How to Give Your Home a Signature Scent

Your home should be your comfortable, safe space. It’s the place you go to after a long day, the place you wake up every morning to start your routine, and the place you gather with family and friends. Giving your home a signature scent will boost comfortability, set the energy of specific rooms, and make your guests feel like staying with you is like visiting a luxury hotel. As the fall season approaches, now is the perfect time to start! 

Follow these steps to transform your home with a signature scent:

Step One: Remove Any Existing Smells

It’s easy for odors to get trapped in your home from your pets, cooking with strong flavors, or moisture. Before adding any scents to your home, it’s important to remove these culprits so your fragrance can shine through.  Here are a few ways to remove any smells from your home, beyond your regular cleaning routine:

• Vacuum your furniture regularly to remove dust, dirt, or pet hair. Don’t forget your baseboard heaters! Remove the covers and vacuum underneath to collect all buildup.
• Hire a carpet cleaning service for a deep clean (and consider upgrading to allergen or pet odor-specific services). 
• Remove throw pillow covers and wash them at least once a month.
• Have baseboards and walls scrubbed at least once a month.
• Add deodorizers to common spaces that collect smells, including your kitchen, bathroom, and mudroom. These will remove smells faster so your candles, diffusers, or air fresheners aren’t working to cover them up. 

Step Two: Finding Your Signature Scent

What sort of feelings do you want your home to elicit for you and your guests? Excitement or relaxation? Energy or calmness? Sophistication or comfort? Maybe just a simple, clean, fresh feel? Determine what emotions match your space and intentions best, and choose a scent to complement them:

• Looking for warmth, comfort, and relaxation? Try scents like vanilla and amber.
• Energy, focus, and positivity match citrus scents best, think orange and lemon. 
• Romance, stress reduction, and tranquility is best achieved through floral scents like rose and lavender. 
• Want to feel grounded, sophisticated, and confident? Choose an earthy scent like sandalwood or balsam. 
• If you’re looking for freshness, relief, and calm, we recommend “clean” scents like airy linen and eucalyptus.

Step Three: Incorporate Your Signature Scent into Your Home

You settled on your signature scent, now it’s time to actually distribute it throughout your home. Combine several methods to keep scents consistent across multiple rooms in your house:

• Diffusers are a great option to “set it and forget it.” Our favorite Nest reed diffusers are an aesthetically-pleasing option to place in bathrooms, on bookshelves, and in living spaces. Wall diffusers are a great, more hidden option that can be set anywhere with an outlet. Essential oil diffusers distribute scent quickly and only require water and a few drops of oil, but we only recommend using them while you’re at home.
• Scented candles and wax melters are the perfect way to change the scent of a room almost instantly. We’re fans of locally-made soy candles from brands like Three Buds Apothecary. Be sure to turn off or blow out before you leave the house, as they can be a fire hazard.
• Want to reduce smells? We recommend adding an air purifier to your bedrooms and common areas. You’ll filter the air in your home and reduce pollutants, all while living your day-to-day life. Plus, you don’t have to worry about turning it off and on, as it can stay on all the time. Check out Dyson’s Big+Quiet or Hot+Cool options, ready to serve your needs.
• Looking to freshen up a space before guests arrive? Use gentle linen sprays for bedding to give an extra touch of your signature scent. (Think Jo Malone London or Heretic Parfum).

Signature scents are the perfect way to set the intention of your space, both for yourself and your guests. As we start the transition to fall and winter in Vermont, now is the ideal time to collect all the ingredients you need to increase coziness and relaxation in your living spaces.

Want more tips for home improvement? Check out our blog!