The art of blending essential oils successfully, comes with trying new blends in your diffuser. You will find your living space filled with a pleasing and uplifting aroma on a regular basis. Also see the the article on essential oil scent groups for blending. This can help you understand which scents work especially well together.
How essential oils work together
Each essential oil is made up of multiple components, all of which are responsible for the different attributes and properties of the oil.
The beauty of essential oils is that the fragrance is not just one individual note, but is composed of a complex harmony of notes. You can work with these different notes to create favourite blends, adding citrus notes by blending with lemon, grapefruit or orange, for example. Or enhance a blend with spicy notes by adding cinnamon leaf or clove bud.
The art of creating a beautiful blend of oils often comes down to a bit of testing and trying various ideas. Whilst you won’t want to waste oils, a little trial and error can help to understand how they work together.
Top, middle and base notes
In addition, fragrances are built using ‘accords’. Individual scents, or notes, are blended to create a new, unified aroma. For instance, each fragrance is made up of top, middle, and base notes. Combined, gives structure to the blend and create appealing, balanced, long-lasting fragrances.
- Top notes are light and refreshing and give the first impression.
- Middle notes are the heart of the fragrance and include most of the herbaceous scents, such as clary sage essential oil.
- Base notes are rich aromas such sandalwood essential oil or patchouli essential oil.
A few blending guidelines
Start off by creating very simple blends. As you work with essential oils and become more familiar with them, you will notice that some are stronger smelling and more pervasive than others. These oils will dominate the ones that have a more subtle smell. Bear this in mind and then blend carefully, drop by drop.
How many different essential oils?
When you start blending, you might prefer to just blend two or three oils at a time. We personally prefer the more simple blends, up to four different essential oils. As you get to know the oils more, try a few more. Then aim to use four oils. Some people use up to seven different essential oils.
How many drops of essential oil?
If you want to use a diffuser from OPLA, we recommend 2 drops for every 20ml of water. Therefore in the water tank of 90ml, you can use up to 9 drops.
We wish you a lovely journey, experimenting with scent combinations and discovering which aromas appeal to you.