Have you ever asked yourself the question,
how do I make perfume? You may have gotten some essential oils and started blending a few
drops of each together, only to realize that the result is something that smells like
herbal medicine. You may have wondered: How do the perfumes in the shop smell so good?
Well, that's the art of perfumery. Similar to picking up a guitar or a paintbrush for the first
time, it takes a lot of practice and knowledge to become a master of the craft. Becoming a
professional perfumer is extremely challenging, but that doesn't stop you teaching yourself to
be able to make great smelling perfumes at home. This video contains everything you need to know
to do just that. So, if you want to learn how to compose beautiful perfumes for yourself then
watch on. So then, to begin learning perfumery, you're first going to need some equipment and
ingredients. Let's start with the equipment. I did a full video on this where I go into
more detail and I'll link that video below, but here are the essentials. Firstly, you'll need
a set of scales, ideally scales which can measure accurately down to 0.001 grams. By investing in
this you can measure out small blends which make your expensive perfume ingredients last longer.
If you can't afford an 0.001 gram scale you can use an 0.01 gram scale to get started. Don't
be tempted to skip using a scale at all however and use drops because it will cause you issues
further down the line. Next you will need some sample bottles. This is where you'll make most
of your test perfumes to avoid wasting money on expensive perfume bottles. You'll need disposable
plastic pipettes; I like boxes of 500, and paper blotters or “scent strips” as I call them. You'll
also need a pen and some labels to identify all of your mixtures. Other equipment such as glass
beakers can be useful too but aren't necessary to begin with. Check out my video on equipment for
the full details. I will suggest some ingredients to get started with in a second, but firstly
let's talk about the different types of fragrance ingredients. In perfumery, these are referred to
as raw materials, so we'll use that term from now on. Now raw materials can be divided into three
classes: Naturals, Synthetics (or Aromachemicals as you might hear them referred to as) and Bases.
We'll talk more about bases later. Naturals can further be broken down depending on how they
are produced. The most common are Essential Oils these are extracted from plants using steam
distillation which is when you pass steam through harvested plant material to capture its natural
oils. Another type of natural commonly used in perfumery are Absolutes. these are created
by extracting plant material with solvents and are often both longer lasting and offer an
aroma closer to that of the natural plant. There are other types of Naturals such as resinoids
and CO2 extracts but I won't go into them here. Aside from naturals we have synthetics. These are
single molecules created in a lab unlike naturals which are mixtures of hundreds of molecules
extracted from nature. Synthetics are vital to Modern perfumery and they are responsible for most
great modern perfumes. Synthetics usually have a clean and distinct olfactory signature and offer
the perfumer and possibilities to go far beyond the smells found in nature. They are often easier
to use and are critical for getting close to the kinds of smells you find in perfumes you can buy
in the shops. A common misconception and perfumery is that naturals are safer and better for the
environment than synthetics. This is not true however as a rule and (the safety of) each raw
material must be taken on a case-by-case basis. Finally, aside from your raw materials, there are
solvents: things like DPG and IPM. The only one that you'll need as a beginner is Cosmetics grade
ethanol or a similar product called perfumer’s alcohol. This is what you'll add to your fragrance
concentrate to turn it into a perfume. Let's talk about some of the most important raw materials in
perfumery which I think would be a great starting point for your beginner's palette. Iso E Super
Hedione and Ambroxan are probably the most famous perfume molecules amongst the general public and
all for good reason; they're all long lasting and diffusive notes which help your perfumes to be
smelled from a distance and they contribute to that elegant shop-bought smell. Bergamot Essential
Oil is one of the most widely used citrus notes and is often used to bridge between the top and
mid notes of a perfume. I'll explain what top and mid notes are shortly. Ethylene brassylate is
a widely used musk and helps provide longevity and a soft lingering skin scent. Patchouli is an
aromatic herb related to mint and lavender and its essential oil is widely used in many
types of perfume and contributes to many important accords. Vanillin is a smell most people
would recognize as vanilla: it's widely used in flavourings but also to provide vanilla sweetness
to perfumes. Finally, dihydromyrcenol is a fresh aromatic top note which is synonymous with men's
aftershave. I'll put a link in the description to other videos I made on good raw materials
for beginners since this list only scratches the surface and I just can't cover them all in
this video. So then, all of these raw materials, where do you buy them? It's an important question
since synthetics can be hard to find and most essential oils that you find online are not of the
standard of quality necessary for fine fragrance. Cheap low quality naturals often feature off-notes
which will ruin your perfumes and make them smell like aromatherapy blends. You want to avoid things
marketed as fragrance oils as well since these are generally made to be as cheap as possible for
businesses selling mass market home fragrance products like scented candles or similar. I found
that the most reliable way to get quality raw materials is to buy from places which specifically
sell raw materials for perfumery. Some examples are in the USA Perfumer's Apprentice, perfumer
supply house and creatingperfume.com. In the UK Pell Wall and Harrison Joseph are both fantastic.
In the EU de hexerij, PCW and Perfumiarz. There's also Perfumer's World in East Asia and they
offer fairly cheap international shipping. This isn't an exhaustive list but certainly
covers some of the most popular ones in 2022. Right then, so you've got your equipment and
raw materials, now how do you make perfume? Well not quite yet. Before we can talk about
learning to make perfume we quickly need to cover some common terms. Firstly EDT and EDP;
that's Eau de Toilette and Eau de Parfum. There are others but these are the most common eau
de toilettes are a less concentrated form of perfume and usually cheaper commonly these would
be around 10 fragrance concentrate to 90 alcohol. Eau de parfum on the other hand are far
more concentrated; often around 20 fragrance concentrate and 80 alcohol. These are loose
terms though and the percentages may vary. Another important concept is that of top, mid and
base notes. Top notes are the shortest lived notes in your perfumes but also have the most impact
when you spray it out of the bottle. Base notes on the other hand are the longest lasting notes
and last until the very end meaning more hours on the skin. Middle (or just mid) notes are, well,
in the middle, and you will use all three terms frequently when talking about the composition
of your perfumes. Finally it's important to know the difference between Accords and Bases since
both are common terms which refer to mixing raw materials together. An accord in perfumery is a
bit like a chord in music; it's a name for when a particular combination of smells results in a
smell which is more than simply the sum of its parts. Think about it as a harmony amongst smells.
A Base on the other hand is a reproducible formula that can be made and used like a single raw
material in future perfumes. Think of it like a lego brick. A good example would be an Amber
Accord; the combination of Labdanum Absolute and Vanillin creates a unique smell which is
referred to as an Amber Accord. If you change the proportions a little you will still get an amber
accord because you still have that combination. however if you fix the proportions you've made it
into a reproducible formula which you can make up in a separate bottle and now use in your other
perfumes as if it were single raw material. as such, now your accord can also be classified as
a base. enough of the boring terminology. let's start talking about making perfume. when you're
just starting out, making nice feeling perfumes straight away is challenging without a good dose
of luck and that's because you still need to learn your fundamental skills. think of it like a
musician learning to play the piano; yes you might be able to learn some basic songs, but to
begin composing and improvising, it really helps a great deal to know your scales first. in art it's
the same; you may be able to trace a picture of a person, but to make one up for yourself without
a reference, you'll need to know anatomy and of course other bits like color theory will help you
complete the painting. so yes, you could easily create a nice perfume if you had the formula;
you'd simply weigh out the raw materials. but I assume that's not why you're watching this video.
you want to be able to reliably create your own formulas. that means you're going to have to learn
some fundamentals in perfumery. I've been doing this for a while and over that time I've developed
a simple three-stage model for learning perfumery. those stages are: 1. learning your raw materials,
2. learning to create accords and basses, and 3.learning to create perfumes. I'll now show
you the basics of each stage. just remember even when you advance to the next stage, you still
need to continue practicing everything from the stage before. let's start then with stage one:
learning the raw materials. when you first begin it's very tempting to open all of your materials
and just start smelling them out of the bottle. sometimes it just has to be done if you can't
contain your excitement, but it's not going to get you very far in the long term and that's
because raw materials are concentrated fragrance and your nose starts to shut down when bombarded
with so many smell molecules. the technical term for this is “olfactory fatigue”. it just means
your nose gets tired quickly in order to smell or “evaluate”, as it's technically called, your raw
materials properly. you first need to dilute them. I like to dilute mine down to 10% in alcohol
but the percentage is up to you. some people prefer 20% since it's naturally an eau de parfum
instead of an eau de toilette concentration. what you pick is up to you, just be consistent.
I've linked a video which I made which shows how to make these dilutions step-by-step, it's
in the description if you want to follow along. once you've got your dilutions you next need
to evaluate them using the following process: firstly take and label a scent strip (for example
“hedione 10%”) and then dip it into your dilution. Pro-tip: fold the ends up like this to stop them
cross-contaminating via your desk. after waiting a few seconds for the alcohol to evaporate, hold the
scent strip about one centimeter from your nose. it's important that it doesn't touch your nose
however, since this will cause cross-contamination and more of that olfactory fatigue. try to
describe the smell and write it down. this is for your future reference. write down what the smell
reminds you of and any descriptors which describe the smell. now leave the scent strip for a while
and later repeat this process regularly for the first day and then less frequently thereafter
until you can no longer smell it. this is really important because it allows you to work out if
your raw materials are top, middle or base notes. as a rough rule I would class notes lasting less
than a day on a scent strip as a top note, less than a week as a mid note and longer than a week
as a base note but the boundaries are blurry. this information will be vital when you come to compose
your perfumes so do not skip it. ideally you would repeat this process of dilution and evaluation
with a much weaker dilution, but it’s especially important for strong raw materials. this is
because some raw materials can be deceptively strong and either smell bad or not at all until
they've been diluted down enough. I usually do 1% as my secondary dilution. it may seem tedious,
but you're building fundamental knowledge which will later help you compose perfumes. Stage
two: learning to create accords and bases. once you're confident that you've learned your
raw materials, the next step is to learn to create basic Accords. I'll now show an example with the
Amber accord we discussed earlier. a classic Amber Accord is made up from two components: Labdanum
(usually the Absolute is used) and vanillin (a synthetic vanilla molecule). if we take the two
at our 10% dilution on separate scent strips and hold them together we should immediately have an
idea of the smell of the Accord. this technique is frequently used to test the harmony without
going to the trouble of making a trial blend. now that we're happy that our Labdanum and
Vanillin harmonize together, let's make our first trial blend. weigh out 0.500 grams of the
10% dilution you made earlier of each raw material using separate pipettes into a new sample vial.
never put a used pipette back into a different raw material since it will become contaminated
and ruin the second raw material. now label your sample and write “amber accord trial 1”. Now,
since blending raw materials fills the air in your workstation with aromas, which in turn causes
olfactory fatigue or in other words tires out your nose, I like to get some fresh air before
evaluating. Then, simply evaluate in the same way as you would have for a dilution. we want
to make sure we get the smell as close to our personal taste as possible which means finding the
best ratio. when analyzing the smell of the trial blend, we would decide if the ratio is just right
or if one thing is stronger than we would like. if that's the case, simply adjust the ratio and
make successive trial Blends until you're happy. we could stop there and have our two component
accord or continue to repeat this process adding more raw materials. if you're interested in
learning more about this methodical style of perfumery, Google “The Jean Carles method”. stage
3: learning how to create perfumes. Okay so we've made an accord. now let's try to make it into a
perfume. there's no fixed method for doing this, but armed with the knowledge you've built up from
before you should now have an intuition for how you might want to build a formula. this intuition
will get better over time with practice. let's start off with our Amber Accord from before. after
studying it, you'll realize that it's a base note. let's pick a mid note to ensure the perfume
has a heart character with reasonable volume. let's use rose since it's a classic, and to
make sure we're hit by a zesty sparkle when spraying the perfume, we'll add Bergamot as a
top note. so I tested this by holding together the scent strips with those raw materials
like before and while a good starting point, the theme seems a little flat on its own, so
I decided to add some extra elements. since we already have the floral Rose and fresh Bergamot,
I was thinking we could go for an Italian summer type of light fragrance that some brands seem
to be doing at the moment. we'll use Helional to create a fresh Sea Breeze effect and also because
I think it Blends well with rose. some Florol, a universal fresh floral note and finally Hedione
which has a diffusive citrus leaning floral note. now looking at the base, the Amber is quite
strong so let's dose it low and scaffold it with some musk and Iso E Super to create a more
neutral structure. Finally, we'll add some subtle embellishments: Ambroxan to emphasize the Amber
Marine elements and Alpha isomethyl ionone to create a comforting Veil. now to make our trial
formula we simply weigh everything into a sample vial with our disposable pipettes like before. I
like to make five gram trials for perfumes with my 0.001 gram scale but you should make larger trials
if you have only an 0.01 gram scale to ensure you maintain accuracy. Again, we can evaluate on the
scent strips. contrary to advice that you may have seen Elsewhere on the internet do not add some
things smell it then try to add some more since your olfactory fatigue will warp your sense of
smell and there'll be a bias towards perceiving the newly added things more strongly than they
really are. instead come up with a formula idea, make it, and then evaluate it when your nose is
fresh. when you have an idea for an addition or a subtraction even, make the whole formula again
with that addition or subtraction. an added benefit of this method is that you now retain
both samples so you have them to directly compare to each other. creating successful perfumes
takes many iterations like this and you will learn the most and save yourself Confusion
by only making a minimal number of changes per trial. ideally one change per iteration as
a beginner, but as you become more advanced you will be able to make more changes per iteration
successfully while still understanding the effect each change has individually on the smell of your
perfume. before you get started making perfume, make sure you educate yourself first on how to be
safe when doing so. remember that alcohol and many of the raw materials that you'll be using are
flammable so keep flames and heat sources away from your perfumes and materials at all times. raw
materials are concentrated substances and some of them may be toxic or act as skin irritants or have
other hazards associated with them. this is true for both Naturals and synthetics. remember that
often essential oils are produced by plants to protect themselves. for that reason never ingest
raw materials or put them on your skin in their pure form unless you know it's safe to do so.
to ensure that you're using raw materials at safe levels in your perfumes, do your research
on the IFRA and follow the IFRA standards. if you don't know, the IFRA is a professional body
which strives for safety in fragrances. I also recommend always having some kitchen roll on hand
to wipe up any spillages you may make accidentally and you can also use gloves and lab goggles
if you wish to protect yourself even further. Finally, I will share some of my top books for
perfumery so you can continue your self-education after you finish implementing everything in this
guide. let's start with “Perfume, the Alchemy of Scent” my most recommended beginners book for
perfumery. it was written by Jean-Claude Elena, a master perfumer who used to make perfumes
for Hermes, the luxury brand. the book offers a concise introduction to perfumery and the industry
as well as providing a list of the raw materials he uses to make his own perfumes and even some
combinations of raw materials for Accords. the best part is the book is really cheap and
accessible and it doesn't take very long to read. my favourite book for perfumery of all time is
probably “perfumery practice and principles”. this one is expensive but in my opinion well worth it
if you're serious about perfumery as a long-term commitment. it's the best textbook style source
of information I found that gives great advice covering all three of my stages for learning
perfumery. if those aren't enough, I'll also recommend a few more: “scent and chemistry” is
incredible if you're a chemist but very technical so I wouldn't recommend it to the average person.
then we have “Diary of a nose” which is another one by Jean-Claude Elena. this one is a diary
so less packed full of practical information but nonetheless it is a captivating read and comes
with even more combinations for accords than the first book. someone called Steffen Arctander
has some excellent books containing monographs. i.e. descriptions of the smell of both natural
and synthetic raw materials, despite being 50 years old. if you're looking for a book with some
formulas for bases and a focus on the business and industry side of things then try “introduction
to perfumery”. it's a professional textbook and does contain a lot of information. if you're still
watching, firstly, congrats and hopefully now you have a much better idea of exactly what you need
to do to learn to make great smelling perfumes yourself. like any art, perfumery takes a lot
of time and practice, but if you stick with it, the results are rewarding visit. my channel to
access a library of videos just like this covering all aspects of perfume creation and finally don't
forget to subscribe to get new videos like this in your subscription feed every week. good luck
with your perfumery and I'll see you next time.
