What are the fragrance families?
By Omer Siton, founder of PerfuMate · Updated
The fragrance families are the broad styles that whole perfumes are sorted into: in the classic French scheme, citrus, floral, fougère, chypre, woody, amber and leather, with fresher groups such as water, green and fruity in newer schemes. A family describes a perfume's overall character and structure; PerfuMate's catalog uses a different, finer set of families for single materials.
What are the fragrance families?
There is no single official list, and two schemes are the usual references. The Société Française des Parfumeurs sorts perfumes into seven families, each with sub-families: citrus (hespéridé), floral, fougère, chypre, woody, amber and leather. Michael Edwards's Fragrance Wheel uses fourteen families in four groups, floral, amber, woody and fresh, running from soft floral and floral amber through woody amber and mossy woods to aromatic fougère, citrus, water, green and fruity. The table follows the French seven and adds the fresh families of the wheel.
| Family | What it smells like | An accord to study on PerfuMate |
|---|---|---|
| Citrus | bergamot, lemon, orange and mandarin, often with petitgrain and neroli; bright and brief | Eau de Cologne Accord |
| Floral | one flower or a bouquet: rose, jasmine, lily of the valley, violet | Rose Accord, Muguet Accord |
| Fougère | lavender over the hay sweetness of coumarin and oakmoss; aromatic and clean | Fougere Accord |
| Chypre | bergamot over a mossy floor of oakmoss, labdanum and patchouli | Chypre Accord |
| Woody | warm sandalwood and patchouli, or dry cedar and vetiver | Sandalwood Accord, Pine Forest Accord |
| Amber (once called oriental) | resins, vanilla and balsams: warm, sweet, powdery | Classic Amber Accord |
| Leather | dry and smoky, built from birch, burnt wood and smoke notes, sometimes with tobacco | Mousse de Saxe Accord, a mossy leather base |
| Water | sea air, a waterfall, the ozonic air after a storm | Aquatic Accord |
| Green | cut grass, crushed leaves, violet leaf, cucumber | Green Leaves Accord |
| Fruity | orchard fruit and berries, often with flowers | Green Apple Accord |
Two labels you will meet in shops are not families in either scheme. Gourmand, for perfumes built on edible notes such as vanilla, caramel and almond, overlaps the amber families, which both schemes describe with sweet vanilla; musk, for clean, skin-like perfumes, is a style rather than a family, and the French scheme uses it only to qualify sub-families such as fleuri musqué. PerfuMate publishes reference accords for both, such as the Marzipan Accord and the White Musk Accord, and a vanilla perfume is the classic gourmand to start with.
How do perfume families differ from material families?
A perfume family describes a whole composition; a material family describes one ingredient. PerfuMate's catalog files its aromatic materials in 21 olfactive families, such as floral, woody, citrus, musk, ambergris, aldehydic and resinous, most of them in more than one and in a definite order, and that classification is what its scent profile adds up for a formula (how families become percentages).
The two lists do not map one to one. Chypre and fougère are structures, not materials: a chypre is bergamot, oakmoss, labdanum and patchouli in balance, and no single material is "chypre"; PerfuMate's Chypre Accord is citrus, resinous, earthy, woody and floral materials together. Going the other way, a material family such as aldehydic or ambergris is one ingredient's character, which can turn up in a perfume of almost any family. Browse the material families, such as floral, woody and citrus, from the catalog.
What does each family smell like, with an example accord?
Each family has a typical shape over time, and PerfuMate's published accords show it in their three-band pyramids, the share of each accord in top, heart and base by mass:
- Citrus. The Eau de Cologne Accord is 80 percent top, 14 heart and 6 base, which is why a cologne is gone within a couple of hours.
- Floral. The Rose Accord is 85 percent heart, built from citronellol, geraniol and phenethyl alcohol rather than rose oil.
- Fougère. The Fougere Accord is 12.5 percent top, 48 heart and 40 base: lavender at 26 percent over coumarin at 16 and oakmoss.
- Chypre. The Chypre Accord is 27 percent top, 21 heart and 53 base: bergamot over labdanum, patchouli and oakmoss.
- Woody. The Sandalwood Accord is 97 percent base, built on sandalwood aroma chemicals such as Sandalore, Bacdanol and Ebanol.
- Amber. The Classic Amber Accord is 94 percent base: labdanum, benzoin and vanillin.
- Water and green. The Aquatic Accord is 65 percent heart and 35 base, and the Green Leaves Accord 10 top, 49 heart and 41 base: much of what reads as fresh is carried by heart materials, not by top notes.
How do I tell which family a perfume belongs to?
Smell it on a strip over a day and judge the family by the heart and the drydown, not by the first minute: almost every perfume opens fresh, and the family shows at the one-hour and four-hour marks. Then look for the structure each family is built on:
- Moss and resin under a citrus opening, dry and slightly bitter: chypre.
- Lavender with a hay-like, almond sweetness underneath: fougère.
- Warm resins and vanilla that grow over the hours: amber.
- A citrus that is mostly gone within a couple of hours, leaving little: citrus, or a cologne.
- A heart that stays one flower, or one bouquet: floral. Woods that carry the drydown: woody.
For your own formula, PerfuMate's scent profile shows the share of each material family at every hour of the drydown, which tells you which character carries each stage (how to read a drydown).
Which families can I build from a small shelf?
A citrus, a soft woody amber and a clean musk can be built from the seven materials PerfuMate suggests for a first perfume; a fougère, a chypre and a real floral each need two or three more.
| Family | What it needs | From the starter set | Add |
|---|---|---|---|
| Citrus, cologne | citrus, a little lavender, a light musk | bergamot FCF, lavender, ethylene brassylate | nothing; petitgrain and neroli for a classic cologne |
| Woody amber | a dry wood, an ambergris note, a little sweetness | Iso E Super, Ambroxan, vanillin | nothing; labdanum for depth |
| Musk | two musks of different chemistry | ethylene brassylate | a second musk such as galaxolide or habanolide |
| Floral | a floral heart | Hedione | rose alcohols: citronellol, geraniol, phenethyl alcohol |
| Fougère | lavender, coumarin, moss | lavender | coumarin, oakmoss absolute low atranol, geranium |
| Chypre | bergamot, oakmoss, labdanum, patchouli | bergamot FCF | oakmoss absolute low atranol, labdanum absolute, patchouli essential oil |
The starter set is the one on how to make perfume at home. Check every family at its strength in the IFRA calculator; the moss in a chypre or a fougère needs it most, because IFRA caps oakmoss extracts at 0.1 percent of a fine fragrance (oakmoss extracts). PerfuMate's 50 reference accords on the accords page are free to study for every family above. Start a formula, free.
Sources:
- Société Française des Parfumeurs, les familles olfactives.
- Fragrances of the World, the Fragrance Wheel, and its history in Wikipedia, Fragrance wheel.
- Accord compositions and pyramids: PerfuMate's published accords. Oakmoss limit: the IFRA Standards Library, 51st Amendment, as run by PerfuMate's IFRA engine; a reference check, not a safety assessment.