Scent Atlas

The twelve scent families

An oil's name tells you little about how it will fill a room. Its family tells you more: what it shares with other oils, and how it might sit beside them.

Neighbours share a quality. Bergamot and petitgrain sit side by side: both are bright and fresh, so together they blend smoothly, almost as one.

Opposites make a contrast. Bergamot sits across the wheel from patchouli: one light and quick, the other low and slow. A contrast isn't a mistake. It gives a blend shape, the way a dark wall makes a pale chair stand out.

Try a pairing for a room

1Choose the room

2Choose up to three oils

Choose an oil's name on the wheel to add it, or a family to see all its oils. Inner ring family · middle ring oil · outer ring note: top on the outer edge (first to arrive, first to leave), middle (the heart, what you notice once the opening settles), base on the inner edge (slow to arrive, last to leave).

Your pairing

Choose an oil's name on the wheel to add it.

Choose a family

Choose a family on the wheel to see its oils.

3How they might sit together

Add an oil, and the reading will appear here.

To try at home

Notice the shape of a scent

Most of us only notice a scent when it is new. After a few minutes the nose stops reporting it, and we stop paying attention. Coming back at set times lets you catch what you would otherwise miss.

Choose one oil you already have and put it in a diffuser in one room. Stay a few minutes and notice what you smell first.
Then step out for twenty minutes. If you stay, your nose soon stops noticing the scent. When you come back in, what meets you at the door?
Come back after an hour. What is left is closer to the base.
Another day, add a neighbour from the wheel. Then try one from across it. Which do you prefer, and in which room?

Write down the room, the hour and the oils. One oil, one room, the same hour: over a few weeks, you learn your own nose.

What it gives you

You learn how each oil moves through your own rooms: which stays, which fades, which fills a small space too quickly. And you learn which room you return to, and how you feel there. That is the Self-Place Bond in small: the relationship between you and your home, noticed one scent and one room at a time.

A Year of Rooms, our 365-day practice, gives this a page each day.

Before using any oil, read the safety information.

Families are a way of sorting, not a rule. Many oils sit between two: lavender is floral and herbaceous, petitgrain is green and citrus. Notes are relative too: they describe how quickly an oil leaves the air. The pairings are not formulas. They are an idea of how oils might behave together in a space; your nose and your room have the final word.

Every oil in the Scent Atlas shows its family on its card.