What Is a Pillow Sham? Meaning, Sizes, and How to Style Them
A pillow sham is a decorative cover for the pillows that sit on top of a made bed, the ones you take off before you get in. It closes at the back, and the front has a finished edge, usually a flange or a band of color, sometimes quilting. Our decorative shams come in the three sizes you'll see everywhere, Standard, King, and Euro, and the ones from our bedding collections are cut from the same fabric as the sheets, so the bed reads as one complete set.
What Is a Pillow Sham?
A pillow sham is the cover that turns the pillows you don't sleep on into part of the bed's design, and you can tell it from a pillowcase by the back. A pillowcase opens at one end. A sham opens at the back, through overlapping fabric or a hidden zipper, so the front stays smooth and you never see the end of the pillow. The front also carries a finish a pillowcase doesn't have, most often a flange, which is fabric that runs past the seam, or a band of color set in from the edge, or a quilted face. During the day the shams dress the pillows on display, and at night they come off.
"Sham" has meant a trick or a fake since the 1600s, and the pillow sense, a decorative front over the pillow underneath, is recorded from the 1700s.
Pillow Sham vs. Pillowcase vs. Pillow Cover
All three go over a pillow, which is why they get mixed up. A pillowcase goes on the pillow you sleep on, and it opens at one end. A sham is the decorative cover for the pillows you don't sleep on, and it closes at the back with a finished edge. A pillow cover is the protective layer that goes on the pillow under the pillowcase and stays there. We explain that one in our guide to Why You Need Pillow Covers.
| Pillow sham | Pillowcase | Pillow cover | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opening | Back, envelope or hidden zipper | One open end | Fully closed |
| Edge | Flange, band, or quilting | Plain hem, sometimes a border | None |
| Job | Dressing the pillows you display | Covering the pillow you sleep on | Protecting the pillow itself |
| Washing | Machine wash for our sheet-line shams, dry clean for quilted | With the sheets | Per its label |
They also aren't cut the same. Our Standard pillowcase finishes at 21 x 30 inches and our Standard sham at 22 x 32, both for a 20 x 26 pillow.
What Sizes Do Pillow Shams Come In?
Pillow shams come in three sizes, and each one is named for the pillow it holds. A Standard sham fits a 20 x 26 Standard pillow, and ours fits a 20 x 30 Queen pillow too. A King sham fits a 20 x 36 King pillow, and a Euro sham fits a 26 x 26 square. Those pillow dimensions are an industry convention, and the Sleep Foundation lists the same set. People often mix up two numbers here, the pillow size and the sham's own finished size. Our Montecito and Saint Moritz shams finish at least 2 inches bigger than the pillow inside, and that extra room lets the insert fill the sham without pulling at the closure.
| Sham | Finished size | Pillow it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Standard/Queen | 22 x 32 inches | 20 x 26 to 20 x 30 |
| King | 22 x 38 inches | 20 x 36 |
| Euro | 28 x 28 inches | 26 x 26 |
Our quilted shams are listed by the pillow they fit, 20 x 26, 20 x 36, or 26 x 26, and every finished measurement is on our size chart. General pillow sizes are in our guide to Bedding Sizes. We cover the Euro on its own, insert included, in our guide to Euro Shams.
How Many Pillow Shams Do You Need?
Most beds need two shams, one to sit in front of each sleeping pillow. A Twin or Twin XL takes one Standard sham, and a Full or Queen takes two. A King or California King takes two King shams. A King pillow is 36 inches long, so two of them cover 72 inches of a 76-inch King mattress, and on a 72-inch California King they run edge to edge. If you add Euros behind those, the bed width sets the count. Two 26-inch Euros cover 52 inches of a 60-inch Queen, and three cover 78 inches across a 76-inch King, which is why a King almost always gets three.
How you stack all of that is in our guide to Arranging Pillows on a King Bed. The Euros stand against the headboard, the sleeping pillows lean on them, and the shams go in front.
Types of Pillow Shams
Flanged
A flange is fabric that extends past the seam, usually 1 to 3 inches, so the sham looks like a framed pillow. It's the traditional sham finish, and the flange is often plain, sometimes with embroidery or hemstitching.
Banded
A band is a border stitched a little in from the edge, so the color sits inside the seam with no frame sticking out. Our Montecito shams are white 300 thread count long-staple cotton Sateen with a yarn-dyed double band in navy, slate, glacier, and other colors, and they close with an envelope flap on the back.
Piped
Piping is a cord wrapped in fabric and sewn into the seam, so you get a thin line of color right at the edge. Our shams don't use piping, but our Siena sheets do. They're white Percale woven in Italy with a piped border in navy.
Quilted
A quilted sham has a stitched, lightly padded face, and it's made to match a quilted coverlet. Our quilted shams are 300 thread count satin-finish cotton with a 3/4-inch square quilted pattern, crafted in Italy. The color is in the fabric itself, gray and navy among them, and the collection includes Euro shams.
Euro
A Euro sham is named for its size, the 26 x 26 square, and any of the edges above can come on one. Our Euro sham finishes at 28 x 28 inches, and the insert made for it is our Pillow within a Pillow in the Euro size, a European goose down and feather pillow crafted in Italy, with a down outer layer around a feather core.
If you want an all-white bed, our Saint Moritz shams are plain white Sateen in 400 or 700 thread count, which gives you the crisp white hotel bed look.
How to Use Pillow Shams
Start by matching the sham fabric to the sheets. If the bed is in Sateen, use Sateen shams. Our shams come from the same collections as the sheets, so the match is built in, and on a Percale bed plain white shams or quilted shams keep the top of the bed simple.
Once the fabric matches, use the sham sizes to build height. Standard and King shams sit at the height of the sleeping pillows, and Euros stand a full 26 inches tall behind them, which is what gives the bed its height.
Then match the shams to whatever covers the bed. With a duvet, keep the shams in the same fabric as the sheets, so the back row and the cuff of the top sheet match and the duvet sits between them. With a quilted coverlet, use the matching quilted shams, so the coverlet and the back row read as one piece. Our guide to Layering a White Duvet Cover shows the order the layers go in, and our guide to Bedding Color Schemes covers picking the band color.
Then step back to the door. From 6 feet away you'll see whether the shams sit level and the colors read as one bed.
Do You Sleep on a Pillow Sham?
No, a sham comes off at night along with the pillow inside it, and the pillow you sleep on goes in a pillowcase. The reason is the construction, and that's true even when the sham is cut from the same Sateen as the sheets. The closure on the back puts a double layer of fabric and an opening right where your head lands, and a flange or band gives you a seam to roll onto in the night. A pillowcase opens at the end and has neither, so that's the one you sleep on.
How to Wash a Pillow Sham
Our Sateen shams machine wash in cold or warm water. Dry them on a cool setting, take them out right away, and smooth them as you fold. Touch up with an iron if you want. For our quilted shams and the down and feather Euro insert, dry cleaning is recommended.
Pillow Sham FAQs
What is a sham for your bed?
A sham is the decorative cover on the pillows that sit on your bed during the day. It closes at the back, has a finished edge like a flange or a band, and comes off at night, when you sleep on pillows in regular pillowcases.
Are pillow shams necessary?
No, you don't need shams, because they don't do anything for sleep. They're there for how the made bed looks, since two shams hide the sleeping pillows and give the top of the bed a finished edge.
What size sham fits a Queen pillow?
Our Standard/Queen sham fits a Queen pillow. It finishes at 22 x 32 inches and takes anything from a 20 x 26 Standard pillow to a 20 x 30 Queen pillow, so you don't need a separate Queen sham.
Can you use a sham as a pillowcase?
You can, but it's the wrong piece for the job. The closure on the back sits under your head, and the flange or band makes a ridge along the edge. If you like the sham fabric, put a pillowcase from the same collection on the pillow you sleep on.
Start with two shams in your bed's pillow size, from the same collection as your sheets, and add Euros if the headboard has the height. Ours are in the decorative shams collection in Standard, King, and Euro.
