Cotton Pillows can have you waking up with lines that appear etched onto your face come sunrise. And while we hate to break it to you, those marks could be sabotaging your skin’s health. Yes, over time, the folds on your pillowcase can cause wrinkles due to dryness and irritation during even the most restful sleep.

But there's one product that's fairly inexpensive and easy to implement that promises to make you look and feel younger. We're talking, of course, about the humble anti-aging pillow. There are many solutions on the market, from silk to ionized technologies, so we’ve gone ahead and rounded up the best anti-aging pillows and pillowcases to help keep your skin looking young.

The answer to this question lies in understanding the two basic types of aging. 

There is intrinsic aging which is what happens internally to your skin. For example, your skin stops producing enough fresh collagen so you get some collapse of skin structure, gravity pulls skin structures down creating a more saggy look, your skin loses some of its natural ability to hold onto moisture so it looks drier and so on. These are things that happen internally as a function of aging and there’s not a whole lot you can do about them.

Then there are the extrinsic factors – things that are done to your skin from the outside like environmental effects. Sun exposure is the big one of course. In fact studies show that photo damage is the single biggest contributor to extrinsic aging of skin. After the sun, smoking is noted to have a major impact on the youthful appearance of skin.

Beyond that there are a number of lesser factors that apparently contribute to skin aging. Sleep is one of them. Regardless of what you sleep on, the quantity and quality of your sleep is important. Not getting enough rest contributes to dark under eye circles and just in general an overall dull complexion. So get plenty of sleep, that sort of goes without saying. But what about this idea that WHAT you sleep on can make a difference? Is there any merit to this idea?

So the first question we should ask is there a mechanism by which sleep could cause wrinkles? 

For the most part the primary cause of wrinkles is a collapse of the underlying supportive tissue like collagen and elastin. Muscle tension is another contributing factor. But another well-recognized cause of wrinkles is creasing. That means if you were to form a fold in the skin of your face at the same spot repeatedly over long periods of time that action will lead to a wrinkle or a crease in the skin. The best known examples of that are the lines of facial expression, those are the lines where wrinkles in your skin are formed by smiling crinkling up your nose or for wearing your brow. And that brings us to the question of creases being formed on your face as a result of laying on your pillow. 

The mechanisms of sleep wrinkles: Compression and Shear - You have to look at the two factors that contribute to facial creasing which are compression and shear.

Compression as the name suggests is the force of the pillow or whatever you’re sleeping on pushing up against your face.

Compression will occur solely as a function of how much force is being applied to your face as you sleep. To some extent the softness of the pillow may reduce that pressure but the material of the pillowcase is immaterial for this factor. A firm pillow with a silk pillowcase will exert just as much compression on your face as the same pillow in a triton pillowcase. 

Sheer, on the other hand, is a function of the material of the pillowcase.

Silk would cause less of a shearing force because it’s a more slippery fabric than cotton. It’s not that really really that big of a deal though because sharing has less of an impact on wrinkles than compression.

In addition to compression and shear, I found another interesting mechanism because it explains how your skin releases water during sleep that’s absorbed by the pillow case (both cotton and silk according to this author) and the result is that skin is “stuck” to the pillow case as these are the microscopic points. Then, as you toss and turn, the force of breaking these adhesion points stresses the skin and causes it to release collagenase, an enzyme that breaks down collagen. Of course, less collagen means more wrinkles. I don’t know if this is completely accurate but it’s an interesting twist on the mechanism.

Some people are side sleepers; others are stomach sleepers. If you consistently sleep on the side of your face, you may see lines develop from the pressure. You don’t necessarily want to add preventable, pillow-inflicted lines from my own smooshing into the mix.

So, I tried it, over the last couple of months (Covid-19 has made it easier to keep track):

  • My nostrils are no longer congested, so I breathe easier and snore less.
  • I've also noticed that some of the acne around my cheeks and chin has cleared up.
  • The oils on your face transfer to your pillowcase while you are sleeping, so reduced oil and residue build up over time and clog your pores.