When DS was a teenager and had a bad acne problem he was told to change his pillowcase daily. I went out and bought about a dozen since I didn’t want to be doing laundry every few days. Even the cheap pillowcases at places like Target sure seem expensive for a simple rectangle of cotton with some simple straight seams.
What about HomeGoods, Marshall, Ross? Waiting for the white sales is probably best, January is the usual month. I think you could find closeouts online.
I agree, pillowcases are wildly expensive relative to sheets. Probably some of that is because people want pillowcases that match their sheets and so will pay to get them. I make my own pillowcases but that’s expensive too. Good fabric is at least $8 a yard and usually more.
But washcloths are much more unreasonably priced relative to much huger towels. It has always bugged me.
Because people will pay so much?
People will pay so much for an item which is needed, for which there is no manufactured alternative, and for which they have neither the time nor inclination to create themselves.
In both cases, however, there’s an aesthetic factor. Linens, particularly bed linens, are no longer merely utilitarian items best hidden beneath “bedspreads,” as in days of yore. Now you flaunt your linens – or so it’s assumed, based on store and catalog displays. Thus, even though for practical purposes one needs only three seams and a finishing hem for a case, no respectable, upper-middle-class consumer would “flaunt” a plain, 3-seamed case. Must have visible hem, preferably wide, preferably classy/decorative.
To a lesser degree the same could be said for washcloths, I suppose, but washcloths tend to lose their display quality once wet, and the bathroom is not yet seen as uniformly a room to show off as apparently the bedroom is. (All kinds of Freudian implications there.) 
Do you have a Target Redcard??
If so, you might want to order these…
not only would you get the 5% extra discount with the redcard, but you’d also get another 10% off with the code “Grad”…and free shipping.
So…2 pillowcases for $10 minus the discounts.
I just wanted to by utilitarian, no-frill pillow cases for a teenage boy to change every day. I wasn’t worried about matching nice sheets. I actually wanted white to eliminate potential issues with dyes also. They just seem so over priced for the simple, small, easy to engineer thing that they are. If you don’t want to feel like you are resting your face on sandpaper, you must spend $$.
I agree with the washcloth issue too!
If you have a sewing machine, no frills pillowcases are very easy to make; you can get several out of a king sized flat sheet.
How much do you want to spend per case?
Don’t need to buy them now. I bought them a number of years ago when DS had the acne problem. I was folding laundry this morning and it started to bug me. It’s a question I have long had. It just really got to me today and I wondered if anyone else found pillowcases out of whack price-wise.
Ross - still a set of pillow cases requires more seams than a flat sheet which = time = labor costs
We get pairs of pillowcases for $6 at an odd lots store. I stock up on dark colors that match my sheets. I don’t think $3 each is a huge amount.
You beat me to it, saintfan. Amount of fabric isn’t the only factor in the cost.
TJMaxx has discontinued styles at good prices.
Pillow cases aren’t expensive because of labor (I’ve made pillowcases, and the amt of labor to sew 3 straight, not-so-lengthy seams is trivial).
Pillow cases are expensive because that’s what the market will bear. Few consumers are willing to forgo the pillowcases when they are buying the other sheets.
It’s like airline tickets. The seller will set the price as high as the market will bear.
I was at my favorite odd lots store yesterday. They had very nice pillowcases 2/$5. I don’t consider that expensive…at…at.
How much are you spending on pillowcases?
^which odd lots store?
At Target the cheapos were in the $8-12 per pair. To get better ones (more thread count, better material, etc), they were over $25 per pair, even at stores like BBB. I agree that it is a “what the market will bear” issue. There are a lot of products like that. A pillowcase is such a simple item i just find it hard to accept.
If it’s for having clean new cloth against your skin every night, a cheap no-sew solution would be to get a pack of mens white crew undershirts on sale and use them as pillow cases.