How to Choose a Natural Perfume: A Perfumer's Guide

Choosing a natural perfume is slightly different from choosing a conventional fragrance.

The usual advice — decide whether you like floral, fresh, woody or sweet scents — is a useful beginning, but natural materials have their own texture, projection and way of developing on skin. A natural citrus perfume will not behave like an intensely diffusive synthetic citrus accord. Natural vanilla can be darker and less confectionary than the vanilla you might expect from a gourmand perfume. Rose, vetiver, woods, balsams and herbs can also smell noticeably different in botanical form.

So if you are buying natural perfume, particularly online, it helps to ask more than simply:

“Which notes do I like?”

I would begin with five questions:

• Which scent family do I naturally gravitate towards?
• Do I want something bright and airy, or warm and enveloping?
• How much projection do I actually want?
• When and where will I wear it?
• Do I already know my preferences well enough to buy a full bottle, or should I sample first?

Here is how I would approach those questions as a perfumer.

First: choose the feeling before the ingredient

People often shop for perfume by individual notes.

“I like vanilla.”

“I hate rose.”

“I want something with lemon.”

That can work, but it can also be surprisingly misleading.

A single material can behave completely differently depending on what surrounds it. Vanilla beside sandalwood and balsam feels very different from vanilla beside spun sugar. Lemon over rose is different from lemon over bitter herbs. Vetiver can be smoky, clean, grassy, earthy or almost mineral.

It is often more useful to start with the overall character you want to wear.

Do you want something that feels:

• sparkling and clean?
• soft and floral?
• green and outdoorsy?
• dry and woody?
• warm and sensual?
• slightly sweet and comforting?

Once you know that, the notes become much easier to interpret.

If you like citrus perfumes

Citrus is one of the most beautiful places to begin with natural fragrance because expressed and distilled citrus oils have a liveliness that is difficult to imitate exactly.

Think lemon peel rather than lemon-flavoured sweets: bright, volatile, slightly bitter, almost textured.

The important thing to understand is that natural citrus is fleeting by nature. Lemon, bergamot, mandarin and similar materials tend to make their strongest impression in the opening of a perfume and then give way to whatever sits underneath them.

That doesn't mean a citrus perfume has disappeared. It means the structure is moving.

Choose citrus if you enjoy fragrances that feel:

• fresh rather than dense
• lively rather than cosy
• clean without necessarily smelling soapy
• easy to wear during the day
• particularly appealing in warm weather

Within our own natural collection, Aurora Natural Eau de Parfum combines lemon and citrus peel with a soft rose heart and light woods. It is a useful choice for someone who wants freshness without choosing a purely green scent.

For something greener, Wildlight Natural Eau de Parfum pairs its lemon opening with lily-of-the-valley facets, green musks and light woods. The effect is more leafy and crisp than traditionally floral.

And if you want citrus with a warmer, more aromatic base, Outland Natural Botanical Eau de Cologne begins with neroli and citrus peel before moving into aromatic herbs, Peru balsam and woods.

That illustrates an important rule: “citrus perfume” doesn't tell you what the perfume will become.

Always look at the heart and base too.

If you like floral perfumes

Natural florals can surprise people who are accustomed to highly polished commercial floral accords.

Botanical floral materials can be creamy, green, indolic, waxy, spicy, honeyed or almost earthy. They do not always smell like a freshly cut bouquet.

This is part of their appeal.

If you normally like floral perfumes, decide first whether you want your flowers to feel fresh and transparent or warm and enveloping.

For a fresh floral, Luma Natural Eau de Parfum combines bright citrus with frangipani and white lotus. It is luminous rather than heavy: a natural floral designed around warmth, air and skin rather than a dense bouquet.

Aurora is another approachable floral, but here the contrast is lemon and rose: more classic, delicate and rosy than tropical.

If you usually say, “I don't like floral perfume,” it is worth working out what you actually dislike.

Is it powderiness? Sweetness? Big white flowers? A vintage rose effect?

You may dislike one style of floral perfume, not flowers themselves.

If you like woody perfumes

Woody perfume is often one of the easiest transitions into natural fragrance.

Vetiver, sandalwood, roots, resins and balsams naturally have depth and texture, and many are relatively substantive perfume materials. They can therefore remain perceptible after brighter top notes have faded.

Natural woody perfumes are particularly worth exploring if you dislike anything overtly perfumed.

Look for them if you enjoy scents that feel:

• dry
• grounded
• earthy
• smoky
• restrained
• unisex
• quiet rather than decorative

Origin Natural Botanical Eau de Cologne is built around vetiver, with light smoke and spice above it and natural vanilla and soft woods beneath. Despite the vanilla, the overall composition is woody rather than sugary.

Outland takes woody fragrance in a different direction. Neroli and citrus create brightness at the top, aromatic herbs occupy the middle, and Peru balsam and woods provide the darker foundation.

So if you like woody perfume, ask a second question:

Do I want dry and earthy, or aromatic and resinous?

That distinction will often tell you more than the word woody itself.

If you like gourmand or vanilla perfumes

Gourmand fragrance is where expectations about natural perfume can become particularly interesting.

Modern gourmand perfumes can smell uncannily like marshmallows, caramel, chocolate, biscuits, whipped cream or spun sugar because contemporary perfumery has access to an enormous range of aroma materials.

A purely botanical gourmand is working with a more limited palette.

That is not necessarily a disadvantage. It simply creates a different kind of sweetness.

Natural vanilla can feel woody, balsamic, slightly smoky or almost leathery rather than purely confectionary. Balsams can add an ambered, resinous sweetness. Sandalwood adds creaminess without literally smelling edible.

If you want a natural fragrance with warmth and sweetness, Mirage Natural Eau de Parfum is the obvious starting point in our collection. It combines lotus flower with natural vanilla, Peru balsam and sandalwood. The result is warm and softly sensual rather than dessert-like.

Origin is another option if you love vanilla but normally find sweet perfume too sweet. Its vanilla is anchored by dry vetiver and woods rather than being allowed to dominate.

This is one reason I would never choose perfume solely from a note list.

Vanilla does not automatically mean sugary. Rose does not automatically mean powdery. Citrus does not automatically mean sporty.

Composition is everything.

A quick natural perfume guide

If you are still unsure where to begin, this is the simplest version:

If you want...	Look towards...	Try first
Bright, feminine and uplifting	Citrus floral	Aurora
Crisp, leafy and fresh	Green floral citrus	Wildlight
Soft, luminous, warm-weather floral	Fresh floral	Luma
Earthy, dry and quietly warm	Woody gourmand	Origin
Aromatic, woody and slightly rugged	Woody aromatic	Outland
Warm, creamy and sensual	Amber floral / natural gourmand	Mirage

You can explore the complete Natural Fragrances collection here. The current collection includes Luma, Wildlight, Aurora, Mirage, Origin and Outland.

Next, think about projection

This is one of the most overlooked parts of choosing perfume.

People talk endlessly about notes while ignoring how much perfume they actually want other people to smell.

Some people genuinely love strong projection. They want their fragrance to announce itself when they enter a room.

Others don't.

They want someone sitting beside them to notice it, but not somebody standing at the opposite end of the restaurant.

Natural perfumery tends to suit the latter preference particularly well.

Without relying on powerful synthetic musks and highly diffusive modern aroma materials, a botanical fragrance often creates a softer radius around the wearer.

That does not necessarily mean poor longevity. A fragrance can remain on your skin for hours while projecting much less strongly than it did when first applied.

If you prefer a discreet perfume, this can be an enormous advantage.

If your main priority is maximum room-filling projection from morning until night, however, a 100% botanical perfume may not be the category I would automatically recommend.

Choose what suits the way you actually live rather than what perfume marketing tells you constitutes “performance”.

Choose for climate — but don't be ruled by seasons

Fragrance has no rules about what may be worn in January or July.

But temperature changes the way perfume behaves.

Heat encourages aromatic materials to evaporate and diffuse more quickly. This means a fragrance can feel brighter and more expansive in hot weather, while its most volatile notes may also move through their development faster.

That makes citrus, neroli, green florals and transparent florals particularly lovely for South African spring and summer.

Wildlight, Aurora and Luma all make intuitive warm-weather choices.

Cooler conditions are especially flattering to vetiver, vanilla, woods, sandalwood and balsamic materials. Mirage and Origin can therefore feel particularly satisfying in autumn and winter.

Outland sits nicely between the two: citrus and neroli give it lift, while balsam and woods provide enough substance beneath them.

But these are tendencies, not laws.

If Mirage smells wonderful on you in February, wear Mirage in February.

What about “skin chemistry”?

There is truth behind the idea that perfume smells different on different people, but the phrase skin chemistry is sometimes made to sound more mysterious than it needs to be.

Perfume performance can be affected by differences in:

• skin hydration
• oiliness
• skin temperature
• how much you perspire
• environmental temperature and humidity
• skincare products already on your body
• where and how generously you apply perfume

Dry skin, for example, can sometimes seem to lose fragrance relatively quickly. Applying perfume over an unscented moisturiser can help.

Warm skin can make a fragrance radiate beautifully but can also encourage faster evaporation.

This is why I would be cautious about deciding that a perfume “doesn't work with my chemistry” after smelling it once on a paper strip.

Paper is useful for comparison.

Skin is where you make the decision.

How to test a natural perfume properly

The worst way to choose perfume is to smell six fragrances in rapid succession and buy whichever one is most impressive during its first thirty seconds.

Opening notes are deliberately noticeable.

They are not necessarily the part of the perfume you will live with.

Instead, spray once or twice onto clean skin.

Smell it immediately, then stop.

Come back after around 15–30 minutes. Smell again after an hour. Then notice what remains several hours later.

Ask yourself:

Do I still want to smell this?

Not: “Is it strong?”

Not: “Is this objectively sophisticated?”

Not even: “Which ingredients can I identify?”

Simply: do I keep wanting to put my nose back to my wrist?

That is one of the most useful perfume tests I know.

Ideally, wear the fragrance through an ordinary day.

Perfume behaves differently when you are moving around, getting warm, sitting outdoors, entering air conditioning, dressing in layers or spending time in the sun.

You are not choosing something to wear on a paper blotter.

Don't test too many perfumes at once

After several fragrances, your ability to distinguish between them deteriorates.

For serious testing, I prefer one perfume per day, or at most one on each wrist if you are directly comparing two.

Do not constantly smell them every five minutes.

Let them disappear from your attention and then rediscover them.

This is especially important with natural perfume because the transitions between top, heart and base can be part of what makes the fragrance interesting.

A five-minute test tells you almost nothing about that.

When should you choose a Discovery Kit instead of a full bottle?

If you already know that you adore vetiver, dislike florals and want something woody and understated, you may be perfectly comfortable choosing Origin directly.

But a discovery kit is the better choice when:

• you are completely new to natural perfume;
• several fragrances appeal to you;
• you know which notes you like but not how they behave botanically;
• you are choosing a signature scent;
• perfume often smells different on you than you expect;
• you are buying online and cannot visit the shop;
• longevity and projection matter enough that you want to test them personally.

Our Botanicals Discovery Kit contains six 5ml sprays: Luma, Origin, Aurora, Mirage, Wildlight and Outland. That gives you enough perfume to wear each fragrance properly rather than making a decision from a tiny dab or a single first impression.

My suggestion would be simple: don't try all six on the first evening.

Take six days.

Wear one properly each day.

By the end, you will probably find that one or two have begun calling you back.

That is much more useful than trying to decide intellectually which perfume you are supposed to like.

The best natural perfume is not necessarily the most dramatic one

Perfume counters favour drama.

A fragrance sprayed for the first time has about thirty seconds to get your attention, so the brightest, sweetest or loudest composition often wins the first round.

But your favourite perfume six months later may be something else entirely.

A good everyday perfume needs to coexist with you.

You will smell it while driving, working, reading, cooking, getting dressed and standing close to people you love.

Sometimes the right perfume is the one that initially seems quieter — and then, strangely, becomes the bottle you reach for every morning.

That is particularly true of natural fragrance.

The pleasure is often not in maintaining one enormous scent cloud for ten hours. It is in the way the fragrance moves: citrus disappearing into petals, petals becoming woods, vanilla becoming balsam, vetiver emerging as everything else quietens.

So begin with your preferences, certainly.

Choose citrus, floral, woody or warm.

Think about projection and weather.

Test on your own skin.

But then allow for one final thing:

surprise.

Perfume is ultimately less about finding the list of notes that describes you than discovering the fragrance you unexpectedly don't want to stop smelling.

Explore all of our 100% Natural Fragrances, handmade in Clarens, South Africa — or begin with the Botanicals Discovery Kit and let your skin make the final decision.