BLOG: Composing scents

Now that you probably have a lot of different essential oils at home, it's nice to know which scents you can combine well. In this blog I will give you more information about the different fragrance tones and how to make a fine blend.

olfactory organ

To start at the beginning, we start with a short explanation about an important organ, namely our sense of smell. As soon as you breathe in air, this air soon arrives at the olfactory nerves. These are located at the top of your nasal cavity (the olfactory cavity), an area behind the skull, between the eye sockets. The olfactory nerves are directly connected to our limbic system, which is strongly involved in our emotions, among other things. As soon as you smell a certain scent, it often immediately evokes certain feelings and memories.

Each fragrance is made up of different molecules. There are many olfactory receptors in your nasal cavity that capture these odor molecules. The receptors then relay the captured information to the brain, where the odor is identified. The brain can distinguish no fewer than 10,000 (!) different smells. The more components a fragrance has, the more receptors are activated and the more impression a fragrance can make.

You can use scents to mask bad smells, create a pleasant environment, but they are also very specific to use during a therapy session.

Making blends

When compiling your own blends, you can of course be inspired by blends that you encounter on Pinterest or in recipe books. It is more interesting to know how blends are actually built up.

A good blend has a balanced composition, whereby it is important that the scent lingers for a relatively long time, that it naturally smells pleasant and that the blend is composed in the right balance, without one of the scents predominating too much.