Free US shipping · 90-night sleep trial · Free returns
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Free US shipping · 90-night sleep trial · Free returns
Why wool
Sleep is mostly a temperature and moisture problem. Wool solved it a few thousand years before foam existed. Here is what the fiber does at night, what it does not do, and how to tell good wool bedding from the rest.
Four properties of the fiber, and why each one matters under a sleeping body.
Each wool fiber is crimped, so a layer of carded wool holds millions of tiny air pockets. Still air is insulation: it slows heat leaving your body in winter and slows heat building up under you in summer. Foam is a solid; it can only store heat and give it back.
Wool takes in water vapor from the air around your skin, up to about 30% of its own weight, without feeling damp, and releases it slowly into the room. The clammy heat of a foam mattress is trapped sweat; wool moves it away before you notice it.
Dense carded wool compresses under your hips and shoulders and pushes back. Pressure spreads across the surface instead of pooling in a dent, and turning over does not mean climbing out of a hollow, the way it does on memory foam.
Wool is naturally resistant to flame, so nothing has to be sprayed on it; it dries out between nights, which dust mites dislike; and it resists odor. Our toppers are wool in an organic cotton shell: no foam, no adhesives, no polyester, nothing to off-gas.
The 30% figure is wool's moisture regain at high humidity, the standard figure used in textile science; cotton manages about 8%, polyester under 1%.
The evidence
People have trusted wool for a good night’s sleep for centuries. Sleep labs have now measured some of the reasons. Here is what they found when they put people to bed in wool, cotton and polyester. Every Woolify topper puts about two inches of merino wool right under your sheet.
Seventeen young adults slept in a sleep lab in wool and in cotton, at 17 °C and at 22 °C, with every night recorded by polysomnography. In wool they fell asleep in 11 minutes on average against 15 in cotton; in the cool room the gap was 10 minutes against 18. The wool duvet on its own did not move the numbers. What sat against the body did.
Thirty-six adults aged 50 to 70 slept at 30 °C in wool, cotton and polyester, without knowing which was which. Across the group wool was the fastest to sleep onset, 16 minutes against 18. For those 65 and over the gap opened to 12 minutes in wool against 22 in polyester and 27 in cotton, and sleep in wool was less fragmented than in polyester.
The closest thing to a topper that has been put through a sleep study: a fleecy wool underlay on the mattress, against standard pads. Sleepers on wool moved significantly less through the night, rated their sleep higher and said they felt better in the morning. It is a forty-year-old study with no modern follow-up, so read it as a hint, not a headline.
When sleep is going well the air inside the bed sits around 32 to 34 °C and 40 to 60% humidity. Push the humidity up and sleep gets lighter: humid heat increases waking and cuts both deep and REM sleep. Warm, dry skin does the opposite; dilated blood vessels in the hands and feet are one of the best predictors of falling asleep quickly (Kräuchi et al., Nature, 1999). Wool holds up to 30% of its weight in water vapor without feeling wet, which is the property the Sydney studies lean on.
Every fill is a trade. This is the honest version of the table, including the rows where wool asks something of you.
Swipe to see the whole table →
| Wool | Memory foam | Latex | Down and feather | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Temperature | Insulates and breathes; cool in summer, warm in winter | Traps body heat | Neutral to warm | Warm; holds moisture |
| Moisture | Absorbs vapor and releases it; stays dry to the touch | Holds sweat at the surface | Does not absorb | Absorbs and stays damp |
| Feel | Dense cushion, no sink; firm mattresses feel softer | Slow sink and contour | Bouncy, springy | Soft; flattens where you lie |
| Materials | Wool and organic cotton; nothing added | Petrochemical foam; off-gassing for days | Natural or synthetic rubber; distinct smell | Animal down; allergen for some |
| Care | Spot clean, air in the sun, fluff | Spot clean only | Spot clean; keep out of sun | Professional cleaning |
| Lifespan | Decades; keeps loft with an occasional fluff | Softens and sags in a few years | Long, but crumbles with age and light | Clumps; needs constant shaking |
After the last night
Americans throw away an estimated 18 to 20 million mattresses a year, and fewer than one in ten is recovered; most are buried or burned. So it is worth asking of any bedding not only how it sleeps, but what it turns into when you are done with it.
Polyurethane, cross-linked so it cannot be melted down and remade. At best it is shredded into carpet underlay; most is buried or burned, and it does not rot.
A plastic that sheds microfibers in every wash; one lab test counted close to half a million from a single load. In seawater it barely breaks down.
A protein, like hair. In a six-month composting test it broke down by half to two-thirds, while polyester, nylon and polypropylene barely changed.
GSM is grams of wool per square meter. 1650 GSM is a dense layer: about 10.5 lb of wool in a Queen topper, 6.5 lb in a Twin XL, 13 lb in a King. Lighter toppers at 400 to 900 GSM feel like a mattress pad; they protect the mattress but do not change how it sleeps.
Two inches is the height after fluffing. It is enough to soften a firm mattress and relieve pressure points; it is not enough to rescue a sagging one, and we would rather say so here than in a return email.
Carded, not batting. The wool is combed into an even layer and quilted into an organic cotton shell so it cannot shift into lumps. The quilting pattern you see is structural.
Five things to check on any wool topper, ours included.
If a listing will not tell you how much wool is in it, that is the answer. Ours: 1650 GSM, 10.5 lb in a Queen.
Blends with polyester lose the moisture behavior that makes wool worth buying. Ours is 100% wool fill.
A polyester shell blocks the breathing you paid for. Ours is organic cotton, quilted through the wool.
“Organic” should come with a certificate you can look up. Ours: OCS 100, the Organic Content Standard, for both the wool and the cotton shell. View the certificate.
Ours is quilted and filled by hand in small batches in Türkiye, with wool from New Zealand's mulesing-free farms.
Our wool
Merino from New Zealand for the toppers and the pillows; washed without harsh chemicals; carded into an even layer or rolled into pearls; hand-filled and quilted in Istanbul; checked and packed by the people who made it.
On shearing
For most of human history, animal skins and wool were what stood between people and harsh weather. Over thousands of years we bred sheep to grow more and more wool, and the merino is the result: its fleece grows all year and no longer sheds. So today, whether we like it or not, a merino has to be shorn to live a healthy life.
That is not a testament to human cruelty. It is a testament to how much we are part of nature and need the animals around us, and it leaves us with a duty to care for them and honor them as best we can. People could not have come this far without the animals we shared our history with. We want to honor the ones that protected us from the harshest of mother nature by giving us their wool.
Wild sheep moult every spring. What sets most domestic breeds apart is a fleece that grows all year and never sheds.
Heat stroke, skin infections, flystrike, trouble walking. Chris, a merino found near Canberra in 2015 after five years unshorn, was carrying 41 kg of fleece.
A skilled shearer takes a few minutes, with calm handling and any nick treated at once. Our wool is from New Zealand, where mulesing is illegal.
If you are in this column, we would rather you knew now. The 90-night trial covers the rest.
More on the FAQ page, or write to hello@woolify.shop.
The wool is inside an organic cotton shell and never touches your skin. Under a fitted sheet you feel cushion, not fiber.
True wool allergy is rare; most reactions people describe are to coarse fibers or to chemicals used in finishing. Ours is organic, carded merino sealed in cotton. If you have reacted to wool before, the 90-night trial is there for exactly this.
A faint natural wool scent for the first week or so, then nothing. It is the smell of wool, not of chemicals, and it fades on its own.
Wool is compressed for shipping. Hand fluffing is a must: knead every quilted square and it reaches its full 2 inches. How full it gets depends on how well it is fluffed.
The topper is spot clean only; air it in the sun a few times a year and use a mattress protector. The pillow’s cotton cover and inner pouch machine wash cold once the wool is taken out; the wool itself is hand wash only.
Shearing is not the cruel part: a merino cannot shed its own fleece and has to be shorn about once a year to stay healthy. Our topper wool comes from New Zealand, where mulesing has been illegal since 2018. Why shearing is care, not cruelty →
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Free US shipping · 90-night sleep trial · Free returns · Handmade in Türkiye
