Tips and tricks to make your perfume last all day

Tips and tricks to making your perfume last all day

Do you find that when you spray on your perfume before work in the morning, by the time you’re heading out for drinks in the evening the scent seems to have evaporated? Rather than douse yourself in an unnecessary amount and risk using your perfume to quickly, you might simply need to reconsider where and how you are applying it. Just because your perfume doesn’t last all day, it doesn’t mean it’s no good; even the most expensive of perfumes tend not to last if you’re not spraying them in the right places. Take a look at these top tricks to ensure your designer perfume lasts longer…

Apply immediately after you shower

After a shower, your clean pores will open up in the steam, making it the perfect time to apply your perfume. As soon as you step out of the shower, gently towel-dry your skin and spray on your scent to your pulse points. Your open pores will soak up the scent and leave your skin smelling fabulous all day long. However, don’t apply the perfume while your skin is still wet as it will only rub off when you dry yourself!

Moisturise

This tip works especially well for those with dry skin, who may find that they struggle to retain a fragrance for very long. Moisturising before you spritz yours will help your skin to absorb the scent and ensure it lingers all day. As well as this, it will help to protect your skin from irritation caused by the alcohol in your perfume. Often, many perfumes will come with their own moisturiser, which is definitely worth investing in.

Avoid rubbing your wrists together

Many people will spritz their perfume onto one wrist and rub it onto the other, but doing so may actually be contributing to its earlier demise. Whilst this can be a good practice when testing a new perfume because the increased heat from the friction will give you a faster idea of how the scent will smell on your skin, doing so daily will cause the more volatile top notes of a perfume to evaporate faster. This may cause a slight imbalance in the scent, and you may find that it smells significantly different to how it was intended, and may not last as long. Spraying each wrist separately will help your perfume to last longer.

Find your pulse points

Coco Chanel said, ‘A woman should apply perfume wherever she wants to be kissed.’ Well, if she wants to be kissed on her sensitive pulse points, that’s a great tip! You are likely to generate the most heat at your pulse points, which can help to intensify your fragrance and can help to amplify your scent. Pulse points include your wrists, your neck, behind your ears, your temples and the top of your back. Most people will stick to their wrists and neck alone, but sparingly expanding your repertoire to include other areas may help your scent to last all day.

Spray in your hair

It might sound strange, but if you think about how long the smell of your shampoo or conditioner seems to last in your hair, you’ll know it’s very good at holding fragrances. One or two sprays in the middle or on the ends of your hair will ensure that every time you pass someone, your hair will leave a lasting scent. Spraying your hairbrush is a good tip too, as it will transmit the scent without drying out your hair as much.

Don’t mix too many fragrances

Layering the right fragrances can work really well, but too many can start to work against one another. You’ll find that there are fragrances in most of your products, such as your shampoo, moisturiser and even your makeup, so ensure that the fragrances go well together. If your brand of perfume provides shampoo and moisturiser or you can find neutral or delicately related scents, use these instead.

Whether your perfume is niche or designer, these top tips should help it last all day and ensure that you stay smelling wonderful for longer. For further advice on perfume, be sure to check our regularly updated blog.

Seven tips to longer lasting perfume

Buying designer perfumes can be a wonderful and luxurious experience, and provides a good opportunity for you to spend some time pampering yourself. However, if you find you’re buying replacement bottles of your scents with alarming frequency, it may be the case that you aren’t being strategic enough about their application. If you’d like to smell as fresh and delectable in the evening as you did when you stepped out of the front door at 8am, take a look at our seven tips below to ensure your fragrance lasts that extra mile…

1) Put it on before you get dressed

Perfumes are all about volatile oils and sweet-smelling chemicals. Because of perfume’s composition, it is activated by both heat and reactions with the oils on your own skin, which means they’ll work better when in contact with the body instead of your clothing. That said, scents can be indirectly applied to clothing by scenting your closet through spraying perfumes sparingly on hangers or drawer linings. If you really can’t get enough of your perfume, some people also suggest adding just a couple of drops to your steam iron.

2) Stronger base notes

As Beethoven or Mozart used to do, perfumers use ‘notes’ as an art form to create different designer scents. In essence, a note is just another word for scent. As with music, notes can be light or heavy, and it is the top notes that are generally the first your nose will greet because they are made of much lighter, more volatile chemicals. These fruity and sweeter notes are rather fleeting and may even disappear in as short a time as ten minutes. Following these, the middle notes (or heart notes) last longer and generally include more pleasantly spicy or heady smells. Finally, the aforementioned base notes are longer lasting, often up to four hours. If you find your perfumes dissipate too rapidly, selecting a designer perfume with stronger base notes will help your scent to last all day.

3) Use the seasons to your advantage

The temperature and climate can have a significant impact upon a fragrance and how it sits on your skin. Warmer weather tends to energise the chemical reaction and speeds up the rate at which your perfume evaporates, which understandably leads to a much stronger scent. Conversely, evaporation works more slowly when it’s cold outside. To balance out these different effects, consider altering your designer perfumes seasonally. By choosing perfumes with greater top notes in the winter and greater base notes in the summer, you’ll ensure they evaporate at a more constant rate – so your perfume will be more likely to last the whole day through.

4) What’s your skin type?

Before buying a skin care product, it makes sense to know what kind of skin you have. The same applies to perfume too. The reason for this is that the alcohol content in a perfume tends to evaporate faster on dryer rather than oily skin, and the succession of notes that are released fades sooner.  In this case, it’s more advantageous to have well moisturised and hydrated skin.

5) Don’t forget to layer

In the same way that you layer your clothes, many people will layer their scents too, which can help them to last longer. To do so, you will need to use a variety of products that work well in unison together to carry your scent throughout the day. This may take the form of eau de toilette in the morning, lotion at lunchtime and a quick spritz from your travel atomiser on your pulse points towards the end of the day. Layering will help you to build a scent combination that gets you noticed without causing anyone to give you a wide berth.

6) Listen to your nose

It’s crucial that your scent arrives and leaves at the same time as you. However, it still needs to serve as a reminder that you are actually in the room, although subtlety is key. If the aroma is just noticeable to yourself, it probably means it’s fairly agreeable to others as well. In the situations where your nose may fail you, for example when you have a cold, it’s feasible that you may overdo it with your perfume application. Either ask a friend or family member, or just apply your scent conservatively – a practice that is advisable most of the time anyway.

7) Store in the right place

Elements such as heat and light clearly affect fragrance compounds, which can have even happen before a bottle is opened. To keep your favourite fragrance in its finest form, be sure to keep it in a cool and dry place. Don’t keep your perfumes in the bathroom as many people do, where changing temperatures and humidity levels can wreak havoc with their compounds. If you only have splash-style bottles, invest in an atomiser or diffuser. These will let in less air and other oils, thereby reducing both contamination and unwanted chemical reactions that may lead to your perfume breaking down before you have a chance to use it.

So, whatever fragrances you choose at Scent City, our helpful hints should go some way to ensuring that you’re sweetly scented throughout the day. For more perfume and beauty tips, make sure you visit our fantastic blogs.

Not sure where to start? Bois 1920 is an historical brand that all perfume lovers must discover. Selected among the best five olfactory expressions at the FiFi Awards (the Oscars of perfumery) in New York.