Perfume notes, accords and composing: short answers
By Omer Siton, founder of PerfuMate · Updated
Notes, the pyramid, accords and the families are the vocabulary of composing, and most questions about them have short, exact answers. Each answer below is the short version of a page that works it through with real materials and numbers, linked at the end of the answer.
What are perfume notes, and how do they work?
A note is one smell impression in a perfume: a material (a bergamot note), a facet you can name (a powdery note) or a stage of the drydown (a top note). Notes work by time: materials leave the skin at different speeds, so a perfume shows its fastest notes first and its slowest last. The notes printed for a perfume describe what it smells like, not what is in it. What a note is, and how the pyramid files them.
What is a fragrance pyramid?
A fragrance pyramid sorts a perfume's materials into three bands by the part of its life they carry: top notes for the opening, heart notes for the middle hours and base notes for the drydown. It is a filing system rather than a law of chemistry; what is measurable underneath it is how many hours each material stays readable. PerfuMate gives every odorant a strip life, sourced where a figure is published and estimated from its family and band otherwise, and its app draws the pyramid in five parts, with top-heart and heart-base between the classic three. The olfactive pyramid, and where it stops being physics.
What are top, middle and base notes in perfume?
Top notes are the light, fast materials you smell first, middle (heart) notes are the body that takes over as the top fades, and base notes are the slow materials still there at the end of the day. Citrus oils and light herbs are typical tops; flowers, spices and soft aromatics typical hearts; woods, musks, ambers, resins and vanilla typical bases. Each band, with examples from the catalog.
What are top notes in perfume?
Top notes are the most volatile materials in a perfume: they make the first impression and are mostly gone within the first hour or so on skin. On a smelling strip, the catalog gives Lemon Essential Oil about 4 hours and Bergamot Essential Oil about 8, against hundreds of hours for a base note. Top notes, with examples.
What are middle (heart) notes in perfume?
Heart notes are the middle of a perfume: the materials that emerge as the top fades and carry its character through the next few hours, usually florals, spices and soft aromatic materials. They are filed by the job they do as well as by their hours: Hedione reads 72 hours on a strip, long enough to pass for a base note, and is filed heart because it carries the middle of a composition. Heart notes, with examples.
What are base notes in perfume?
Base notes are the slowest materials in a perfume: woods, musks, ambers, resins and vanilla that stay on skin for hours and on a strip for days or weeks. They are what is left at the end, and the reason a perfume lasts: Ambroxan reads about 400 hours on a strip and Ethylene Brassylate about 208. Slow materials that also hold their lighter neighbors back a little are called fixatives. Base notes, with examples and what a fixative is.
How long do top, middle and base notes last?
On a paper strip, the typical top note in PerfuMate's catalog lasts about 7.5 hours, the typical heart note about 68 hours and the typical base note about 300 hours: the medians across the catalog materials that carry a sourced blotter figure. On skin everything is shorter and depends on the dose: worn in a perfume, the top carries the first minutes to an hour or so, the heart the next few hours and the base the rest of the day. The bands overlap, which is why PerfuMate reads each material's own hours rather than its band. The figures by band.
Which note in a perfume is the strongest?
None of the three bands is stronger by nature: strength belongs to each material, and across the catalog the median impact is 6 out of 10 in the top, the heart and the base alike. Top notes are the loudest thing in the first minutes because they evaporate fastest, and base notes feel strong late in the day because they are what is left. Which note is the strongest, and the catalog counted.
What ratio of top, middle and base notes should a perfume have?
There is no correct ratio; a common starting point is 20 to 30 percent top, 40 to 50 percent heart and 20 to 30 percent base, by weight of the concentrate. Then the strip decides, because materials differ in strength and in hours: a cologne can be half top notes and an amber half base, and both be right. How to balance top, heart and base notes.
What is the 30/50/20 rule for perfume?
The 30/50/20 rule says a perfume's concentrate should be about 30 percent top notes, 50 percent heart and 20 percent base. It is a rule of thumb, not a standard: the guides that give it cite no source, those calling it the 50-30-20 rule disagree on which number goes with which tier, and the worked chypre in Jean Carles's "A method of creation and perfumery", dated December 1961, is 25 percent top notes, 20 percent modifiers, his middle group, and 55 percent bases. PerfuMate's pyramid shows a formula's real balance, from each material's strip life and its dilution-corrected grams. What the rule gets right, and where it misleads.
What is the 3:1:1 rule for perfume?
There is no 3:1:1 rule in perfume making: 3-1-1 is the US airport rule for liquids in carry-on bags, under which each container holds 3.4 ounces (100 ml) or less, all of them fit in one quart-size bag, and each passenger carries one bag (TSA, TSA FAQ). A bottle over 100 ml travels in checked baggage. Some fragrance blogs also use the name for a way of applying perfume, three sprays on pulse points, one on clothing and one on the chest or behind the ears, which is a habit, not a formula ratio. The ratios that do apply to a formula.
How do you combine notes when making a perfume?
Combine them by time and by job: give the formula an opening, a heart that carries the idea and a base that is still there the next morning, and bridge the gap between fast and slow materials so the perfume does not go hollow after twenty minutes. Build the idea as an accord first, dose the other lines around it, and change one line at a time on dated strips. How to balance top, heart and base notes.
How do you build the heart and base of a perfume?
Build the heart around the material or accord that carries the idea, with a bridge such as Linalool or Geraniol that reads from minute ten to hour one, and build the base from one or two slow materials you would be happy to wear alone. Dose the base by loudness, not by share: Ambroxan at 2 percent and at 0.5 percent are two different perfumes. A worked skeleton with real materials.
What is an accord in perfume?
An accord is one idea, warm amber, salt on stone, tea with jasmine, stated in the smallest number of materials that can state it, usually three to five. It is built at 100 percent within itself and then dosed into a perfume as a single decision. PerfuMate publishes its reference accords free, such as the Fougere Accord and the Rose Accord, on the accords page. How to build a perfume accord.
What is the difference between a note and an accord?
A note is a smell you perceive; an accord is a blend you build. One accord can produce one note, as when citronellol, geraniol and phenethyl alcohol read together as a rose, and one material can carry several notes at once. Notes describe a perfume; accords are how a perfumer writes it. Note vs accord, with an example.
How do you build a perfume accord?
Name the idea in a few words, audition candidates on strips, then pick one line to carry the idea, one or two to shade it and one slow line to anchor it, and settle the ratios between them before the accord meets anything else. Test it on a dated strip over a day, because its materials leave at different speeds. How to build a perfume accord.
What are the fragrance families?
The fragrance families are the broad styles perfumes are sorted into: the Société Française des Parfumeurs lists seven, citrus, floral, fougère, chypre, woody, amber and leather, and Michael Edwards's Fragrance Wheel uses fourteen in four groups, adding fresh styles such as water, green and fruity. Labels such as gourmand and musk are common in shops but are not families in either scheme. The families, with an accord to study for each.
How do you formulate a perfume?
Write the idea as one sentence, build the accord that carries it, lay a three-line skeleton around it (one opening line, the accord as the heart, one base line), dose each line by its role and its loudness, and only then weigh a small first version. Every later line has to earn its place by doing a job the first three do not. How to start a perfume formula from an idea.
How do you make a vanilla perfume?
Build it on vanillin, with a little ethyl vanillin for lift, a musk and soft woods for body and a bright top so it does not read as frosting, then dilute it in perfumer's alcohol and let it rest. PerfuMate's untested starting formula for a 30 ml bottle uses eight materials at 18 percent and is within every IFRA Category 4 limit at that strength; nobody has made it at the bench yet, so treat it as a first trial to adjust by smell. How to make a vanilla perfume, with a starting formula in grams.
Can you make perfume with vanilla extract?
Not a good one: vanilla extract is made for food, and under the US standard it is vanilla in water with at least 35 percent alcohol, sometimes sweetened, so most perfume materials will not stay dissolved in it. For vanilla in a perfume, use vanillin, vanilla absolute or a tincture of vanilla beans made in perfumer's alcohol. Vanilla extract vs perfumery vanilla.
Can you use vanilla extract as perfume?
You can dab it on, but it is a food flavoring, not a perfume: mostly water and alcohol with the vanilla at flavoring strength, sometimes with sugar, and not made or assessed as a cosmetic for skin. Try it on a small patch first, and keep dark extract away from light fabric. Wearing vanilla extract, and what to use instead.
Can you recreate (clone) an existing perfume?
You can get close, but an exact copy is rarely possible: a GC-MS analysis lists molecules, not a recipe, and naturals and house-only molecules blur what it shows. The practical route is by nose: smell the original at intervals, name its ideas, build an accord for each and compare side by side on blotters. Can I recreate a perfume I love?
Can a discontinued perfume be recreated?
Only approximately, and only well with a sample to compare against; without one you are rebuilding a memory. Many older perfumes also used materials that are no longer allowed, such as the nitro musks, most of which IFRA now prohibits, or classic oakmoss, whose atranol is now prohibited in EU cosmetics, so a faithful version has to substitute them. Recreating a discontinued perfume.
Are perfume dupes and clones legal?
A perfume that smells like another is not unlawful in itself in the US, where a 1968 appeals court decision allowed a maker to copy an unpatented perfume and say so in advertising, as long as nothing misled buyers about who made it. Using the original's name as your product's name, or a bottle or logo that could be mistaken for theirs, is where dupes go wrong, and other countries draw these lines differently, so check the rules where you sell. Dupes, clones and the law.