HOMBYS Lumbar Pillow vs a Regular Throw Pillow

On a July afternoon I was sitting in my lift chair by the front window with the Gaston Gazette open on my tablet, and I caught myself reaching behind me for the fourth time in an hour to drag a couch pillow back up into the small of my back. I bought the MCombo power lift recliner in February. It does what I need it to do, which is lift me to standing, and I am not sorry about it for a minute. But when it is upright, which is how I read and work the crossword, the backrest does not meet my back. There is a gap. For a few weeks a throw pillow off the couch was my answer, and a poor answer it was. It went flat the moment I leaned on it. In July I ordered the HOMBYS lumbar support pillow, and I have used it every single day since.

Here is the short version, because I know not everybody wants a long one. For sitting upright in a recliner, the HOMBYS wins and it is not close. It holds its thickness where the chair does not, and it covers the whole small of my back instead of half of it. For napping, the throw pillow wins, because I have to take the shaped one out and set it on the couch before I lean back, and the throw pillow is softer anyway. And the throw pillow was already in the house. So the honest answer is that these two are not really competing for the same job. One is for the hours you spend upright. The other is for leaning back and for propping up an elbow.

The Two Pillows, Side by Side

To be fair to both of them, here is exactly what I am comparing. The HOMBYS is a rectangular memory foam cushion, 20 inches long by 14 inches wide, 5 inches thick at its deepest point, with a cover that comes off and goes in the washing machine. It is shaped for a recliner. The other one is a throw pillow from my own couch, the kind that comes with a sofa, no tag worth reading, filled with something loose that shifts to whichever end you are not leaning on. I am not a nurse or a physical therapist and I am not going to pretend to be one. I am a 72 year old woman in Gastonia who reads the tag on everything and measured her chair twice before she ordered.

	HOMBYS Lumbar Support Pillow	A Regular Throw Pillow
What it is	A rectangular memory foam cushion, 20 inches long by 14 inches wide and 5 inches thick	A soft couch pillow with no set shape
Fit at the small of your back	The 5 inch thickness fills the gap the recliner back leaves	Squashes flat the moment you lean on it
Width across your back	20 inches of coverage from one side of my lower back to the other	Whatever is left after the filling shifts to one end
Fill and shape	Memory foam that returns to its own shape when I stand up	Loose filling that lumps and stays lumped
Cleaning	Cover comes off and goes in the machine	Whole pillow or spot clean, and it is never quite the same after
Staying where you put it	Slides down when I stand, so I push it back in when I sit	Also ends up on the floor, and flat when it gets there
Napping and reclining	I take it out and set it on the couch before I lean back	Soft under an elbow or behind a head, no need to move it
Getting one	Order it and wait for the box on the porch	It was already on my couch
Fabric	100 percent polyester cover	Whatever the pillow came with

Where HOMBYS Wins

The thickness is the whole thing. Five inches of memory foam does not go anywhere when a grown woman leans on it. The first afternoon I put it behind me I read for a solid hour and never once reached back. That had not happened in weeks. A throw pillow has no such intention. It has no shape of its own to keep, so it takes the shape of whatever is pressing into it, and then it stays that way. By the time I finished a chapter it was a wad behind my shoulder blade and the gap at my back was wide open again. The shaped cushion also spans 20 inches across, so it covers from one side of my lower back to the other. When I lean a little to one side to reach my coffee, I am still on the cushion.

The fill is the second thing. Memory foam comes back to its own shape when I get up. Four months of daily use and it still stands upright on the seat by itself when I climb out of the chair, which is more than I can say for anything else in that corner of the room. The cover is the third. It comes off and goes in the machine, and I wash it about once a month on a gentle cycle and let it air dry over the back of a kitchen chair. A couch pillow that has absorbed four months of an older woman's afternoons does not wash up nearly so well. It comes out of the machine in lumps. I know, because I tried it once with the throw pillow and then put it back on the couch where it belonged.

Where a Regular Throw Pillow Wins

The throw pillow wins the nap, and it is not close either. Every afternoon I lean the chair back for twenty minutes, and the shaped cushion has to come out first. It is not built for leaning back. It is built for sitting up, and behind my shoulders in a reclined chair it pushes my head forward. So out it comes, onto the couch, and back in it goes when I sit up again. The throw pillow does not have that problem. It is soft, it goes wherever I put it, and I can tuck it under an elbow or behind my head with the footrest up. If I only ever used that chair to nap, I would not have bought the HOMBYS at all.

The other thing the throw pillow has going for it is that it was already in the house. Nobody had to order it, nobody had to wait for a box, and if it turned out to be the wrong thing I had lost nothing but the walk back to the couch. There is also something to be said for a pillow you can fluff with two hands and toss in a corner. No cover to wash, no position to hold, no setting it aside before I lean back. It never asks anything of you.

How I Ended Up Comparing Them

I did not set out to compare anything. In June I was using the throw pillow and telling myself it was fine, the way you do. What changed was that Karen, my daughter, came by on a Saturday and watched me haul that pillow back up behind me three times while we talked at the kitchen table about her week. She did not say a word, which is how she says things. So that week I sat in the chair with a tape measure and measured from the seat back to where my back actually lands. Then I read a great many listings, and most of them were either too long or looked like a bolster for a couch. The HOMBYS was the one that listed its size plainly, 20 inches by 14 inches by 5 inches, so I knew what was coming in the box.

It arrived in a box Karen carried in from the porch. I set it in the chair, sat down, and knew inside a minute. It sat in the small of my back the way the throw pillow never did. I want to be honest about the fit, though. It is not a custom cushion and it does not turn the recliner into a different chair. It fills a gap. That is the whole of what it does, and it does it well enough that I stopped thinking about the gap, which is the most you can ask of a pillow. Give yourself a few days with it, because I sat too far forward the first week and it slid out from under me until I learned to sit back against it.

Five inches of memory foam does not move when a grown woman leans on it. The couch pillow went flat before I finished a chapter.

Four Months In: What Held Up and What Annoyed Me

The foam has held, and that is the thing I wondered about more than anything else, because I have owned pillows that were wonderful in July and useless by Thanksgiving. This one still stands up on its own on the seat when I get out of the chair, and it still fills the gap when I sit back down. The cover has been through the wash four times now and still fits the way it did the first time. The tag says machine wash and that is exactly what I have done with it, nothing clever.

Here is what annoys me, and it is one thing. The cushion slides down. When I stand up out of the chair it drops a few inches, and I have to push it back into the small of my back when I sit down again. I have done it so many times now that my hand does it before I think about it, the way you straighten a picture frame when you walk past it. It is not a deal breaker and I have not tried to fix it. But if you are the kind of person who wants a thing to stay exactly where you put it, know that this one does not.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the HOMBYS if the back of your recliner leaves a gap when you sit upright, and if you spend your afternoons reading, watching television or eating in that chair rather than sleeping in it. Buy it if a couch pillow has already failed you. It is also the better choice if you want something you can wash, because in a chair that gets three or four hours a day, that matters more than it sounds. Stay with a regular throw pillow if you only use the chair with the footrest up, if you are mostly napping, or if you would rather not add one more thing to move out of the way every afternoon. And measure your chair back before you order anything. Sit in it, reach behind you, and see where the gap actually is.

I would also say this, and I mean it sincerely. If your back bothers you enough that you are shopping for a cushion, have a conversation with your doctor or with a physical or occupational therapist about what you are sitting in and how you get out of it, especially if you are recovering from a surgery or a fall. A pillow is a pillow. It fills a gap behind you and that is all it does. Dr. Patel is the one who told me a lift chair was worth looking at in the first place, and I would ask him about any cushion too before I spent my afternoons in it.