Would you love for your home to have a scent like honeysuckle wafting in on a spring breeze? Or perhaps you'd like your home to smell like warm cookies, fresh from the oven. Maybe you prefer the scent of cinnamon and apples, or of a garden filled with gardenia and jasmine.

Whatever your preference, you can achieve the goal of spreading the scent of your choice throughout your home. You merely have to identify which scent you wish your home to have, and then seek out products which not only have that scent, but which also have the capacity to spread the scent around an entire room.

Many popular home fragrances on the market today are a mixture of different scents. While they may smell lovely, they don't allow you full control over the scent of your home. It's better to select a pure scent, such as a single essential oil or herb, so that you can create the precise scent that you want.

Potpourri

One of the best ways to control the scent of your home is make your own potpourri. This way, you can choose precisely the plants and essential oils whose scents you desire. For example, if you want a scent of marigold, citrus and cedar, you could place dried marigold flowers, dried citrus peel and cedar shavings to your potpourri mix. A fixative such as powdered oak moss, orris root, or gum benzoin must be applied to hold in the essential scents of these plants. Then apply a few small drops of an essential oil such as lemon, lime or orange. Be sure to put some of your homemade potpourri mix in each room for maximum effect.

Essential Oils

You can use an oil diffuser such as a lamp ring, a fan diffuser, or a candle diffuser to disperse a fragrance through your home. Since each diffuser will probably only have enough power to affect a single room, it's best to get several of these devices and put one in each room.

Target the scent of your choice by placing precisely the pure essential oils which correspond to the scents you desire into the diffuser. For example, if you would like your home to smell like a rose garden, simply add a few drops of rose essential oil to the diffuser.

Candles

Burning scented candles is also an excellent way to control the fragrance of your home. Scented candles allow for a wide range of fragrances such as apple, vanilla, cherry, pomegranate, cranberry, and other scents which can be difficult to create using essential oils. The fragrances last longer than air fresheners and as long as they're natural, are safer to breathe.

Decide which scent you prefer before selecting your candle. Then really smell the candle deeply to ensure that it has the fragrance you desire. Try purchasing larger candles which are inside glass jars with lids. They will give off a more powerful scent, and can be enclosed so that the scent doesn't leak off when you don't want it to. Keep in mind, though, that many candles give off little fragrance when burned. So you may want to experiment with a few scented candles before purchasing a lot of one specific brand or fragrance.

Learn more about this author, Guinevere Shepherd.
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