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Natural perfumery: essential oils, flowers and extracts

By Omer Siton, founder of PerfuMate · Updated

Natural perfumery makes perfume only from what plants give, essential oils, absolutes, resinoids, tinctures and flower extracts, weighed and checked like any other formula. Each question below has a short answer and a link to the page that answers it in full.

What is natural perfume?

A natural perfume is made only from materials taken from plants and resins, essential oils, absolutes, resinoids and balsams, with no synthetic added. It is weighed, diluted and rested like any perfume, but its palette is smaller and rougher, its base has to come from resins, woods and roots, and natural does not mean free of IFRA limits or allergens. How to make a natural perfume.

What ingredients are used in natural perfume?

Essential oils, absolutes, concretes, resinoids, balsams, CO2 extracts and tinctures: anything distilled, pressed or extracted from a plant or resin without a synthetic added. FCF and distilled citrus grades still count as natural, while perfumer's ethanol is not marked natural in the catalog, so a fully natural bottle is usually an oil in jojoba. What counts as a natural material.

How do you make natural perfume at home?

Weigh a concentrate of naturals in grams across top, heart and base, check it in the IFRA calculator at the strength you will bottle it, then dilute it, rest it and filter it. The natural amber-floral on PerfuMate's natural perfume page needed one change, less ylang ylang, to pass every Category 4 limit; after it, the formula passes at 18 percent and up to 24.33. How to make a natural perfume.

How do you make perfume with essential oils?

The same way as any perfume: choose oils by role with at least one slow base oil, weigh them as a concentrate, then dilute it, to 10 to 30 percent in a carrier oil, PerfuMate's range for a perfume oil, or to one of the alcohol strengths on perfume concentrations, explained. The most restricted oil in the blend decides how strong it can be, and the IFRA calculator finds it. How to make a natural perfume and which essential oils to choose.

Which essential oils are best for making perfume?

None is best on its own; the best set covers the roles. Start with one or two slow base oils, such as vetiver, patchouli, cedarwood or sandalwood, add a heart (lavender, geranium, clary sage, neroli, palmarosa) and a top (bergamot FCF, sweet orange, petitgrain, pink pepper), and keep the shelf to five to ten oils you know. Best essential oils for perfume, by role.

Which essential oils are top, middle and base notes?

Citrus oils and most spice seeds are top notes, florals and many herbs heart notes, and woods, roots and resins base notes. The catalog lists Lemon Essential Oil at 4 hours on a smelling strip, Lavender Essential Oil at 12 and Vetiver Essential Oil at 400; the full table, with each oil's IFRA ceiling, is on best essential oils for perfume.

Can you use essential oils as perfume?

Some, diluted, and a few even neat by IFRA's numbers; many not. Worn neat, lavender, sweet orange, patchouli and vetiver reach no Category 4 limit by their typical composition, while expressed bergamot is 250 times over its cap and rose otto 182 times over on methyl eugenol. No limit reached is a reference check, not a safety assessment, and a single oil smells of one thing: wearing essential oils as perfume.

How do you dilute essential oils for perfume?

In a perfume oil the blend makes 10 to 30 percent of the finished oil, PerfuMate's range, and the most restricted oil in it sets the ceiling. In a 10 ml jojoba roll-on at 20 percent, that is 1.72 g of the blend and 6.88 g of jojoba oil, weighed, not counted in drops. Massage-oil dilution charts answer a different question: IFRA files body oils in Category 5A and perfume in Category 4. How to dilute essential oils for a perfume oil.

What are some perfume recipes with essential oils?

Two are on PerfuMate's pages, each checked against IFRA at its strength: a natural amber-floral of 20 g, and an essential-oil cologne of 20 g, an untested starting point to adjust by smell, that passes at 5 percent and up to 13.33. More beginner formulas, in grams, are on perfume recipes for beginners.

How do you make cologne with essential oils?

Replace the aroma chemicals of a classic cologne with oils that do their jobs, and keep an FCF bergamot. The essential-oil cologne on PerfuMate's cologne page, an untested starting point to adjust by smell, uses bergamot FCF, lemon, petitgrain, neroli, lavender, rosemary, clary sage and coriander over a little cedarwood and vetiver; at 5 percent it is within every IFRA Category 4 limit, and its ceiling, set by the cold-pressed lemon, is 13.33 percent. How to make an eau de cologne.

How long does a natural or essential-oil perfume last?

On skin, as long as its slowest naturals stay readable: a blend that is mostly citrus is gone within hours, while one built on resins, woods and roots lasts far longer. In the bottle there is no fixed date; the citrus top changes first, so keep it full, sealed, cool and dark, and judge an essential oil by its supplier's stated date. How long a natural perfume lasts.

Which flowers are used in perfume?

The ones whose scent survives distillation or solvent extraction: rose, jasmine, tuberose, orange blossom, ylang ylang, mimosa, osmanthus, narcissus and lavender above all. Lily of the valley, lilac, freesia, peony and honeysuckle have no natural extract in PerfuMate's catalog and are rebuilt from aroma chemicals, as PerfuMate's Muguet, Lilac and Freesia accords do. Which flowers can be extracted.

How do you make perfume from flowers?

At home, three ways: a tincture of petals in perfumer's alcohol, an infusion of dried petals in a carrier oil, or enfleurage in odourless fat. All three give a faint version of the flower: about 4,000 kg of rose flowers make 1 kg of rose oil, so 100 g of petals hold about 25 mg of it. How to make perfume from flowers.

How do you make perfume from flowers with alcohol?

Pack petals loosely in a jar, cover them with perfumer's alcohol, not vodka, which is mostly water, and keep it dark for a week or two; strain, and recharge the same alcohol with fresh petals until it smells strong enough. Chill, filter and label it as a tincture, and use it as a weak material in a formula. How to make a flower tincture.

How is fragrance extracted from flowers and plants?

By six methods: distillation for most leaves, woods and many flowers; cold pressing for citrus peel; solvent extraction into concretes and absolutes for delicate flowers; supercritical CO2; tinctures in alcohol; and enfleurage in fat, which the trade has abandoned. Each changes the smell, which is why one rose is sold as an otto, an absolute and a CO2 extract. How fragrance is extracted.

What is enfleurage, and how does it work?

Enfleurage draws a flower's scent into fat: petals are laid on a layer of fat on a glass plate in a wooden frame and renewed 30 to 40 times, and the scented fat, a pomade, is washed with alcohol to give an absolute. It was used for flowers too sensitive to heat for a still, such as jasmine and tuberose, and was abandoned for its cost in favour of solvent extraction. Enfleurage, step by step.

What is a tincture in perfumery?

A tincture is one raw material macerated in alcohol, a material rather than a perfume: ISO 9235 defines it as a solution obtained by maceration of a natural raw material in ethanol, or in water. The catalog carries vanilla, orris root and ambergris tinctures, among others; Vanilla Tincture is cured beans in perfumer's alcohol at 10 to 20 percent. Tinctures in perfumery.

How do you make a perfume tincture?

Weigh the raw material and perfumer's alcohol, for example 10 g of chopped cured vanilla beans in 90 g for a 10 percent tincture, close it in a dark jar, shake it every few days, and stop when a weekly strip no longer gets stronger. Filter, chill and filter again, label it like a dilution, and weigh it into formulas rather than counting drops. How to make a tincture.

Which perfume ingredients come from iris (orris) root?

Orris butter, the steam-distilled oil of the rhizome, orris resinoid, orris CO2 extract and orris tincture, plus the iris molecules, alpha-irone and the methyl ionones. The irones form slowly in the stored root, about 30 to 70 mg from 1 kg of fresh rhizome over more than three years, which is why orris is so expensive. What comes from orris root.

How is sandalwood perfume made?

Sandalwood oil is steam-distilled from the heartwood of mature trees and is rich in santalols; a sandalwood perfume uses that oil, synthetic sandalwood molecules such as Sandalore, Javanol and Ebanol, or both. PerfuMate's Sandalwood Accord is built from the synthetics, and the natural oil is also the base of traditional attars. How sandalwood oil is made.

How is rose used in perfumery, and what does it smell like?

Rose is a heart note: the distilled otto is honeyed, lemony, spicy and green, and the solvent-extracted absolute deeper and jammier. Citronellol, geraniol and nerol make up much of rose oil, but traces of damascenone, ionone, rose oxides and phenethyl alcohol carry most of its smell. How rose is used, and how it smells.

How do you make rose perfume at home?

Build the rose from citronellol, geraniol and phenethyl alcohol, add a little real rose otto and geranium, and set it with a top and a base. PerfuMate's 20 g rose formula, an untested starting point to adjust by smell, passes every IFRA Category 4 limit as an eau de parfum at 18 percent, and up to 23.23 percent; 4.5 g of it in 20.5 g of perfumer's alcohol makes 30 ml. How to make a rose perfume.

How do you make natural rose perfume at home?

Make it as a perfume oil in jojoba, since perfumer's alcohol is not marked natural, and carry the rose body with geranium and palmarosa: methyl eugenol caps the rose oils, so real rose can only be an accent. By the catalog's typical composition, rose otto can be at most 2.75 percent of a concentrate used at 20 percent, if nothing else in it carries methyl eugenol; a low-methyl-eugenol rose absolute lets more real rose in. A natural rose perfume oil.

The IFRA figures above come from PerfuMate's IFRA calculator, which sums each restricted molecule across all the naturals that carry it; the strip lives come from its catalog, and the other figures are cited on the pages linked. Check a natural formula, free.

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