Once September is over, I always want to sort the house out, and it usually starts with the candles. I’d never wear the same perfume to the office and to dinner, so why should the kitchen smell like the bedroom?
Bedroom: lavender and juniper
NEOM’s The Wind Down Reed Diffuser, one of two limited-edition autumn blends, is made for the stretch between logging off and going to bed. Lavender, geranium and juniper lead a blend of 11 essential oils. It won’t undo a midnight inbox, but keep one scent just for the moment the laptop shuts and it soon becomes your cue to switch off.
Living room: leather, tobacco and orange blossom
This is the room guests see and smell first, and the vessel matters as much as the scent. Valentino’s Cire Baroque, by perfumer Daniela Andrier, pairs orange blossom with pistachio in an emerald-green jar that looks the part on a coffee table.
Baobab Collection’s Pearls Black diffuser, silkscreened with black pearls and platinum, is another you won’t hide behind a photo frame. Inside, it’s ginger, rose and grapefruit.
When friends come round and nobody leaves before midnight, light Trudon’s Ernesto. Grapefruit, bergamot and a slug of rum settle into tobacco, leather and amber, like a Havana hotel bar after hours. Save it for when the records come out.
Kitchen and desk: lemon and hinoki
A heavy amber has no business competing with dinner. Voluspa’s Mediterranean Lemon, with Sicilian lemon and bergamot over jasmine and solar amber, smells like a window left open in July.
At the desk, Airy Fragrances’ Forest Breath 森 is built around hinoki, the Japanese cypress, with clary sage and sandalwood. It’s welcome when the home office is really a corner of the spare room. Half the time we aren’t buying what we want the flat to smell like. We’re buying somewhere we’d rather be.
Bathroom: fir, linden and chamomile
Here the scent can come from what you use rather than what you light. Olverum Bath Oil has been made for roughly nine decades from ten essential oils, led by Siberian fir needle and May Chang. Pour it in and the whole room follows.
Wildsmith’s Hand and Body Duo, scented with linden, Roman chamomile and cedarwood from the gardens at Heckfield Place, does the same for washing your hands.
Open-plan: one spray, no clutter
In an open-plan flat, a lemon candle, a forest diffuser and a lavender blend all going at once will smell like the ground floor of a department store. A room spray is more forgiving. Aesop’s Olous Aromatique Room Spray is bright and green, with grapefruit and bergamot over cardamom and a trace of incense. It fades by the end of the evening, so you can change your mind tomorrow.
You don’t need all nine. Start with the room you spend your evenings in and add from there. Most homes only need two or three.
