Test by lying down, not by pressing with your hand
Pressing a pillow with your palm tells you almost nothing useful. The load a hand exerts is nothing like the weight and angle of your head over several hours. Put the pillow on the bed, lie in your actual sleeping position, and hold it there for thirty seconds.
Notice whether your neck is neutral (roughly level with your spine, not tilted up or dropped down), whether the pillow feels like it is actively pushing against your head, and whether your shoulder is comfortable if you are a side sleeper. Those are the three things that matter. Everything else is preference.
If the loft is still too high, remove another small amount and repeat. Do not rush this. Three or four iterations is normal.
What loft each sleeping position actually needs
The right fill level is not universal. It depends entirely on how you sleep, and the gap your pillow needs to fill is physically different for each position.
Front sleepers
Front sleepers need the least loft of anyone. When you sleep face down, even a moderately thick pillow will tilt your head back and rotate it to one side for hours at a stretch. Most front sleepers do better with a pillow that has been reduced to roughly half its original volume, sometimes less. If you are a committed front sleeper and your current pillow is still causing neck stiffness after adjustment, the CoolBreeze is worth considering as the entry-level option in the Martian Dreams range: it starts lower.
Back sleepers
Back sleepers need moderate, consistent support across the cervical curve. This is less about height and more about the fill distributing evenly so the hollow of your neck is supported rather than bridged over or left unsupported. Shredded and blended fills, like the microfibre in the Velistra or the gel memory foam blend in the LunaCore Hybrid, tend to do this better than a single solid piece of foam, because the fill moves with you rather than holding a fixed shape. Remove enough fill so the pillow does not push your chin toward your chest, but stop before it goes so flat that your head drops below your shoulders.
Side sleepers
Side sleepers need the most loft. The job of the pillow here is to bridge the gap between the mattress and the side of your head, spanning the width of your shoulder. That distance varies quite a bit depending on build and mattress firmness, which is why a single-height pillow is genuinely not enough for most side sleepers. The StarFirm in the Martian Dreams range is built specifically for this position, with shredded memory foam that holds its shape under sustained lateral pressure rather than compressing over the course of the night. For side sleepers adjusting a different pillow, err on the side of more fill rather than less, and check that your ear is not being pushed downward toward your shoulder. That tilt is the thing you are solving for.
One thing worth knowing: if you share a bed and your partner recently joined or left it, your mattress may have changed its firmness profile slightly from the weight redistribution. That alone can make a previously comfortable pillow feel wrong, so adjusting fill after a change in sleeping arrangements is a reasonable response rather than an overcautious one.
What to do with the fill you remove
Do not throw it away. The amount you remove may feel trivial, but if you switch mattresses, change sleeping position, or simply find after a few nights that you have taken out too much, you will want it back.
A resealable plastic bag works well for microfibre fill. For shredded memory foam, a zip-lock bag of a reasonable size is better because the pieces do not compress as readily and you will want to store them without flattening them into a brick. Label the bag if you keep more than one pillow in the house, because microfibre and memory foam from different pillows are not interchangeable.
Store the bag somewhere dry and away from direct heat. Airing cupboards are fine for microfibre, though sustained heat over time does affect memory foam, so a drawer or a shelf is safer for that.
How to reintroduce fill if you have gone too far
Open the inner zip, add back a small amount of fill, redistribute it by kneading the pillow briefly, close the zip, and test again in position. The same principle applies in reverse: small adjustments, then a proper lying test. The temptation is to add back everything at once. Resist it.
The adjustment is not permanent
Pillow loft preferences shift. A new mattress changes the equation significantly, because a firmer mattress reduces the shoulder-to-head gap for side sleepers, and a softer one increases it. If you have recently changed mattress and your pillow now feels wrong, the fill is the first thing to revisit before buying a new pillow.
Sleeping positions also drift over time. Many people who think of themselves as side sleepers spend a portion of the night on their back and have never noticed. If you are waking with neck stiffness despite an apparently well-adjusted pillow, it is worth paying attention for a few nights to which position you actually wake up in, which is not always the one you fell asleep in.
The adjustment is also not a one-off task. Pillow fill compresses over time, particularly microfibre, and the loft you set six months ago may need revisiting. This is probably the most useful thirty seconds of pillow maintenance most people have never considered, and it costs nothing except a resealable bag and a few minutes of lying down.
If your current pillow does not have a removable fill, every pillow in the Martian Dreams range does.
