Perfume Making Instructions

Essential Oils, absolutes, fragrance oils and other fragrant chemicals are used to make perfume. On this site I will only provide instructions for perfume creation using essential oils, absolutes and fragrance oils. There are many other aromatic oils and chemicals available to the experienced perfumer that I do not use in these instructions.

Building you Perfume Organ

If you have read the glossary you will know that perfumers work at a perfume organ, a unit of semi-circular stepped shelving containing hundreds of bottles of raw materials. Of course you do not need hundreds of bottles of raw ingredients to get started. You can begin with as few as 10 different oils.

Fragrance families

The first step to creating your fragrance is deciding what type of fragrance you are interested in creating. What kind of scent will define your personality? Here is a simple guide of the major fragrance families (from The Fragrance Foundation) that should help you:

Citrus: The light, fresh character of citrus notes (bergamot, orange, lemon, petitgrain, mandarin, etc.) is often combined with more feminine scents (flowers, fruits and chypre).
Green: Green notes are natural in character; often married with fruity and floral notes, they are modern and fashionable.
Flowery: An accord of different floral notes. Combined with any other family, flowery perfumes are universally commercial.
Single Floral: A composition based on the scent of one particular flower; the main examples are rose, jasmin, tuberose, lily of the valley or ylang ylang.
Oriental: A blend of warmth and mystery. Musks and precious woods are complemented by exotic essences.
Semi-Oriental: Semi-orientals combine oriental notes with various florals. Top notes are often fresh.
Chypre: Based on a woody, mossy and flowery complex, sometimes with aspects of leather or fruits, chypre perfumes are rich and tenacious.

Have you figured out what family suits you? Now you must choose the ingredients in your perfume. If you are not sure of the character of the ingredients and need some help please read perfumery ingredients. Also.. Take a look at the notes used in commercial perfumes to get some ideas.. fragrance descriptions.

Fragrance Notes

After choosing your ingredients you are ready to start the mixing process. I am often asked about creating "top notes" "middle notes" and "base notes". I recommend the following:

The most simple method would be to use a 3:2:1 ratio (top:mid:base) Once you are a little more experienced you may choose to alter this ratio.

Mixing Instructions

I recommend using a dropper and counting drops when making your perfume. If a precise scale is available even better. But most people do not have precise scales, therefore all of the instructions and recipes I will provide will be counted with drops.

After you have written your formula, carefully combine the oils you selected by counting drops. Begin by combining the oils. Swirl after every ingredient you add. Then add the alcohol, make sure this is the last step since alcohol is highly volatile and will evaporate quickly if the bottle is not sealed. Once the alcohol has been added shake the bottle gently. For the next 3 or 4 days shake the bottle twice a day. If you are using Vodka as the alcohol base you will notice that your perfume is forming seperate layers. Vodka does not contain the amount of alcohol needed to dissolve fragrance oils. Therefoe I recommend specially denatured ethyl alcohol.

perfume recipes

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