Perfume Formula Book
Geneva Andreotti
Our perfume formulas are created through chemical analysis, olfactive knowledge and research; inspired by the most popular fragrances on the market. An excellent source for understanding how successful perfumes and their notes are constructed.
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Fast forward to high school, and I had to save and spend my own money to buy perfume and became acutely aware of the cost of smelling like a movie star. I had one bottle of perfume that lasted me six years because I hardly ever wore it.
That being said, with the whole not-having-time-to-shower mom conundrum, there are days when a natural perfume would be nice. Many conventional perfumes contain over a dozen chemicals that do not have to be disclosed on the label.
This led me into a rabbit hole of research on the perfume industry and how perfumes are created. The good news is that while the final product took a lot of patience on my part, it was well worth it and it is most definitely cheaper than store bought perfumes (especially because I seem to have a gift for liking the most expensive perfumes at any store without seeing the price tag).
Most perfumes are a mixture of fragrance oils in an alcohol base. There are base fragrances, mid-tones and top notes. When you smell a perfume, the top notes are typically the first thing you smell, followed by mid and then base notes.
I include my favorite recipe below, but the key is finding the oils and ratios that work for you. I recommend adding a few drops at a time of each one and keeping a journal of how many drops of each are added. Once you find your favorite blend and write it down, it is easy to duplicate.
NOTE: I photographed the perfume in the pretty glass bottle for Pinterest sake, but I recommend making and storing homemade perfume in a less-expensive dark colored bottle like this one to help preserve the pure scents of the oils. Also, my perfume looks blue green from the three drops of blue chamomile oil I added.. you can omit this if you prefer a more neutral color perfume, though this has not ever stained even white clothing.
Today I would like to share with you the formula for my own personal jasmine natural perfume. Formulas are not often shared so why am I doing this? Simply because over the years I have learnt a lot on the web about many topics that I am interested in, thanks to generous people willing to share their knowledge and experience. It is in this spirit that I want to share a personal fragrance formula that I love based on jasmine.
I normally have the base ingredients representing a higher ratio in my formulas, however, the tinctures here are acting as a base. To help the longevity of your fragrance, make sure your skin is well moisturised with an unscented product where you will apply the fragrance. This gives the perfume something to hold on to.
@Hirondelle21 a handy hint when selecting potential solvents is to get a numerical value for viscosity - the most effective solvents for perfumes are 10 cSt/cP or less (for comparison, water and alcohol are both around 1 cSt)
Many companies and individuals approach PerfumersWorld to act as consultant perfumers for them and we have to quote thousands of dollars as it is time consuming and can be a complex matter. Now we have found an efficient way to offer you the many advantages of having the expertise of a team of consultant perfumers working for you without having to pay towards the $xxx,xxx /year salaries.
It is called The Perfumers Formulation Bulletin with 28 great new formulations per issue in the form of a GCMS* result or a perfume compound formulation all delivered to you by email in password protected .pdf files. Such as:
How are the Bulletins sent to me?
The Bulletins are sent out by email as password protected portable document files (.pdf) within 2 working days of your confirmed order.
The sample sets are shipped by mail or courier according to your checkout choices. More details on shipping Here.
I dont believe anyone ever gives formulations like this away!
We arent giving them away that's why theres a fee! It lets us focus on what we like doing, creating new formulas and allows you to focus on the 3 Ms, manufacturing, marketing and making money.
Are these Real Formulations or just demonstration formulas?
These are real formulations that can be made today. They are NOT like the "demonstration" formulations sometimes available from websites or perfumery books that cannot realistically be made because they contain some material no longer produced, with 10% of floral absolutes, only specialities from multinational companies, or some long since IFRA prohibited materials.
While acting as consultant perfumers to many clients it is clear that many of their needs are similar but if we privately act as consultants for them on their individual projects, it is expensive and we have to plan on recovering a minimum of $100/hour, which for the independent perfumer or growing company is a major expense. So, utilizing the fact that many of the requirements have areas in common we have been able to set up a system to share these costs and give you great value for money.
We know of a company that spent $250,000 for a package of 250 formulas to start a new company, thats $1,000 per formula! You would get more than this in just 10 issues for a fraction of a fraction, of the price!
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How does a perfumer turn a fragrance concept into a finished perfume? Why are many months required to bring a new fragrance to life? This description of the fragrance creation process is written from the artisan point of view since that is what I know best, but the steps are similar whether done on a large or small scale.
The method of formulation varies a bit from one perfumer to another. Some perfumers immediately write a complete formula with top, middle, and base notes, while other perfumers break the scent down to work on parts independently before putting the parts together. Perfumers often work on accords separately to use later in the full formula.
The image above shows a short example formula, from Perfumer Supply House, for the Givaudan chocolate key accord, which is not meant to be a perfume by itself but can be used as a rich chocolate note in perfumes. Some sample formulas are also shown on the Firmenich website, such as a demo formula featuring their beautiful rose base called Wardia. Most spreadsheets for full perfume formulas would include more ingredients than these simple examples, and the spreadsheet would include columns for ingredient concentrations and percentages in the finished product as well as a scaling factor to increase/decrease batch size. Perfumers usually develop their own spreadsheet format tailored to their method of formulating.
When the formula looks promising, the perfumer weighs out a small batch on a scale. Most artisan perfumers start by making small amounts with at least some of the ingredients in dilution. Small batches conserve ingredients and save money, which is wise given that the perfumer will likely need to make many trial versions, often called mods (short for modifications).
When making a tiny batch, say 10-30 grams, even one drop of some ingredients might be too much, so pre-diluting becomes necessary. Some ingredients in formulas need to be used at orders of magnitude less than others. For example, aldehydes, geosmin, civet, indole, and birch tar are some ingredients that are used in very small amounts.
Perfumers at larger companies often have lab assistants who weigh out the mods, and some labs have sophisticated machines that help with weighing formulas. Artisan perfumers create mods by hand themselves and dream about those formula batching machines!
Each time the perfumer weighs out a formula, he or she tests the result on skin and/or on paper scent strips. After sniffing, the perfumer adjusts the amounts of ingredients in the formula and might even add or remove a few ingredients. Evaluating each mod can require several wears, and the perfumer might need a few days away from the scent occasionally to freshen his/her nose. Working on two or more scents at once can actually help keep the nose fresh.
A fascinating and beautiful description of the fragrance formulation process is given in an interview with perfumer Michel Roudnitska on the Bois de Jasmin blog. Roudnitska says that he spent two years creating about 300 trials before finishing the scent Bois de Paradis for the brand Delrae. (The effort was worthwhile for the gorgeous result!) In an interview on Fragrantica, Firmenich perfumer Olivier Cresp says that fragrance creation takes a few hundred modifications. It is interesting, and perhaps somewhat comforting to indies and artisans, that even the great master perfumers create many trial mods.
As with many creative endeavors, it can be hard to decide when to call the product done. The perfumer by nature feels the urge to keep tinkering, but eventually the formula is hard to improve any further and input from testers/clients/creative directors confirms that the final mod meets the goals and has some special appeal.
Once the final mod is chosen, the perfumer scales up the formula to production size. The perfumer adjusts the formula in the spreadsheet to increase the concentrations of most or all of the ingredients to 100% (neat), thus creating a nearly alcohol-free concentrate. All the alcohol is added after batching the concentrate, which is much more efficient than working in dilutions but is only possible when making larger batches.
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