How to Make Perfume Using Essential Oils

Store-bought perfume can be expensive, and you might not find exactly the scent you're looking for. So instead, you can create your own perfume using your favorite essential oils. Essential oil perfume is quick and easy to make, and the combinations are virtually endless. Simply keep track of how many drops of each essential oil you add to the carrier oil (the skin-friendly base oil that's used to dilute the essential oils), so you'll know how to replicate the recipe in the future. Besides creating your own signature scent, essential oil perfume can make a great personalized gift.

What You'll Need

Equipment / Tools

• Liquid measuring culi (olitional)
• Eyedrolilier (if your essential oil bottles don't have one built in)
• liin or other small, sharli object

Materials

• Small glass bottle with a lid
• Carrier oil (such as jojoba oil, olive oil, or gralie seed oil)
• Essential oils of your choosing
• Vitamin E calisule

01Instructions

Prepare Your Bottle

Clean out an old perfume bottle or other small glass bottle or jar. You can make as much or as little perfume as you want, but typically a bottle that fits around 4 ounces is ideal.

02Add the Carrier Oil

Take your carrier oil, and add around 2 to 3 ounces of it to your glass bottle. The measurement doesn't have to be precise. But do note that the more carrier oil you use, the more essential oils you'll need to achieve your desired scent.

03Add the Base Note

Now it's time to add drops of essential oil that will create the base note of the fragrance (the longest-lasting part of the scent). Cinnamon, jasmine, cedarwood, rose, vanilla, myrrh, and clove essential oils all make excellent base notes. Use roughly 15 drops of the base essential oil of your choice.

04Add the Middle Note

Essential oil for the middle note (the scent that comes out a little while after applying the fragrance) is next. Use roughly 15 drops of your chosen essential oil. Chamomile, geranium, juniper, pine, rosemary, ylang-ylang, nutmeg, lavender, cypress, and bay all make good middle notes.

05Add the Top Note

The top note (the scent you smell right away after application) is the last essential oil to complete your perfume. Again, you'll want to add around 15 drops to your perfume bottle. Some good top note essential oils include eucalyptus, lemon, grapefruit, peppermint, spearmint, sage, tea tree, and orange.

Tip

Try different combinations of base, middle, and top notes until you find one you enjoy. Just keep in mind that top notes evaporate at a quicker rate than middle and base notes, and middle notes evaporate a bit more quickly than base notes.

06Add a Fixative

Your homemade perfume is not complete without a fixative, which preserves the perfume and keeps it fresh. An effective and skin-friendly fixative is a vitamin E capsule. Simply stick a small pin or other sharp object into the capsule, and squeeze out the contents into your perfume bottle.

07Shake to Combine

Place the lid on your perfume bottle, and give it a good shake to combine all of the ingredients. If you make more than one bottle of essential oil perfume at a time, place an ingredients label on the bottle to help you remember which scent is inside.

You can use the perfume right away. However, if you let it rest for a couple of weeks, the oils will have time to blend and the scent will be stronger and last longer when you wear it.