Belinda Carli
Institute of Personal Care Science (IPCS), Australia

Abstract

With so many essential oils to choose from, how do you put a blend together that is going to be pleasing to consumers and have a lasting character? Successfully blending essential oils takes practice and time to become familiar with how blends may alter in composition over weeks, months and years, however you need to start with good blending principles to guide your selection in creating lasting, favourable aromas.

SELECTING YOUR ESSENTIAL OIL AROMA ‘TYPE’

If you are creating ‘natural’ products then using essential oils as your fragrance is common practice, unless your fragrance house can provide you with a totally natural fragrance blend. For many companies, creating their unique and appealing essential oil blend is an excellent way of enhancing the appeal of their products and emphasizing their marketing story. When selecting the aroma your blend should have, the following considerations should be made:

product story/philosophy:

• products with a more unique story or philosophy should incorporate a more complex aroma profile – ‘complex’ referring to an aroma profile that develops in an interesting way over time.
• products with a simpler marketing story can have more simple aroma profiles. 
• products with a cheaper price will need to consider input of essential oils very carefully, since essential oils are usually more expensive, and less substantive than fragrance.

substantitivity:

• ‘substantivity’ refers to the way an aroma lingers over t ...
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