Poll: Americans have poor pillow maintenance

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 5/6/2004 12:00:00 AM

RICHMOND, Va. — A just-released Roper poll, sponsored by the Carpenter Company, shows that while 70 percent of American adults say a comfortable pillow is "very important" to a good night's sleep, most Americans are probably sleeping on a pillow that is old, needs to be washed and is therefore not nearly as clean and comfortable as it could be.

The poll reveals that the average American's pillow is more than two years old and washed less than once a month. People age 65 and over are likely to have the oldest pillows at nearly three years old. Nearly one in three Americans (30 percent) do not replace their pillows sooner than every three years. Women (73 percent) and people age 35 to 49 (82 percent) rated pillow comfort very important, but were also the groups most likely to wait more than a month to wash their pillow.

For the poll, Roper interviewed by telephone a nationally representative sample of 1,016 Americans ages 18 or older, between March 12 and 14. To ensure a reliable and accurate representation of the total national adult population, completed interviews were weighted slightly to Census norms for age, gender, geographic region, race, and education norms. The margin of error for the total sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points.