The Brick Pillows: What You Get and What You Miss

The Brick is where a lot of Canadians buy their first adult pillow. You walk in for a couch, pass the bedding section, grab a pillow off the shelf, and figure it is good enough. For some people, good enough is genuinely enough. The Brick carries recognisable brands like Serta, Beautyrest, and their own house labels at prices that range from $20 to $120. The selection covers the basics: memory foam, down alternative, cooling gel, and standard polyester fill. What The Brick does not offer, and cannot offer given its business model, is the kind of pillow fitting that matches your specific neck curve, shoulder width, and sleep position to the right product.

What The Brick Carries

The Brick's pillow inventory rotates seasonally, but the core lineup includes several categories. Serta and Beautyrest branded memory foam pillows sit in the $50-$120 range and are manufactured by Innocor (Serta's pillow division). These are legitimate products with CertiPUR-US certified foam and reasonable construction. A Serta/Innocor pillow from The Brick is the same product you would find on Amazon or at Costco, sometimes at a slightly higher price because The Brick's overhead is higher than online-only or warehouse retailers.

Their house-brand and white-label pillows fill the $20-$50 range. These use standard polyester fill or lower-density memory foam with basic cotton-polyester covers. They serve the replacement market, people who need a new pillow now and do not want to spend time researching options. The foam in budget pillows compresses faster than premium alternatives, typically losing 30-50% of its loft within six to twelve months of nightly use. This does not make them bad. It makes them disposable. If you accept that a $25 pillow is a one-year product, the value proposition works fine.

Cooling gel pillows and specialty options appear in The Brick's online catalogue more frequently than in-store. The online selection is broader, but you lose even the limited ability to squeeze a packaged pillow in the aisle. Buying a pillow online from any retailer, The Brick included, is a gamble on comfort that the return policy either absorbs or you do.

The Fitting Problem

Pillows are not one-size-fits-all. A side sleeper with broad shoulders needs a high-loft pillow (5-7 inches) to keep their spine aligned. A back sleeper with a narrow frame needs a medium-loft pillow (3-5 inches). A stomach sleeper needs almost no loft at all (2-3 inches or less). Getting this wrong does not cause immediate pain, but over weeks and months, a pillow that positions your head too high or too low creates chronic neck tension, morning headaches, and shoulder stiffness that people often attribute to their mattress rather than their pillow.

At The Brick, you pick a pillow off a shelf. There is no fitting process, no testing surface, and typically no staff member trained in pillow selection beyond general product knowledge. This is not a criticism specific to The Brick. It is the inherent limitation of any big-box furniture retailer where pillows are an accessory line, not a core business. The staff sells couches, dining sets, and mattresses. Pillows are an afterthought display near the checkout.

It is difficult to say how many Canadians are sleeping on the wrong pillow loft because they grabbed the first comfortable-looking option at a furniture store. The number is probably significant. Brad has been fitting pillows to sleepers for 38 years and estimates that at least half the customers who come into our showroom with neck complaints are using a pillow that does not match their sleep position.

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