PerfuMate › Learn › How can I learn perfumery: on my own, from books, or on a course?

如何学习调香：自学、读书还是上课？

作者：Omer Siton，PerfuMate 创始人 · 更新于 2026-10-07

All three work, and all three come down to practice: a small set of materials smelled every day, a 0.01 g scale, simple accords and one formula rewritten many times. Books add the theory and a course adds a teacher's nose and a palette chosen for teaching, but you can start on your own this week with free tools and decide about a course once you know what you want from one.

Can I learn perfumery on my own?

Yes. Perfumery is learnt by smelling, weighing and writing down, and all three can be done at home. A self-study path in five stages, each with the page that covers it:

Train your nose. A dozen materials or fewer, one per scent family, smelled a little every day in 10 percent dilution and named blind. How to train your nose.
Read materials over time. Smell each on a strip at fixed times, from 30 seconds to the next day, and note how strong it is and how long it lasts. How to evaluate materials on blotters.
Build accords. Weigh the classic small structures, such as labdanum, benzoin and vanillin for an amber, and take them apart again by smell. How to build an accord.
Make a first perfume. Weigh a formula published in grams with its IFRA check, dilute it and let it rest. Perfume recipes for beginners.
Revise it. Change one thing per version, keep every version, and judge on dated strips. How to improve a formula and how to keep track of formulas.

A suggested first three months, at ten to twenty minutes most days:

Weeks	怎么做
1 to 2	Set up the bench, make 10 percent dilutions of ten materials, smell three or four a day and write three words for each before reading any description.
3 to 4	Smell the same materials at fixed times through a day and into the next; test yourself blind on the families.
5 to 6	Build three classic accords, an amber, a fougère and a chypre, and find each part in the mix.
7 to 8	Weigh a first formula, bottle it at two strengths and start the rest.
9 to 12	Make two or three versions of one idea while the first rests, and read the first strips of each.

The practice material is free: the 50 accords on /accords show every share, the catalog describes each material's smell and strength, and its strip life where one is known, and the calculators do the dilution and bottle arithmetic.

Which books are worth reading?

Five, each for a different job: Calkin and Jellinek for how perfumes are built, Sell for the industry from brief to bottle, Ohloff and his co-authors for the chemistry of smell, Arctander for the materials one by one, and Piesse for history. Each title was checked against its publisher's or a library's record, and the list is in no order of merit:

Perfumery: Practice and Principles, by Robert R. Calkin and J. Stephan Jellinek (Wiley, 1994): how perfumes are structured and developed, from materials to analysis and safety requirements.
The Chemistry of Fragrances: From Perfumer to Consumer, edited by Charles S. Sell (Royal Society of Chemistry, second edition, 2006): the industry from brief to finished product, with chapters on ingredients, analysis, perception and safety.
Scent and Chemistry: The Molecular World of Odors, by Günther Ohloff, Wilhelm Pickenhagen, Philip Kraft and Fanny Grau (Wiley-VCH, second edition, 2022): the chemistry of odorants and of smell, with an introduction to composition by the perfumer Fanny Grau.
Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin (1960) and Perfume and Flavor Chemicals (Aroma Chemicals) (1969), by Steffen Arctander: material-by-material descriptions from the 1960s; the first is still reprinted.
The Art of Perfumery, by G. W. Septimus Piesse (1857): free on Project Gutenberg, and a view of how perfume was made in the 1850s. Its recipes measure in ounces and drachms and use civet and musk: history, not formulas to weigh.

A free PDF of an in-copyright textbook is usually an unauthorised copy; the public-domain classics are the legal free downloads, and a library can lend the rest. Books teach vocabulary and chemistry, but they cannot teach a smell, so read a chapter a week alongside the smelling rather than instead of it.

Are perfumery courses worth it, and how do I choose one?

A course is worth it for what self-study cannot give, a teacher who smells your work, a palette chosen for teaching and classmates to compare noses with, and the right one depends on what you want from it: a career, or a skill to practise at home. The programmes below were read on each institution's own site in October 2026; they are examples of each kind, not a ranking, and dates, fees and formats change, so confirm on the site before you apply.

Degree-level schools, for a career

ISIPCA, Versailles, France: master's-level programmes including Scent Design & Creation (three years) and the European Fragrance and Cosmetics Master (two years, taught in English with the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and the University of Padua).
Grasse Institute of Perfumery, Grasse, France: the International Technical Degree in Fragrance Creation and Sensory Evaluation, 12 months in Grasse followed by a 6-month internship, for 12 students a course, taught in English; a bachelor's is the minimum it asks for.
École Supérieure du Parfum, Paris and Grasse, France: a five-year programme to master's level; the school was founded in 2011.

Short courses and workshops

ISIPCA also runs an online perfumery course of seven half-days and summer schools of five to ten days.
Grasse Institute of Perfumery teaches a live online course in two levels, for small groups of eight, with kits of raw materials sent to each trainee, as well as short sessions in Grasse.
Cinquième Sens, a composition house and training organisation in Paris, runs workshops for amateurs, such as a three-hour create-your-perfume session, alongside professional training. In New York, Pratt Institute's continuing-education certificate in the Art & Business of Perfumery is taught in collaboration with it.
The Institute for Art and Olfaction, a non-profit in Los Angeles, offers beginner classes such as Perfume 101, longer materials courses, and some classes online.

Distance study

IFEAT Academy, run by the International Federation of Essential Oils and Aroma Trades: an online, assignment-based diploma of 120 credits at Level 6, about 1,200 hours of study, with fragrance units and flavor units on a shared core.

Online or in person? In person you smell beside a teacher and compare strips on the spot. Online saves travel and, where a kit is posted, lets you work at your own bench; check that the kit holds named materials and that someone will smell your work, not only watch it.

What should I ask before booking a perfume-making class or workshop?

Ask what you will make, whether you leave with the formula in grams, which materials are used, who teaches and how many people share the teacher, whether the bottle you take home is made safely, and what comes next. PerfuMate cannot list the classes near you, but these six questions sort a lesson from a souvenir wherever it is:

What will I make? Your own formula from single materials, or a blend of ready-made bases chosen for you?
Do I leave with the formula in grams? Every material named and every dilution written down, so you can make it again. A bottle without its formula is not something you can repeat.
Which materials are on the table? How many, which ones, naturals or aroma chemicals, and are they named or only numbered?
Who teaches, and how many people are there per teacher? A trained perfumer or evaluator smelling your trials is most of what you pay for.
Is what I take home made safely? At a stated strength, checked against the IFRA Standards, with gloves, ventilation and diluted materials on the bench.
What happens next? Follow-up sessions, a way to reorder your perfume, materials you can buy to keep practising.

A session that ends with a formula you can remake is a lesson; one that ends only with a bottle is a souvenir. Both can be worth it, as long as you know which one you are booking.

Is it hard to make perfume?

Making one is not; making a good one of your own takes practice. With a formula written in grams, a 0.01 g scale and perfumer's alcohol, the work is weighing and arithmetic, and a first perfume can be weighed in an evening. What takes time is what arithmetic cannot do: learning how each material smells and how long it lasts, waiting weeks for a blend to settle before judging it, and changing one thing at a time over many versions. Three habits make it far easier: weigh everything, write everything down, and judge on dated strips rather than in the first minute. The calculations themselves, from dilutions to the IFRA check, can be left to a calculator. How to make perfume at home shows the whole process.

Is perfume making a good hobby, and is it an art?

Yes to both: it is a good hobby for people who like to make things slowly and precisely, and an art practised with science. A shelf of five to ten materials, a scale and a notebook are enough, and the cost grows with the number of trials more than with equipment (what it costs to start). It asks for patience, because every version rests for weeks, and for care: materials are handled with gloves and fresh air, and perfumer's alcohol is flammable.

The American Society of Perfumers describes perfumery as a craft that combines the two, and the Institute for Art and Olfaction exists as a non-profit for education and experimentation with scent. The art is in the idea and the balance; the science is in the materials, the arithmetic and the limits.

PerfuMate is a free bench for exactly this practice: your materials with their catalog descriptions, formulas in grams with every dilution counted, each version kept, and the IFRA check running while you learn. Start a formula, free.

来源（查阅于 2026 年十月 6 日）