It all makes scents: how "scentscaping" can enhance your home and workplace
Scentscaping products can enhance interiors and home spaces
Smell is said to be our strongest sense. Clever use of fragrances can affect our mood, trigger memories and even impact the ambiance of a room. For 2015, scents are on the interiors map, with fragrances being used in many guises to subtly enhance spaces in the home.
Perfume, the evocative novel by Patrick Suskind, explores the power of scent and its ability to influence our emotional state, to mould our lives. The theme is embraced by Australian entrepreneur Belinda Everingham, who says the book inspired her to launch Bondi Wash, a line of gloriously scented, natural home cleaning products and washes that are now available in Hong Kong.
“I was inspired by the desire to give pleasure through scent,” she says.
Using Australian plants, flowers and essential oils, Everingham created a line of natural alternatives to household cleaners: floor washes, bench sprays, room mists and even a dog wash. Their ingredients include fiery Tasmanian pepper, paperback, pungent lemongrass, cleansing tea tree and lavender. So, while each product contains natural disinfectants, it also fills the home with a delicious fragrance.
“I wanted to bring Australian botanicals into homes all round the world – just like the French have done with their cosmetics and fragrance industries," Everingham says. "Australian botanicals are only just starting to be researched and discovered. Many of our natives have anti-bacterial properties, so a range of ‘washing’ products that use these powers made sense to launch with.”
Everingham’s timing couldn’t be better, as her products neatly fit into the growing home-trend of "scentscaping": layering scents in the home.
“Scentscaping is when different scents are used in different parts of a residence or business to create distinct feelings,” explains Jennifer Dublino, vice-president at United States-based ScentWorld. The sense of smell is the only human sense processed in the limbic system of the brain, she says.
"The limbic system is the seat of our emotions, our memory and our associative learning," Dublino explains.
"Therefore, scents easily become paired with experiences or events that have an emotional component. For instance, if your mother made a certain kind of delicious food when you were a child, smelling that food will generally produce feelings of comfort, relaxation and happiness. Vanilla is almost universally considered to be a pleasant scent because it’s one of the dominant fragrance notes in breast milk.”
Hotels and spas, and shops and malls have long used scents to influence feelings and buying behaviour. In 2012, Dunkin Donuts in Seoul embarked on an advertising campaign that included a coffee aroma. The scent was activated by diffusers on city buses, and released while Dunkin Donut ads were playing on the buses' radios. The company’s goal was to boost brand awareness and increase sales of coffee in their stores along the bus route. As a result, the stores' traffic increased by 16 per cent and their sales jumped by 29 per cent.
Scent can be used to equal effect in the home, and the right aroma can help to set a room's tone.
“Scent not only impacts people’s moods, but also their behaviour and perceptions,” Dublino explains. “For example, a cucumber scent makes a room feel larger and a barbecue scent makes it feel more intimate. People feel a room is cleaner when they smell a lemon scent, and energized by peppermint, eucalyptus or citrus.”
Dublino and Everingham say products containing essential oils produce purer fragrances than synthetic alternatives, whether as a mist-spray, candle, oil, atomiser, diffuser or even a bench spray. “Essential oils are completely plant-based – no synthetics,” Everingham explains. “The term ‘fragrance’ or ‘parfum’ is actually a labelling loophole as it can mask a multitude of toxic chemicals, which don’t need to be listed on the bottle."
Essential oils also have health and wellness benefits, she says, citing how Bondi Wash's "specially designed fragrance for dogs, Paperbark & Lemongrass, will help calm both you and your dog, repel insects, and kill bacteria and nasties on their skin”.
Scent is very personal, so a fragrance must be right for you. Dublino says: “For spring and summer I love citrus scents, especially sweet orange. For autumn and winter, I like vanilla, amber, and dark berries, like cranberry and cassis.” She adds that she uses candles sparingly and instead recommends cold air diffusers, which disperse oil evenly and safely in the home.
Everingham suggests mixing fragrances. “I find the sweeter scents work well in the kitchen and living areas, and in the bathrooms, fresher, greener scents work well – so I am using our Sydney Peppermint & Rosemary Hand Wash, Body Wash and Mist Spray at the moment," she says. "Sometimes, I just place a few drops of essential oil onto a bowl of pebbles I have collected. The essential oils eventually evaporate but it is a lovely way to scent the home naturally”.
