What is oud, and how is it used in perfume?

By Omer Siton, founder of PerfuMate · Updated 2026-10-07

Oud is agarwood: the dark, resin-filled wood that forms in Aquilaria and Gyrinops trees after wounding and fungal infection, and the oil distilled from it. It is smoky, woody, balsamic and animalic, very strong and highly valued, and because the trees are protected and the resin is rare, suppliers also sell many oud reconstructions: PerfuMate's catalog lists about three times as many of those as real agarwood oils.

What is oud (agarwood)?

Oud, also called agarwood or aloeswood, is resinous heartwood from trees of the genera Aquilaria and Gyrinops. A healthy tree forms none: the resin builds up around wounds and fungal infection, a process that can take up to ten years in the wild, and a review in Frontiers in Plant Science notes that only around 1 to 2% of wild trees contain it. The resin is mostly sesquiterpenes and 2-(2-phenylethyl)chromones. On a perfume label, "oud" can mean the oil, a reconstruction, or simply a style.

How is oud oil made?

Mostly by hydrodistillation after a long soak. Chips of agarwood are soaked in water to soften the wood and make the oil easier to release, then distilled with water. A 2024 study of traditional agarwood fermentation describes soaks of 30 to 45 days for wood low in resin and up to 90 days for hard, resinous wood, and local oil grades sold in order of market value.

Solvent extraction gives an absolute, and supercritical CO2 an extract, and they are not the same material as the distilled oil: the 2019 review notes that the phenylethylchromones, important to the sweet, long-lasting scent of burning agarwood, are found in CO2 and solvent extracts but never in hydrodistilled oil. Making oud oil at home is not realistic: it starts from resinous agarwood, a CITES-controlled material, and needs distillation equipment.

What does oud smell like: distilled oil, absolute and CO2 extract?

Deep, smoky, woody, balsamic and animalic, with a leathery side; the grades differ in balance. The catalog's descriptions, with the constituents it estimates:

All three sit at 8 out of 10 on the catalog's strength scale, which is why oud is used in small amounts. These are typical values: real oils vary with species, origin and distillation, and a supplier's GC-MS analysis is the real figure.

Does IFRA limit oud oil?

Not by name, but through what it contains: by the catalog's typical composition, its p-cresol holds distilled agarwood oil to about 1% of a finished perfume. The oil carries about 0.5% p-cresol and IFRA caps p-cresol at 0.005% of a finished fine fragrance, so 1% of the perfume is the most the oil can be, or about 5.5% of the concentrate in an eau de parfum at 18%. The absolute, at about 0.2% p-cresol, can go to about 2.5% of the perfume. These are PerfuMate's calculator results from typical values, a reference check rather than a safety assessment: an oil whose analysis shows less p-cresol allows more, and one with more allows less (p-cresol and IFRA).

How is oud used in a perfume?

As a base note, in small amounts, and very often as an accord that builds the effect around a little oil or replaces it. PerfuMate's published Oud Accord uses no agarwood at all: Iso E Super 19.4%, Timberol 16.2%, Habanolide 15.1%, Cypriol Essential Oil 12.9%, patchouli, Atlas cedarwood and labdanum at 8.6% each, vetiver 5.4% and Safraleine 4.3% for a saffron-leather note, with traces of birch tar, Amber Xtreme and skatole. Its note says to use it at 5 to 20% of a concentrate; treat it as an untested starting point and adjust it by smell. Cypriol, a root oil, is described in the catalog as widely used to extend oud.

Two IFRA points if you make it. Timberol's molecule, 1-(2,2,6-trimethylcyclohexyl)-3-hexanol, is limited by IFRA to 1.3% of the finished perfume: at the accord's suggested 5 to 20% of a concentrate it stays well under, but used as the whole concentrate at 18% it would be about twice over. And the birch tar must be a rectified grade. IFRA's standard on birch wood pyrolysate says crude birch tar oil should not be used in any finished product, and that only rectified (purified) birch tar oils that comply with its limit on polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) should be used; the limit is measured in the finished product with benzopyrene and 1,2-benzanthracene as markers, and counts any rectified cade, styrax or opoponax oil in the same perfume. Ask the supplier to confirm that its rectified oil meets the standard.

Ready-made oud bases do the same work; the catalog lists reconstructions such as Oud Synth 10760 E, Pretty Oud and Agarwood Artessence. Asked to stand in for the distilled oil, the substitutes engine ranks the CO2 extract first as the same oil in another grade, and scores the CO2 extract with an oud reconstitution base, 72 to 28, at 93%.

Is agarwood protected, and what does that mean when you buy oud?

Yes: Aquilaria and Gyrinops, the agarwood trees, are listed in CITES Appendix II, so oud oil crossing a border needs CITES papers, while a perfume packaged for retail sale is exempt. Appendix II allows international trade but controls it: a shipment needs an export permit or re-export certificate from the country it leaves, and some importing countries require permits of their own. The listing covers all parts and derivatives, oil included, except seeds and pollen, in-vitro cultures, fruits, leaves, exhausted agarwood powder, and finished products packaged and ready for retail trade, an exemption that does not extend to wood chips, beads, prayer beads and carvings.

For a perfumer, that means oud oil bought from abroad for further use should come with an export permit. Ask a seller for the species, the country of origin and whether the wood came from plantation or wild trees, and buy from sellers who can show the paperwork. This is orientation, not legal advice.

Does oud oil expire, and how should it be stored?

No standard sets a shelf life for oud oil, and the catalog carries none. As a heavy, base-note natural it generally keeps better than citrus and other terpene-rich oils, but follow the supplier's stated shelf life and store it cool, dark, full and sealed, as how to store perfume materials describes. If you keep a bottle for years, compare it on a strip with the note you made when it arrived; that tells you whether the oil has changed or your memory has.

Attar vs oud: what is the difference?

Attar is a format and oud is one material: an attar is a perfume oil worn without alcohol, traditionally made by distilling flowers, herbs or other materials into sandalwood oil, while oud is agarwood oil, which can be worn on its own or used inside an attar or a perfume. The catalog's Gulab Attar, for one, is damask rose distilled into sandalwood. What is attar covers attars in full.

PerfuMate reads each agarwood grade through its typical constituents and checks p-cresol and every other restricted molecule against the Category 4 limits while you compose; enter your supplier's GC-MS and the check uses your oil instead of the typical one. Check a formula in the free IFRA calculator.

Sources: Tan et al., Agarwood Induction: Current Developments and Future Perspectives, Frontiers in Plant Science 10 (2019); Naziz, Das and Sen, Enzyme activity of culturable fungi and bacteria isolated from traditional agarwood fermentation basin, Indian Journal of Microbiology (2024); Commission Regulation (EU) 2026/1383 of 22 June 2026, the current annex to Regulation (EC) No 338/97 (Aquilaria spp. and Gyrinops spp., Appendix II, annotation #14); US Fish and Wildlife Service, CITES Appendices; IFRA Standards Birch wood pyrolysate (Amendment 47), p-Cresol (Amendment 51) and 1-(2,2,6-Trimethylcyclohexyl)-3-hexanol (Amendment 51), as applied in PerfuMate's IFRA data.