With a new season unfurling on the breeze, tender leaves poking through (sometimes still frosted) soil and buds, well, budding; we’re joyously welcoming spring and using the opportunity to change-up the way we’re scenting our homes. We feel, since lockdown and with so many still Working From Home, that most of us now understand that candles certainly aren’t just for Christmas or the colder, darker months anymore.
Nowadays, we adore punctuating the hours by lighting differing scented candles to match the season (and our mood), and perfuming our homes with diffusers, incense and yes – even pot pourri is having an olfactory moment once again!
Here, we offer suggestions for how to layer your home fragrances, and point you toward some that feel so-right for right now – casting off the heavier, swaddling scents we’ve loved and lived with the last few months and getting ready for lighter, brighter perfumes wafting as we WFH…
How to Scent-Scape:
Expert Maxine Brady says: ‘Scent Scaping is an up and coming trend I’ve seen really grow the last few months. It’s about using aroma and scents to zone our homes, either room by room or during differing times of the day. I like using a different fragrance in the morning to evening. I like decorating a home with candles and diffusers, and arrange them much as I would art in a room, to bring them to life. I never think a room is finished until I put a candle on my sideboard.
Lately our homes have been our whole world – that’s a lot of pressure on our surroundings, and it’s hard to set boundaries, so using home fragrance allows me to transfer from a work space feel to a more homely escape. It’s a very clever way to balance our mental health as well as making our homes smell beautiful.’
Use your nose as well as your eyes to decorate your home. Perhaps a hallway is where you put a lovely diffuser to welcome your guests and having it smell gorgeous at all times? As a decorating tool, home scents are a really clever way to bring up & coming trends into your home without changing all the furnishings! Use complimentary coloured vessels to your wallpaper or furnishing colours. People are loving sharing #shellfies on social media.
Use aroma to mark the changing seasons. Fresher sunny scents in summer, and warmer woodier scents in colder seasons. Changing those scents and bringing them into your house really helps stop one day blending into another. According to John Lewis, the average online searches for home scents went up by 600%. For diffusers, the searches were up by over 1000% A candle is an instant pick me up when you need a treat.” Michelle: “I like to use home fragrance to enhance my mood or to change up my mood.”
Create an indoor garden bringing the outdoors in. We know home plants have become incredibly important – the flow between spaces can be between your garden and indoors. Dot plants and succulents around a diffuser – reuse the containers when empty as plant pots or the diffusers as mini vases.
Press the reset button with the power of scent. After a busy and stressful day, it can be hard to mark a line between weekdays and your weekends – reclaim your home and say the weekend starts now. Clear away work things, laptops from tables, shove the kids toys in a box and light a candle as a scene-setter and mood re-setter.
Maxine Says: ‘All these tips are ideal if you rent rather than own, because you’re unable to change wallpaper and paint, or sometimes even furnishings, you can make the space your own by stamping your personality with home scents…’
What We’re Burning:
La Montaña Cloud Burst £39 for 220g
Spring showers are, of course, a feature of the weather this season, but Cloudburst is inspired by the mountainside after a summer storm, when the rain clouds part and strong sunshine lances through, stirring up a heavy mist of fragrance. In this haze, notes from our herb garden mingle with fresh citrus from our lemon and lime trees, along with the signature fragrances of the wild mountainside. We’ve always thought of this as a sister fragrance to First Light; in First Light it’s all clarity and freshness, whereas Cloudburst seems older and wiser – but just as beautiful.
La Montaña Wisteria £39 for 220g
We have a long history with wisteria, from the flower-festooned walls in Granada on our first wedding anniversary to the wisteria we tried to grow in a pot next to our front door in England. But now (finally!) we have it growing abundantly in our garden here in Spain and it’s a divine scent that says ‘home’ to us. Wisteria is a stunning, one-of-a-kind fragrance anywhere, but when it’s flowering in pure mountain air, the beauty of its perfume is life-affirming.
STORIES Nº.01 Bougie Parfumée Scented Candle Trio £95 for 3 x 70g
Stories No.1 was the transformative beginning of founder Tonya’s healing journey through scent and travel, telling ‘the uplifting story of sorrow transformed into beauty, of the dark yielding to the light.’ So, woodiness and amber swoons with swirling blossom notes on a breeze. A limited edition, sustainably made, scented candle trio, inspired by the individual top, heart and base notes of STORIES Nº.01 Eau de Parfum – reflecting the top, heart and base notes of STORIES Nº.01 fragrance; inspired yet not identical, with some creative tweaks.
STORIES Nº.02 Bougie Parfumée Scented Candle Trio £95 for 3 x 70g
For 02, Tonya reached further back in her fragrant memories to recollections of her own childhood, evoking joyful days spent in her grandfather’s garden. ‘In the greenhouse, rose bushes stood among orange trees, on which blossom and fruit grew in tandem,’ Tonya recalls, with pots of patchouli lining the patio, which she had the sensation and scent memory of rubbing the leaves on to her wrists. In this trio, you will discover plumes of perfumed garden memories which bring the outdoors in so, so beautifully.
Written by Suzy Nightingale
