Secrets to Making your Perfume Last All Day

Secrets to Making your Scents Last All Day

Perfume has been described as being the “ultimate sensory experience, calling up emotions and forgotten memories.” If there were lessons in fragrance then fragrance 101 would be learning the secrets to making your scents last all day.

How long a fragrance lasts on the skin is not the same for every individual. As a general rule a perfume (or parfum) or eau de parfum should last anywhere from six to eight hours while an eau de toilette can last anywhere from three to four hours. The higher concentration that an eau de toilette has the longer it will last. Dry skin doesn’t retain scent as long as oily or combination skin. Oily skin contains more natural moisture and that’s why it holds in scent longer. The PH levels in a person’s skin (which is the amount of acidity in the skin) are not the same for everyone. What your own personal levels of PHs are will determine how a scent will react to your skin. Other things such as pregnancy, menopause, stress, medication and hormonal changes, even eating foods with a lot of garlic or spice in them can affect how they smell on you and how long the scent will linger on your skin.

The best way to encourage your scent to last all day is to layer it. In other words use more than one product of the same scent. For example start with a body wash or body gel and then use the complementary scented soap. If your fragrance doesn’t have its own soap, then to avoid a clash of scents, use a non-scented soap. After your bath or shower while your skin is still wet apply a generous amount of body cream or lotion and then to finish up the layering process, spritz or dab some of your favorite fragrance on a pulse point. Your skin will warm to the fragrance and absorb it making you smell heavenly and giving the scent lasting power.

It is not advisable to apply scent behind your ears because that area of your body contains a lot of sebaceous glands, which will have an effect on how the fragrance smells both when you first put it on and hours later. A fragrance body lotion contains approximately three to five percent aromatic oils while a body cream has even more, approximately eight percent. Due to the high concentration inherent in both, your fragrance once layered, can last for many hours and even a full day later you will be able to smell the scent ever so faintly. Warnings about soaps- if you use a deodorant soap when you bathe don’t apply perfume immediately afterwards as the scents might clash and it also isn’t good for the skin (too much scent!).

Other secrets to making your scent last all day include applying it right after you take a shower or bath as your pores are open and will easily soak up the fragrance. An excellent way to do this is before you get dressed, while you are still naked, spray your perfume into the air and walk through it as it falls. If you do this before you dry off it will work even better. Since perfume has more lasting power on oilier skin types, try applying a small amount of petroleum jelly to the areas on your body where you plan to apply perfume. The jelly will give the perfume something to cling to and thus increase its lasting power.

Many people don’t realize that when applying perfume to their skin it is always best to spray from the ankles up because like hot air, fragrance also rises and if you apply it lower on your body it will adhere to your skin for a longer period of time. Another secret to applying fragrance for longevity is to not use your fingers to apply it directly. Instead put it on a cotton ball before you put it on your skin or even better, use an atomizer.

As a good rule of thumb, spray your scent approximately twenty centimeters away from your body. If you spray an even amount of fragrance over a larger area it will last much longer than if you instead concentrate it over a smaller spot of your skin. Scents last longer if applied to pulse points (the sides of the neck, the inside of the wrists, the elbow creases, between the breasts, around the ankles and behind the knees). People often make the mistake of rubbing their wrists together assuming that will intensify the scent. It will not! In fact it will have the reverse effect and will end up distorting the notes that comprise the fragrance.

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