How To Pick The Right Scent For You

We apply perfumes and colognes to enhance our sex appeal, confidence and even attract our potential mates. Perfumes can be good for lifting our mood, they can remind us of fond memories and help us smell great. Choosing a scent that is right for us can be a daunting task. With so many choices and types of fragrances, choosing the one that matches our personality and preference can take some trial and error before we can find the scent that we truly love. When we do find that scent, it becomes an extension of ourselves and helps redefine our personal image. 

Research

Before you go to a department store or a boutique to find a scent, you can do a little research on what scents evokes that feeling of love in you. Sometimes, the best place to start is right at home. Think about your daily life and the scents you have come to love and get familiar with. These are smells that you apply to your body, like the bath soap you like to use, the brewed coffee that livens up your mornings, the lavender or chamomile scent of your bedtime lotion or even the smell of coconut shampoo. These smells can be the foundation of what you want to look for in a fragrance product. Once you have found a scent or a note you like, you can use it as your starting point, like something floral such as rose and gardenia, something fruity like citrus or apple. For men, there are also several notes to choose from, like pine, leather, coffee or cinnamon. Sites like Fragrantica.com and Basenotes.com can give you an idea of the category and primary notes that you are looking for in a fragrance product.

Consider the Scent’s Intended Use

Different scents can be tailored for the environment where you are using it on. Think of how a certain fragrance can fit your mood and lifestyle and the environment where you’ll be bringing your scent into. Women can wear light floral or citrus scents in a professional environment. For men, leather and coffee notes can be a great fit for the office environment. A sexy, long-lasting musk can be more suited for night outs rather than in the office. Also, you should also consider how intense the fragrance should be. If you want others to notice you, go for scents with high, but not overpowering intensity. If you want the scent to be just for you or to give subtle hints for people close to you, you can wear light fragrances.

Try the Scents On

You can’t complete your scent selection task without sampling the scents on your body. Simply smelling the samples will not be enough. You also have to try them on to get a whiff of how they actually smell when applied to your body. One common mistake people make in buying perfume is buying based on the first impression. Some buy on the instance that they found a good scent from sniffing out the samples. Others do try the scents on, but decide to buy within seconds after getting a good impression on the initial scent.

Sampling a scent needs an application to your skin and it takes time. In case you didn’t know, the notes determine the overall scent of perfumes and fragrance products. Notes consist of three different layers: the top, middle and base notes.

• Top notes – Top notes from the top layer of a fragrance. These are the scents you detect first after spraying a perfume on your body. Its main purpose is to provide an initial scent that transitions into the next part of the fragrance. They usually evaporate quickly, usually within 15 to 30 minutes.
• Middle notes – Also known as heart notes, these make up the essence or the “heart” of the fragrance. Their role is to retain some of the top notes’ aroma while also introducing a new, deeper scent. They make up about 70 percent of the total scent and lasts longer than the top notes (30 to 60 minutes) and the middle notes’ aroma remains evident throughout the entire life of the fragrance.
• Base notes – These notes from the foundation of the fragrance. They help boost lighter notes to add more depth to the scent. They are rich, heavy and long-lasting and they work together with the middle note. Since the base notes sink into the skin, it lingers the longest, lasting 6 hours or more.

Thus, when trying out scents, give them time to reveal their full fragrance. Wait until the top note dissipates and for the base notes to reveal the true essence of the scent. Our skins have a unique makeup, hormonal levels, and chemistry, which can alter the way a fragrance smells. Also, our body’s temperature and the environmental temperature can also figure when it comes to factors that can affect the true scent of a fragrance product. So spray a fragrance on a pulse point that is naturally warm, like your wrist or elbow and allow some time to pass for the fragrance to reveal itself.

Finding the right scent for you takes instinct and common sense. You have to find hints of fragrance notes that you have an affinity with and love to smell regularly. But it’s not just the whiff of the notes that should guide you. You also need some research and experimentation on which scent truly serves as an extension of yourself. Try out scents on your body and see how the fragrance lingers and unfolds over time. It also takes patience as testing scents take time before you can effectively decide on which scent fits best for you.