Bakhoor, Perfume Oil, Eau De Parfum — Here’s How To Layer Various Types Of Scents
When shopping for fragrances, you want to choose something that’ll become your signature. And by signature, we don’t just mean the perfume you’ll wear every day — it’s the scent that makes you as rare as gold.
There’s something sexy and empowering about people knowing you’re in a room just by your smell alone. Still, getting them to sense your scent is challenging if you’re wearing the same fragrance as everyone else. But you don’t have to throw away your favorite viral body sprays or EDPs just yet. The trick to making your current fave your signature? It’s by layering with other scents. Ahead, an explanation of the do’s and don’ts of layering every type of fragrance.
Consider Scent Notes
Firstly, make sure the fragrances you layer are different in every way — it just doesn’t make sense to layer a vanilla perfume oil with a vanilla body spray.
Do your research and figure out if your chosen fragrance falls under one of the four prominent scent families: fresh, floral, woody, or deep. (“Deep” means sweet, warm, or spicy scents. Its official name is “oriental,” but that was made years ago by a bunch of old white men and hasn’t been updated despite industry outrage. So we’re changing it to “deep” for this story.) Once you’ve figured out your base scent, accent your fragrance with ones from different scent families.
To be even more nit-picky, each scent family has a delicate-to-complex spectrum, and pairing two heady scents can cause an overwhelming “what is that” reaction instead of a “who is that” one. You can easily make this mistake by pairing a “deep” resin scent with a “woody” tobacco. To avoid an overpowering scent cocktail, accent one deep scent with one or two lighter ones.
Layer Products, Not Perfumes
This may sound like a lot, but bear with us — using three perfume oils can confuse your nose since they all share the same intensity. Instead, use various fragrance products that dissipate at different levels to make your bespoke scent last all day, and layer them from heaviest to lightest. Here’s the order in which you should apply your fragrance products:
Bakhoor: AKA scented wood chips that you use to smoke your hair. This technique is widely used in Arab countries but is making its way to the rest of the world at lightning speed. Scented smoke is pretty intense, so bakhoor is always a great places to start.
Fragrance Creams: There’s a reason why all those holiday fragrance sets come with lotions, body sprays, and parfums — fragrance creams are a great way to create a full-body base scent for the rest of your fragrances.
Perfume Oil: Perfume oil are like essential oils in that one drop is likely enough for an intense payoff. Lightly dab perfume oil onto your pulse points, like your neck, wrists, elbow creases, behind the ears, and behind the knees.
Eau de Parfum: Or EDP, This is your standard “perfume” and a quick spritz on the pulse points should be enough to create a scent that lasts all day.
Eau de Toilette: If you want to enjoy a more low-key day, you can swap out your EDP for this fresher fragrance type instead. The same rules apply here: just a few sprays on the pulse points should be enough.
Body Spray: Finally, you can finish your entire scent cocktail with a quality body spray. To avoid smelling like you’ve just left a perfume counter, spray the air in front of you, step under the mist, and allow the droplets to settle onto your skin gently.
And for the most critical fragrance layering tip: just have fun with it and love what you’ve got on. After all, the best way to make an impression on others is to have confidence in what you’re wearing. It may take a bit of trial and error, but you’ll get to your signature scent in no time.
