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I spent $218 on Purple and Volosso trying to protect my mom's skin. Neither of them were thick enough to actually do it. My mom is 79. She sits in her recliner for most of the day. After her fall last year she doesn't move around much anymore — a few steps to the kitchen, a few steps to the bathroom, and back to her chair. Her doctor warned me at her last appointment. "At her age, with her mobility, you need to watch her skin. Especially where she sits." I didn't fully understand what he meant until I looked it up. Pressure sores don't start on the surface. They start from the inside out — deep tissue breaking down under sustained pressure before anything shows on the skin. By the time you see redness, the damage underneath is already serious. And the number one place they develop in elderly people who sit for long periods? The tailbone. The sitting bones. Exactly where all her weight concentrates in that chair. So I did what any daughter would do. I researched. Purple seat cushion — $119. The brand everyone knows. Looked substantial. She sat on it for two weeks and I noticed it had already compressed down noticeably. Still soft, but flat. Volosso Cell Gel+ — $99. 1.7 inches of gel grid. The reviews were good. Same thing happened. Within six weeks it had lost most of its height under her weight. I called her doctor's office and described what was happening. The nurse said something I hadn't read anywhere: Your cushion isn't protecting her if it bottoms out. She explained it to me slowly because I wasn't getting it at first. Gel grid cushions work by keeping tiny open columns between the body and the seat. Those columns are what distributes pressure across the whole surface — instead of letting it pile onto one spot. But that only works if the gel is deep enough to hold its structure under the person's full seated weight. Below a certain depth, the columns collapse flat within weeks. Sometimes days. The grid closes. And every bit of pressure goes straight back to the tailbone and sitting bones — the exact spots you were trying to protect. Purple: 1.5 inches. Not enough. Volosso: 1.7 inches. Still not enough. The threshold where the grid actually maintains its structure under a seated adult's weight is 2.4 inches. That's not a marketing number. That's the physical depth required for the columns to stay open. She told me there was one cushion built to that spec. Zero Cushion. 2.4 inches of double-layer gel grid. I ordered it that evening. I didn't tell my mom I'd already bought two others. I just swapped it in. Six weeks later it still looks exactly like it did out of the box. I press down on it with both hands and it springs back fully. Every time. Her doctor checked her skin at her last visit. No breakdown. No redness. No warning signs. I'm not writing this because anyone asked me to. I'm writing it because I spent $218 on cushions that were compressing flat under my mother's weight every single day — and I had no idea, because they still felt soft on top. Soft isn't the same as protective. 1.5 inches bottoms out. 1.7 inches bottoms out. 2.4 inches doesn't. If your mom spends most of her day in one chair — her skin is only as protected as the depth of what she's sitting on. Zero Cushion.