A fragrance oil is not a scent. It's a formula — aroma molecules, solvents, and often a fixative — built by someone for a purpose, and the same name on two bottles rarely means the same thing inside.
This guide starts with how to read what you're buying, then explains why two oils sold as the same scent can be genuinely different products.
Before you start. Everything here is a starting point, not a specification. Fragrance oils are concentrated materials handled at temperature near open flame. Where a supplier's guidance or an IFRA certificate differs from anything on this page, follow theirs.
The short version
- Read the whole product page, not the scent description. Flash point, vanillin content, compatibility notes, phthalate status, IFRA certificate, safety data sheet. Those tell you whether the oil will work; the scent notes tell you whether you'll like it.
- Set your load below two ceilings. The wax's stated maximum, and the maximum on that oil's IFRA certificate for candles. Use the lower.[1]
- Match your addition temperature to what your wax and fragrance suppliers specify for that combination. Flash point is a shipping and handling property, not an addition-temperature rule — see the making hub. Some oils still can't be added hot enough to bind properly, but that is a property of the oil rather than a consequence of its flash point.
- Test in your medium. A blotter sits at room temperature and a candle doesn't. Cold throw is not a reliable proxy for hot throw.
- Cure before you judge. Both the candle and, if you're blending, the fragrance itself.
Why five teakwoods smell different
Search any supplier for teakwood and you'll find several. They will not smell alike, and there are five independent reasons why — the last of which is remarkable.
1. The formula is a trade secret
There is no standard of identity for a fragrance name. Fragrance formulas are proprietary, and the exact ingredients are known only to whoever owns the formulation.[2]
The same absence you'll find in candle wax — no rule saying what "soy wax" must contain — applies here. General law still operates: the FTC prohibits deceptive advertising, safety data sheets are required, IFRA standards bind their members. What doesn't exist is a rule saying what teakwood must be.
2. The extraction method changes the material
The same plant, run through different processes, yields different materials — each with its own molecular fingerprint, olfactory character and cost.[3]
Steam distillation vaporises the oil and condenses it; it handles most of the world's lavender, rose and frankincense but is too harsh for delicate flowers. Expression is mechanical pressing, used almost entirely for citrus rind. Solvent extraction dissolves aromatics along with waxes into a semi-solid concrete, which is then washed with ethanol and filtered to yield an absolute — one important commercial route for delicate flowers such as jasmine and tuberose.[3] Supercritical CO₂ extracts at low temperature, between 35 and 55 °C, and leaves no residue.[3]
Rose otto and rose absolute come from the same petals and are not the same material.
3. The solvent decides what it's compatible with
A fragrance oil is rarely just aroma chemicals. Cosmetics & Toiletries put the consequence plainly: dipropylene glycol is fairly polar, which makes it a good choice for a shampoo fragrance and a bad choice for a candle fragrance, where it would separate from the base immediately.[4]
Two oils with identical aroma molecules and different diluents behave completely differently in wax. This is covered in practice further down.
4. The intended application changes the formula
Room sprays are built for lift and fast bloom. Reed diffusers need capillary action within a viscosity window. Candles need hot throw, cold throw and a workable flash point. Port a room-spray formula into wax and it underperforms.[5]
5. And at the molecular level, the smell may come from an impurity
This one is worth the detail.
Iso E Super is one of the most widely used woody materials in perfumery — discovered at IFF in 1973, patented as Isocyclemone E. Fragrantica put its cost at around nine cents a gram,[6] and Première Peau estimate it appears in around 40% of fragrances.[7]
The principal material has a much higher odour threshold than the minor component carrying much of the characteristic odour.
In the 1990s, Givaudan chemists established something odd. The Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry reports Iso E Super's odour threshold as 500 ng/L, as given in the original patent.[8] The characteristic scent comes instead from an impurity present at about 5%, since named Iso E Super Plus.[8]
How much more potent that impurity is depends on where in the paper you look. The narrative gives its threshold as 5 ng/L; Table 1 lists the same compound at 5 pg/L — a thousandfold difference within one publication.[8] We can't resolve which is intended. What holds either way is that a five-percent impurity carries the character of the material, and that the (+)-enantiomer, arborone, is the form that smells while its mirror image is described as having a faint odour.[8]
Source: Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 15 (2019). The 5 ng/L and 5 pg/L figures are both printed in that paper, for the same compound.
Fragrantica, writing in about 2016, added that no method could yet make even racemic arborone on an industrial scale; the best material available was an isomer mixture with two to three times the usual arborone content, around 10%.[6]
Which means commercial material can differ in the composition of the fraction that actually carries the smell.
You can't see any of that on a label. What you can see is flash point, vanillin, compatibility, an IFRA certificate and a safety data sheet — which is why those fields matter more than the word teakwood.
Reading a product page
Six things on a fragrance oil listing tell you whether it will work. Most makers read the seventh — the scent description — and skip these.
Flash point. The lowest temperature at which the oil gives off enough vapour to ignite in the presence of a spark or flame. Its practical relevance is shipping and handling — it is not an addition-temperature rule. More on this below.
Vanillin content. Predicts discolouration. Vanillin-rich oils discolour over time, from light tan through to almost black.[13] It's an appearance issue rather than a safety one, but it decides whether your white candle stays white.
Compatibility. Whether the oil is rated for your medium. Gel wax is a mineral oil system and needs non-polar oils, with most gel manufacturers also requiring a flash point at or above 170 °F (77 °C). Soap compatibility is a separate question — see the solubility section for what can go wrong.
Phthalate status. Meaningful, unlike most free-from claims. Covered in its own section below.
The IFRA certificate. Properly a Certificate of Conformity to IFRA Standards, issued by the manufacturer of the fragrance mixture rather than by IFRA. It gives the maximum concentration for that specific oil in that specific product category, and it is the document that governs your load, not a general rule. ⚠️ IFRA's own position is that conformity to its Standards does not substitute for national or local law — which is why the CLP and REACH obligations further down are a separate question rather than the same one.
⚠️ An essential oil usually has no certificate, and that is structural rather than evasive. A Certificate of Conformity covers a fragrance mixture. Where an IFRA Standard exists on a raw material — a citrus essential oil, say — IFRA's Guidance states that the supplier “should not issue an IFRA certificate as such,” and that suppliers should instead communicate the raw material's conformity with the corresponding Standard “in a different format.”[32] So the absence of a certificate is not the absence of information: for a natural, ask how the supplier communicates conformity and what constituent data they can give you. The Standard still applies with full force — what is missing is a single mixture-level document translating it into one use level for you.
The safety data sheet. A hazard communication document — flash point by method, specific gravity, hazardous components above threshold, and any Proposition 65 warning. Note it will not list the full formula; that's trade secret, which is reason 1 above.
The certificate and the SDS do different jobs. The IFRA certificate is a dosage document: how much you may use. The SDS is a hazard document: what you're handling and how. Neither substitutes for the other.
| Document | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| IFRA Certificate of Conformity | How much of this mixture may be used, in which product category, under the applicable IFRA Standards? |
| Safety Data Sheet | What hazards apply, and how is it handled, stored and shipped safely? |
| Technical Data Sheet | How does the supplier expect it to perform? |
| Product page | What is the supplier telling a buyer? |
| The formula | What is actually in it — and you don't get this one. |
Where fragrance oils come from
Four companies make a large share of the world's fragrance. Givaudan, IFF, Symrise and DSM-Firmenich together hold about half of the global flavour and fragrance market, by one market-research estimate.[16] IFF's annual SEC filings describe the structure: their main competitors are other large global companies, then mid-sized companies, then numerous regional and local manufacturers, then consumer product companies who may develop their own.[17]
Your craft supplier sits in that third or fourth tier — buying compounds, or having them made, rather than inventing them.
Some molecules aren't for sale. Houses patent aroma chemicals and keep them exclusive for the patent term. These are called captives, and houses have tried to develop alternatives to arborone specifically — cheap bulk arborone still isn't available to the craft market.[7]
That's a structural reason a craft oil can't smell exactly like a designer fragrance. Some of the material isn't available.
And there's a layer between the molecule and the formula. Perfumers don't only work from individual compounds — they buy pre-built accords, which patents call proprietary specialty bases.[18] So a formula can contain a base whose own composition the formulator doesn't fully know, and whose properties they have to get from the supplier.[18]
Naturals are expensive because yields are terrible. Between 3,500 and 5,000 kilograms of Rosa damascena petals produce one kilogram of essential oil.[3] That ratio is most of the answer to why natural materials cost what they do — and why synthetics dominate.
Building a scent profile
Top, middle and base aren't poetry. They're volatility, and volatility is measurable.
The tiers have numbers
A Firmenich patent defines them by vapour pressure at 25 °C (1 Torr ≈ 1 mmHg):[18]
- Top notes sit above 0.1 Torr. They evaporate fast, read citrusy, green, light and fresh, and deliver the first impression — but perfumers don't rely on them to carry the fragrance over time.
- Middle or heart notes fall between 0.001 and 0.1 Torr. They become dominant a few minutes in and last a few hours, and they're where florals, fruits, marine and spice notes live.
- Base notes sit below 0.001 Torr. Animalic, woody, sweet, amber, musky — not perceived as dominant until several hours in, during dry-down.
A second patent gives 0.08 and 0.0008 Torr at 22 °C.[23] Those aren't competing figures: vapour pressure rises with temperature, so the thresholds shift with the reference point.
There's a second scale if you'd rather not chase vapour pressure data. A Procter & Gamble patent classifies by Kovats Index — a gas chromatography retention measure. Top below 1300, middle 1300 to 1450, base above 1450.[24]
The proportion rule that circulates is not a universal law
You'll see 30/50/20 recommended widely — 30% top, 50% middle, 20% base.
Published sources use substantially different proportions, several of them base-heavy. Perfumer's Apprentice teach 55% base, 20% middle, 25% top, and state plainly that a fragrance at 20% base and 50% top would not last long on skin.[25] A 2009 chemical-engineering paper reports Carles's classic proportions — middle 30–40%, base 45–55% — before calling that traditional view an oversimplification.[26] The P&G patent specifies 10–20% top, 20–30% middle and 45–70% base.[24]
Three independent sources cluster base-heavy, which makes the popular rule the outlier among the sources that give reasons. ⚠️ That is not the same as showing it backwards — 30/50/20 describes a strategy rather than a requirement, and a top-heavy blend is a legitimate choice if brief brightness is what you want. What the clustering does show is that the rule is not a law, and that longevity is the thing it trades away.
One caveat: these are skin-perfume proportions. A candle is a different system — heat plus a wax matrix — so treat them as grammar rather than a candle recipe.
Some base materials are also fixatives — that's why the proportion matters
⚠️ Base note and fixative are not interchangeable categories. A base note is a low-volatility material that persists; a fixative is a material that slows the evaporation of the blend around it. Many base materials do both, which is why the terms get used as synonyms — but a material can be one without being the other.
Base notes don't merely arrive last. They are often used as fixatives, changing how fast the top and middle notes evaporate.[26]
The mechanism is stated in a patent: a fixative prolongs a fragrance by delaying the evaporation of volatile materials, achieved through hydrogen bonding with the other components, which lowers the mixture's overall vapour pressure.[27] Some fixatives are relatively low-odour and work primarily by slowing evaporation — miscible in both polar and non-polar solvents, with a higher boiling point than what they hold back. Others are strongly odorous and do both jobs.[27]
That description fits a solvent fixative — diethyl phthalate is the obvious example, and it has its own section below. Many base notes both smell strongly and fix: oakmoss, vetiver and musks do both jobs at once.
So a top-heavy blend isn't just short-lived. It has nothing holding it down.
The arithmetic
Perfumer's Apprentice give one method that makes this buildable.[25]
Start with a base accord. Say six parts oakmoss, four vetiver, one musk — eleven parts of base. If base should be 55% of the finished blend, divide: 11 ÷ 0.55 = 20 parts total. Middle is 20 × 0.20 = 4 parts. Top is the remaining 5, which is 25%.
Build the base accord first, then the middle, then the top. The base is the largest component and the one that determines whether anything lasts.
Solubility: why an oil works in one thing and not another
A fragrance oil that performs beautifully in body lotion can separate out of wax within minutes. The reason is phase compatibility, with polarity a major variable — and it's largely decided before you ever open the bottle. This is reason 3 above, in practice.
The solvent is doing more than diluting
Cosmetics & Toiletries set it out: a fragrance has three parts — aroma molecules, solvents, and sometimes surfactants. The aroma molecules themselves span a wide polarity range: pinene and limonene are non-polar, vanillin and phenylethyl alcohol are polar. A blend is generally treated as non-polar overall — until the solvent package pulls it polar.[4]
Because fragrances rarely contain only aroma chemicals, and solvents profoundly influence the polarity of the blend. Their example is the one to remember: dipropylene glycol is fairly polar, making it a good choice for a shampoo fragrance and a bad choice for a candle fragrance, where it would immediately separate from the base.[4]
It also explains gel wax. Gel is a mineral oil system — about as non-polar as a candle medium gets — which is why gel manufacturers specify non-polar oils.
What to do about it: buy oils sold for your application. An oil marketed as all-purpose has been optimised for one medium and compromised for the others — usable, but rarely best.
Soap has four named failure modes
Cold-process soap is where fragrance misbehaviour is most visible, because you watch it happen. Recipe and temperature contribute, but the fragrance is usually the trigger.
- Acceleration — the fragrance speeds up trace, and the batter thickens faster than you can work it.[29]
- Seizing — acceleration taken to its conclusion. Makers call it soap on a stick: the batter turns to a thick, clay-like mass that won't pour.[30]
- Ricing — a component of the fragrance binds with the harder base oils and forms rice-shaped lumps through the batter.[29]
- Separation — the fragrance prevents emulsification, and oil pools on the surface.[29]
Plus discolouration, which is the vanillin story again and can run from light tan to nearly black.[30]
Bramble Berry's mitigations are worth following: make a small test batch first, use a whisk rather than a stick blender, add fragrance at the last possible moment, soap at lower temperatures, use full water, and favour recipes with more soft oils.[29] A seized batch is often salvageable by switching to hot process.[29]
Fragrance load
Two ceilings, and you use the lower.
The wax's maximum is the carrying capacity of its crystal network — the mechanism is in the wax guide. Exceed it and the excess doesn't disperse; it separates, beading on the surface or pooling at the bottom.
The oil's maximum is on its IFRA certificate, for your specific product category.
Neither ceiling is negotiable, and they aren't the same number. Lone Star put it plainly on their product pages: the load is the maximum the wax holds, and your oil's IFRA ceiling may be lower.[1]
One belief worth retiring: more fragrance does not mean more throw. Past the wax's capacity it inverts.[31]
And the same load can be two different numbers. Fragrance load is a percentage of wax weight — 8% means 8 g per 100 g of wax. Fragrance content is the proportion of the finished candle: the same 8 g in 108 g total is 7.4%. US suppliers generally teach load; European practice and CLP calculations work in content. Check which a recipe means before scaling it.
IFRA and CLP are not the same thing
These get conflated constantly, and they do different jobs.
IFRA is a voluntary industry standard, binding on members, setting safe-use limits by product category. It governs your recipe.
CLP is law — Regulation EC 1272/2008 — requiring hazard communication to consumers. It governs your label.
An IFRA certificate does not substitute for a CLP label.
On Category 12, the misconception worth clearing: IFRA's categories are ordered by skin contact, and candles sit in Category 12. IFRA's own guidance defines it as products not intended for direct skin contact with minimal or insignificant transfer, and states that because exposure is negligible, "the concentration of fragrance ingredient is not restricted in the finished product."[32]
But that's the category-level rule. Restrictions are set per material, and per-material limits live in IFRA's Standards Library rather than in the category guidance. IFRA does not set a generic candle-load cap — your wax does, and the certificate for your specific oil may still cap particular materials within it.[32]
The regional asymmetry matters if you sell across borders. In the EU a candle isn't a cosmetic; it falls under overlapping frameworks — general product safety, REACH, and CLP. There's no single EU candle regulation. The general-product-safety layer is the General Product Safety Regulation (EU) 2023/988, which replaced the earlier directive and has applied since 13 December 2024. It is deliberately horizontal: a safety net for consumer non-food products and for risks that sector-specific legislation doesn't already cover, which is why it sits alongside CLP and REACH rather than instead of them.[44] ⚠️ We have not found candle-specific guidance under it; what is documented is the regulation's scope and application date, and that candles are not among its excluded categories. Treat it as a third instrument to check with your own compliance advice, not as a settled account of what it requires of a candle. The US has ASTM F2417 as a voluntary standard, the CPSC lead-wick rule as the mandatory piece, and California's Proposition 65. Europe carries substantially more binding labelling obligation.
Phthalates
This is the most contested claim on a fragrance oil product page, and most of what's written about it conflates two different things.
Phthalates are a family, not a chemical. Several are classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction and are restricted or prohibited in cosmetics and other applications across various instruments. Directive 2004/93/EC, which amended the EU Cosmetics Directive to bring CMR-classified substances into the prohibited annex, lists dibutyl phthalate, bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate and bis(2-methoxyethyl) phthalate among them.[36]
The one used in fragrance is diethyl phthalate — DEP — and it is not among them. It appears nowhere in that directive. Different compound, different toxicological profile.
The regulatory record is specific. The EU's SCCNFP reviewed DEP in opinion SCCNFP/0411/01, adopted 4 June 2002, concluding its safety profile supported cosmetic use and recommending no restrictions; the position was reaffirmed in 2003 and revisited by the SCCP in opinion SCCP/1016/06, adopted 21 March 2007.[37][38] No IFRA Standard restricts DEP in the way the CMR phthalates are restricted — but the certificate for your specific oil is the document to check.
What it actually does is the part relevant to your bench. DEP is a solvent and fixative — the job description from the profile section above: not odorous itself, miscible in polar and non-polar systems, higher-boiling than what it holds back. Perfumer & Flavorist note it's compatible with most wax blends and can cause fragrance bleeding if used in excess.[39]
It also affects viscosity, which affects how readily a wick draws fuel. Blaze & Foam state that their wick chart is based on performance using Golden Wax 464 and phthalate-free fragrances[40] — they state the condition rather than explaining a mechanism, but it's a supplier treating phthalate-free as a variable worth naming.
Every prominent source on this topic has a commercial position. Suppliers selling DEP-containing oils defend it. Suppliers selling phthalate-free challenge it. One brand claims IFRA restricted DEP in fine fragrance in 2019, which we could not verify and which sits awkwardly against IFRA's own materials. And a peer-reviewed regulatory review describes phthalates as a class as endocrine disruptors, listing DEP alongside DBP and DEHP — class-level claims sweeping in a compound the regulators treat separately is precisely how this becomes confusing.
Phthalate-free is a real recipe change. It is not the same fact as "this oil used a banned CMR phthalate."
Throw
Cold throw is what you smell from the unlit jar. Hot throw is what fills the room. They don't correlate, and the second is the one that matters.
The flame doesn't touch the fragrance. It heats the wax; a shallow melt pool forms; fragrance evaporates from the pool surface and drifts into the room. The flame's job is heat, not scent.[31]
Which means wick performance is one of the major determinants of hot throw. A larger, hotter melt pool releases more fragrance — so an under-wicked candle with an excellent oil will underperform, and the fix is the wick, not more fragrance. If throw is weak and the pool is small, change the wick first. See How to Choose a Candle Wick.
Cure matters twice over. The candle needs time — vegetable wax keeps hardening for weeks, and the wax guide covers why. And a blend needs time: finished fragrance is left to macerate in temperature-controlled vats for weeks or months so the molecules settle.[41] You don't need to macerate a finished supplier oil the way you macerate a blend you built yourself.
CandleScience put the commercial framing well: cold throw wins customers, hot throw keeps them coming back.[42]
Testing
Test in your medium. A blotter sits at room temperature, skin is warmer, and a melt pool is hotter than either. Longevity on paper overstates longevity in use.
Change one thing at a time. Oil, load, wax, wick and pour temperature all interact. Change two and you've learned nothing.
Record your conditions — room temperature, addition temperature, load, cure time, wick. Without them you can't tell which variable produced which result.
Judge throw at production cure, not at two days. And judge your wick on cured candles, or you'll size it wrong.
Test the specific combination, not the components. An oil that works at 8% in one wax may bleed at 8% in another. The load ceiling belongs to the pair.
Expect the oil to vary too. Formulas are reformulated, suppliers change bases, and the material that carries the character may be a minor component whose proportion drifts between batches. If a fragrance behaves differently and nothing in your process changed, the oil is a candidate.
What to take away
A fragrance oil is a formula, not a scent. Two bottles with the same name can differ in composition, extraction, solvent, intended application and — at the molecular level — in which minor component is doing the work.
You can't see any of that on the label. You can see flash point, vanillin, compatibility, an IFRA certificate and a safety data sheet, and those tell you more about whether an oil will work than the scent description does.
Read the numbers. Respect both ceilings. Match your temperature to the oil rather than to a rule. Build base-heavy if you're blending. And test in the thing you're actually making, because that's the only place the answer lives.
Search fragrance oils →Sources
- Lone Star Candle Supply, fragrance oil product pages, for example Lavender. Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Wholesale Supplies Plus, Fragrance Oils — Frequently Asked Questions. Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Première Peau, Steam Distillation: How Ingredients Are Born, 21 October 2025. It also carries the extraction paragraph: steam distillation, cold pressing, solvent extraction to a concrete and then an absolute, and supercritical CO₂ at “between 35°C and 55°C” with “No residue.” Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Cosmetics & Toiletries, "Comparatively Speaking: Fragrances in Nonpolar Bases vs Water-based Systems", Anthony J. O'Lenick Jr., 13 July 2010. ↩
- I'Scent, Why Same Name, Different Base Smell Different: “If you port a ‘room spray hero’ straight into wax, it'll underperform or smell off.” The brand publishes at customfragranceoil.com. Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Matvey Yudov, Fragrantica, The History of Iso E Super in Perfumery. Undated; its earliest reader comments are from March 2016. Accessed 27 August 2026. ⚠️ Corrected 15 September 2026: this page previously said commercial grades raise the proportion “only modestly”. The article says “two-three times as high a content (that is around 10%)”, and the 10% is arborone content. ↩
- Première Peau, Iso E Super: The Molecule You Can't Smell: “Iso E Super sits in roughly 40% of contemporary fine fragrances.” Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Stepanyuk, A. & Kirschning, A., "Synthetic terpenoids in the world of fragrances: Iso E Super® is the showcase", Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry 15 (2019) 2590–2602. ↩
- US Patent 6,740,713, citing ASTM DS 48A and Calkin et al., Perfumery, Practice and Principles. ↩
- US Patent 7,407,650, Fragrance compositions. ↩
- Amoore, J. E. (1977), “Specific anosmia and the concept of primary odors”, Chemical Senses 2(3), 267–281. The six compounds tested are isovaleric acid, l-pyrroline, trimethylamine, isobutyraldehyde, androstenone and ω-pentadecalactone (Exaltolide). Percentages as reported by Leffingwell & Associates, Odor Detection Thresholds. ⚠️ The study is identified; the specific rates quoted here are Leffingwell’s reading of it and have not been verified against the full text. ↩
- Gillmeister, Nagai, Margot, Meesa, Matsunami & Hummel, Olfactory training in specific anosmia to androstenone and its association with genetic variations of OR7D4, IBRO Neuroscience Reports (2025). A study of 335 volunteers, not a review; the 1.8–75% range is background it cites from Bremner et al. (2003) and Triller et al. (2008). ↩
- Tweak and Tinker, Using Fragrance Oils in Soap Making: “Discoloration can range from a light tan to a dark brown almost black color.” ⚠️ This is a cold-process soap article. It says nothing about wax, and nothing about UV, so the sentence above was narrowed on 2026-09-13 to the claim the source actually makes. Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Calwax LLC, Safety Data Sheet: Ceda Serica Coconut & Apricot Candle Blend, revised 10 June 2020 — corrected 2026-09-13 from “3 June 2024”. ↩
- Waxverse, Candle Pour Temperature Guide: “Low-flashpoint citrus essential oils (typically 45–55°C) cannot be added at any normal pour temperature … will barely bind, and will throw quietly.” Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Fortune Business Insights, flavors and fragrances market analysis: “Some of the key market players are Givaudan, International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), Symrise AG, and Firmenich SA. These four stakeholders hold about 50% of the global marketplace.” Accessed 27 August 2026. ⚠️ Corrected 15 September 2026: this footnote also cited IMARC for an upper figure of 55%. No IMARC page checked, live or archived, carries a share figure for these companies, so the 55% and the IMARC citation were removed. ↩
- International Flavors & Fragrances Inc., Form 10-K for fiscal 2019, which names “the three other large global flavor and fragrance manufacturers, Givaudan, Firmenich and Symrise”, and for fiscal 2025, filed 27 February 2026, which names “other large global companies, such as Givaudan, Novonesis, DSM-Firmenich, Symrise, Kerry, and ADM”. Both list the same four tiers in the same order, and both say consumer product companies “may develop” their own. ⚠️ Corrected 15 September 2026: this page previously gave the fiscal 2019 wording, “three other”, in the present tense. ↩
- US Patent 9,814,661, Fragrance compositions. ↩
- Alpha Aromatics, How Perfume Is Made — A Master Perfumers' Industry Guide. Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- McGill University Office for Science and Society, The Smelly Truth About Fragrances. ↩
- US Patent 5,355,718, Aroma emission analysis system. ↩
- Hong Kong Baptist University, Department of Chemistry, Chemistry in Daily Life, on perfume analysis by GC-MS. ↩
- US Patent 12,290,591, Fragrance compositions. ↩
- US Patent 10,653,587, Array of absorbent articles including a fragrance accord and a lotion composition. ↩
- Perfumer's Apprentice, Advanced Blending Techniques. Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Teixeira, M. A., Rodríguez, O., Mata, V. G. & Rodrigues, A. E., “The diffusion of perfume mixtures and the odor performance”, Chemical Engineering Science 64(11) (2009) 2570–2589. The pyramid proportions are reported “According to Carles” in its introduction, which then calls that view “an oversimplification of the naturally occurring process of evaporation”. ↩
- US Patent 11,896,702, Fragrance-enhancing compositions. ↩
- US Patent 6,767,507, Uncomplexed cyclodextrin compositions for odor control. ↩
- Bramble Berry, How to Work with Misbehaving Fragrances. Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Soap Queen, Soap Behaving Badly. Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Sweet U Candles, Hot Throw, Explained: “Overload it and you tend to get the opposite of what you wanted … often a weaker scent, not a stronger one.” Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- IFRA-RIFM, Guidance for the Use of IFRA Standards, 51st Amendment, 30 June 2023. Category 12 definition p28; candles rationale p53; certificates for raw materials §7.14 p67 — “When there is an IFRA Standard on a raw material (e.g., citrus essential oil), the supplier should not issue an IFRA certificate as such. Instead, suppliers should communicate to their clients the conformity of the raw material with the corresponding IFRA Standard in a different format.” Read from the PDF, 16 September 2026. ⚠️ Currency, checked 7 September 2026: the 51st is the amendment in force. Consultation on the 52nd closed 12 June 2026 and IFRA published its End of Consultation Letter on 31 August 2026, but final notification has not been issued — so the 52nd is not binding and a press release about it is not a rule change. Categories 10, 11 and 12 are all under review as part of that work, which is every category an air-care or candle guide depends on. ↩
- Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland, Candles and CLP. ↩
- Health and Safety Authority (Ireland), Obligations of EU candle and reed diffuser producers under REACH and CLP. ↩
- Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 (CLP), Annex I, section 3.4, as introduced by paragraph 3.4.3.3.1. Table 3.4.5 gives the generic concentration limits that trigger classifying the mixture — Skin sensitiser Category 1 ≥ 1,0 %, Sub-category 1A ≥ 0,1 %, Sub-category 1B ≥ 1,0 %. Table 3.4.6 gives the lower elicitation limits behind the supplemental statement — Category 1 ≥ 0,1 %, Sub-category 1A ≥ 0,01 %, Sub-category 1B ≥ 0,1 %. (The regulation writes decimals with a comma.) ↩
- Commission Directive 2004/93/EC of 21 September 2004, amending Council Directive 76/768/EEC. Phthalate entries: dibutyl phthalate (675), bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (677), bis(2-methoxyethyl) phthalate (678). ↩
- SCCNFP/0411/01, adopted 4 June 2002. ↩
- SCCP/1016/06, adopted 21 March 2007. ↩
- Siegel, R., “Creating a Winning Candle Fragrance—from Brief to Manufacture”, Perfumer & Flavorist 32 (June 2007), 34–38, sidebar “Glossary of Common Candle Fragrance Solvents”: “Diethyl phthalate (DEP): A commonly used solvent compatible with most wax blends, which can cause fragrance bleeding if used in excess”. Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Blaze & Foam, Wick Guide — archived copy, 17 September 2025. ⚠️ The live URL previously linked here now returns 404. The archived copy carries the sentence cited: “The wick chart below is a guide only, based on performance using Golden Wax464 and phthalate free fragrances from Blaze & Foam.” Replaced 2026-09-13. ↩
- Embark Perfumes, How Perfume Is Made: “the perfume is left to macerate (age) in temperature-controlled vats — sometimes for weeks or months.” Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- CandleScience, Golden Brands 464 Soy Wax. Accessed 27 August 2026. ↩
- Bremner, E. A., Mainland, J. D., Khan, R. M. & Sobel, N. (2003). "The prevalence of androstenone anosmia." Chemical Senses 28(5), 423–432. Screened 55 subjects by standard methods for a 16.3% putative non-detection rate; forced-choice retesting found that group detected androstenone significantly above chance (P < 0.001) despite low self-reported confidence. Estimated actual non-detection in young healthy adults, 1.8–5.96%. Verified against the record 7 September 2026 — note the paper's own framing targets a prior estimate of roughly 30%, so the figures on this page from other studies are not the ones it set out to revise. ↩
- Regulation (EU) 2023/988 on general product safety (GPSR), applying from 13 December 2024 and repealing Directive 2001/95/EC. ⚠️ Cited for the regulation's scope and application date only. No candle-specific guidance under it was located, and this page does not state what it requires of a candle. Checked 7 September 2026. ↩