The Science behind your Pillow as a Toilet Seat

We know you wouldn’t intentionally sleep on a toilet seat, but a 2015 study from North Carolina State University found that you already do. As a part of their Wild Life of Our Homes project, Professor Rob Dunn and his team swabbed thousands of American homes for microbe sampling. I.E. Thousands of people sent these science guys the germs from their toilets, beds, refrigerators, couches, door handles, and more.

Diagram visualizing the nine surfaces tested during this study. Image courtesy of Rob Dunn Lab. Designed by Neil McCroy 

But one of the most shocking findings? "There is so much overlap between the bacterial strains [found on the toilet seat and pillowcase] that it can be difficult to tell where a particular sample came from,” the project’s public science director Holly Menninger reveals. In layman’s terms: your current pillowcase is bacterially indistinguishable from a toilet seat.   

Presumably because of a pillowcase’s proximity to your mouth, and the obvious relationship between your toilet seat and gut bacteria, both places suffer from what scientists might term fecal contamination.

And what does that mean? That your 8-hours of beauty sleep actually means a VIP poo-teria party turning up in your pores. Now we’ve solved the mystery of why mysterious zits pop up come morning time. Not to toot our own horn, but maybe you should consider switching to that NIGHT game.  

And how does a NIGHT pillow work to stop the spread of bacteria? Just like you can't eat memory foam, bacteria can't either. Our unique air-light memory foam isn't a food source for icky creatures, so they can't survive on the surface. And the lush silk pillowcase? Silk is naturally hypo-allergenic, meaning that it won't propagate the multiplication of harmful microbes. That's science.  

It is time to clean up your beauty game. 

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