1 · What this guide is
Three products that look like one. A room spray, a linen spray and a pillow spray can be the same liquid in the same bottle with the same nozzle, and they answer to three different sets of safety limits.
This guide covers what they are, how they physically work, and how to make one. It does not cover reed diffusers — those work by capillary action rather than atomisation, which is a different problem — and it does not cover anything you intend to put on skin, which is the perfume guide. For choosing which fragrance oil to use, see the fragrance oil guide.
I am not a formulator. My background is thermal systems — Navy submarine nuclear service, and Senior Reactor Operator at civilian nuclear plants since 2020. What I bring is training in evaporation and mass transfer applied to a subject where the published guidance contradicts itself, and a habit of going to the primary document.
Where a supplier's instructions or an IFRA standard differ from anything here, follow theirs.
The most useful thing on this page is not a recipe. Section 4 decides which of the three products you are making, which determines which limits apply — and that decision comes before you weigh anything.
2 · Before you start
The category question, in short
A room spray maps to IFRA Category 10B. A linen spray maps to 10A. A pillow spray is explicitly listed by IFRA in Category 11B, a skin-exposure category — IFRA treats fragrance transferring from bedding to your face as skin exposure.[1]
Different categories mean different maximum concentrations for the same fragrance material. Section 4 has the detail and the reasoning, and it is worth reading before you buy anything.
Ventilation and inhalation
This is the failure mode that differs from candles and perfume. You are producing an aerosol and standing in it.
- Work in a ventilated space, and do not test-spray repeatedly in a small closed room.
- Fragrance aerosols can irritate the airways, so avoid repeated spraying in enclosed spaces and consider other occupants before testing — an aerosol is a different exposure route from the same material on skin.
- If you are using alcohol as a carrier, the fire precautions from the perfume guide apply — flammable vapour, no flame, ventilate.
Surfaces
Everything you spray lands on something, and some of those things will be damaged by it.
Test on an inconspicuous area before you spray anything you care about. Fragrance oils can stain fabric, and solvents can damage finishes on wood and painted surfaces. Section 8 covers this properly, but the habit starts now.
Preservation — the one people miss
A water-based product creates the possibility of microbial growth that an anhydrous one does not have. Wax has no water. Perfume is mostly alcohol. A room spray built on water is neither.
The SCCS Notes of Guidance (12th revision, 2023, Appendix 9) states that in some justified cases — giving alcohol content above 20% as its example — end product microbiological testing is not necessary, citing ISO 29621.[2]
⚠️ Read that carefully, because it is narrower than it looks. It says testing may not be necessary above that threshold. It does not say a product below it will spoil, and it is not a licence to skip preservation.
What follows practically: a water-based spray below that alcohol level cannot simply be treated as falling within the example of a product for which end-product testing is unnecessary. It needs a preservation strategy and appropriate microbiological assessment rather than an assumption. If you are making one bottle for yourself and using it within weeks, the risk is different from making a batch to give away — but “I'll use it quickly” is a plan, not a preservative.
⚠️ IFRA Standards do not address microbiological preservation. Across all 73 pages of the 51st Amendment Guidance for the Use of IFRA Standards there is no mention of microbial contamination, bacteria or mould[1] — it is not their subject. Microbiological preservation is a separate discipline with its own standards, and this guide does not attempt to teach it.
3 · A first room spray, start to finish
Before anything: decide which of the three products you are making, and look up the limit for your fragrance material in that category. Section 4 explains why this comes first.
1. Decide the product
Room, linen, or pillow. Not “all three” — see section 4 on dual-use products, which take the limiting result across every intended use.
2. Look up your limit
For the specific fragrance material, in the specific category. From its IFRA certificate, not from a general figure or a supplier's blanket recommendation.
3. Choose the carrier
Water, alcohol, or a blend. Section 7 covers what each buys you. For a first attempt, a high proportion of alcohol is simpler — it dissolves more, evaporates cleanly, and sidesteps the preservation question above.
4. Weigh, do not measure by volume
Same reason as every other formulation: materials have different densities, so a formula reproduced by volume is a different formula. A scale reading to 0.01 g is enough here.
5. Combine the fragrance and the solubiliser first
This is where beginners fail, and it is worth doing deliberately.
Fragrance oil does not dissolve in water. A solubiliser helps incorporate it into the water phase and keeps the result homogeneous — and it works by being combined with the oil before the water arrives, not added afterwards to rescue a mixture that has already separated.
Combine the oil and solubiliser and stir until uniform. If your solubiliser is thick or semi-solid at room temperature, warm it gently until it flows before mixing.
⚠️ The ratio is formulation-specific. It depends on the solubiliser, the fragrance oil, and the carrier, and there is no universal number — which is why suppliers publish a starting ratio per product rather than a general rule.
6. Add the water phase slowly
Gradually, with gentle mixing. Watch it as it goes in.
If it goes cloudy, that is information. You have exceeded what your solubiliser will hold at that ratio. Section 6 explains what is happening.
7. Check it after standing
Leave it for a day and look at it.
Clarity tells you the formulation isn't currently scattering enough light to look cloudy. ⚠️ It does not by itself establish stability over time or across temperature — but a spray that stays clear for a day has passed a useful screen. “Shake well before use” is usually an instruction for one that did not.
Some products are intentionally two-phase, and those are a deliberate design. But if you were aiming for a single clear liquid and got a separation, the formulation has not solved the problem — and the practical consequence is that early sprays deliver mostly water and later ones deliver mostly oil.
8. Test on the surface you intend to use it on
An inconspicuous corner, and give it time to dry fully. Some staining only appears after evaporation.
9. Bottle and label
Including the date, the formula reference, and — because this matters more here than anywhere else — what the product is for. The label is part of the formulation decision.
A worked example
⚠️ Not filled in yet, deliberately. This needs a named solubiliser, a named fragrance oil whose certificate lists 10A, 10B and 11B, a stated concentration below the relevant limit, weights in grams, and a stability observation over time. Unlike the perfume guide's, this one is achievable — a room spray is a short ingredient list. It stays blank until the products can be named.
4 · Which product are you actually making?
Source status — September 2026
Everything in this section is based on the notified 51st Amendment.[1] IFRA's 52nd Amendment consultation has closed and its End of Consultation Letter was published, but the final Standards have not yet been notified.
IFRA also states that a comprehensive review of product types in Categories 10, 11 and 12 is planned as part of preparing that amendment[1] — which is every category this page depends on.
⚠️ And the letter moves a row in the table below. Its §2.5 records that Category 10B is currently treated as leave-on for phototoxicity — which is why a 5 ppm furocoumarin limit would apply to it — and that the consideration is being changed “from ‘applicable leave-on’ to ‘applicable incidental’”, so that “the phototoxicity limit applicable to these products will be aligned with the limit currently applicable to rinse-off products (50 ppm).”[10] Category 10B is the room spray category, so expect that row to move, and upwards — IFRA notes that “as the revised limits are higher, implementation is expected to be straightforward.” Two Standards are revised to match: Tagetes oil and absolute, and Methyl N-methylanthranilate.
The revised furocoumarin Standard has two skin-contact limits, and which one applies depends on what the product is sold as. The Standard — renamed “Furocoumarins in Natural Complex Substances” — carries 1 ppm for products intended for deliberate sun exposure and 5 ppm for other leave-on products, and the letter's §3.1.1 makes the trigger explicit: it is an SPF claim or intended sun exposure, not the chemistry of the material.[10] A room spray is neither, which is what makes the rinse-off alignment above the provision that governs this page.
✅ This also settles a conflict this page previously could not. IFRA's news wording described Category 10B as including reed diffusers, while Table 12 of the 51st Guidance places reed diffuser oil in 10A — see source 9, the Guidance's §6.5.18.[1] The letter resolves it: the 52nd proposes moving reed diffusers and related products from 10A to 10B, so 10A is the current placement and 10B the intended one. Read from the letter itself rather than the news item.
Re-check the classification against the current amendment before using this for a product you intend to sell. Formal Notification of the 52nd is expected in January 2027, likely the second or third week; the Standards then enter force 11 months later for new creations and 30 months later for existing ones.[10] ⚠️ That date has already moved once — IFRA's June 2026 page expected Notification towards the end of November 2026 — which is why this box carries a date rather than an expectation.
Before you formulate
| What is it used on? | Category |
|---|---|
| Air only | 10B |
| Fabric and textiles | 10A |
| Pillows and bedding | 11B |
| More than one of these | Evaluate every intended use, use the limiting result |
These are product-use classifications, not a ranking of how dangerous the categories are. The rest of this section explains why that distinction matters more than it sounds.
For the products covered here, you are making one of three things. They can be the same liquid in the same bottle, and what separates them is what you say the product is for. That determines the IFRA category, which determines which restrictions apply, and therefore how much of a given restricted material the finished product may contain.
The three categories
| What you would call it | How IFRA lists it | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Room spray | “Air freshener sprays, manual, including aerosol and pump” | 10B |
| Linen spray | Within the household cleaning products entry — “fabric enhancing sprays, treatment products for textiles… deodorizers for textiles or fabrics” | 10A |
| Pillow spray | “Pillow spray” | 11B |
⚠️ Two of those are translations. One is not. “Pillow spray” is IFRA's own entry, word for word. “Room spray” and “linen spray” are not IFRA terms at all — they are shop words, and the mapping to an IFRA product type is a judgement someone has to make.[1]
Note also that “fabric spray” is not a Table 12 entry, though it is a natural shorthand and appears elsewhere in IFRA's documentation. A linen spray is cited to the long household-cleaning listing, not to a two-word convenience.
The one that surprises people: a pillow spray sits in a skin-exposure category
Category 11 is defined as products with intended skin contact but minimal transfer of fragrance to skin from an inert substrate. Category 12 — where candles live — is products not intended for direct skin contact.[1]
A pillow spray is in Category 11. Not because a pillow is skin, but because of how the product is used.
IFRA publishes its reasoning, in section 6.5.20 of the 51st Amendment guidance, and it is more specific than you would guess:[4]
The consumer instructions provided do not say the pillow surface should be allowed to dry before lying on it. IFRA therefore assumes the product is sprayed on the top surface, that the consumer lays their face on the pillow before the fabric dries, and that occlusion occurs when the face is pressed against it. Assuming complete transfer to skin was judged too conservative, so a wet facial wipe was used as the surrogate — a model assuming 20% of the product remains on skin.
So the driver is wet transfer under occlusion, not proximity to your face in the abstract. If the instructions said to let it dry, the model would be different.
⚠️ Note what that rationale reaches: Category 11, unqualified. It never says 11B. The reasoning gets the product into the skin-exposure category; the letter is assigned separately, by a different rule.
The A/B split is about phototoxicity
Category 11 divides:
11A — minimal transfer from an inert substrate, without UV exposure. 11B — minimal transfer from an inert substrate, with potential UV exposure.[1]
IFRA states that Category 11 covers leave-on products where phototoxicity considerations either apply or do not, depending on how likely UV exposure is, and that in 11A the question becomes irrelevant — expressed in the standards as an absence of restriction.
So for a material whose restriction is driven by something other than phototoxicity, the two categories can carry the same limit:
| Methyl N-methyl anthranilate (phototoxic) | p-BMHCA (not) |
|---|---|
| 11A: no restriction · 11B: 0.10%[3] | 11A: 0.017% · 11B: 0.017%[5] |
The category number is not a severity scale
This is the trap, and it is easy to fall into: 11B looks stricter than 10B because 11 is bigger than 10.
It is not a ranking. The numbers identify product-use categories, not danger levels, and how strict a category is depends on which material you are asking about.
Three materials, from their own IFRA standards:
| Material | 10A (linen) | 10B (room) | 11B (pillow) | 12 (candle) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| p-BMHCA[5] | 0.10% | 0.63% | 0.017% | 16% |
| Oakmoss extracts[6] | 0.10% | 0.10% | 0.10% | no restriction |
| Methyl N-methyl anthranilate[3] | 0.50% | 0.10% | 0.10% | no restriction |
Read the first two columns down.
For p-BMHCA, linen is six times tighter than room. For oakmoss, they are identical. For the anthranilate, linen is five times looser than room.
Three materials, three different orderings. “Linen spray is more restrictive than room spray” is true of the first, false of the second, and backwards for the third. It is not a rule — it is a coincidence that holds often enough to feel like one.
You cannot reason from the category number. You look up the material.
⚠️ A note on p-BMHCA, because it will confuse anyone who looks it up. Those are the figures in the 51st Amendment. IFRA prohibits the material in Categories 1 and 6, and restricts rather than bans it elsewhere.[5] Separately, EU law prohibits it in cosmetic products entirely.[7] Those are two different instruments reaching different answers, which is the perfume guide's central regulatory point. Whether an EU cosmetic prohibition reaches a room spray depends on whether that product is a cosmetic under EU law, which I have not established and do not want to guess at. It is used here to show how limits scale across categories.
The sharpest version of the point
Take the phototoxic anthranilate through the categories: no restriction in a candle, 0.10% in a pillow spray.[3]
Same material, same room, two very different exposure models. One of them puts fragrance on your face, wet, for eight hours. The other does not.
Why published categories disagree
Search for the IFRA category of a room spray and you will find suppliers disagreeing, including at least one site that contradicts itself.
The reason is not carelessness.
“Room spray” is not an IFRA term, so every supplier publishing a category for one is performing a translation from a marketing word into IFRA's product-type language — usually without saying they are doing it. Different people making the same judgement independently will land in different places.
So: do the translation yourself, in the open. Name the listing you matched to, and let the reader check your reasoning. If the mapping is arguable, say so. That is what the table above is doing.
If it does two things, evaluate both
The obvious commercial move is to label a product “room and linen spray” and sell it for both. The obvious formulation mistake is to calculate the limit for each use and take the higher one.
IFRA's guidance is explicit that a dual-use product is not simply given the more restrictive of its two categories: you compare the limits in both categories for every ingredient and take the lower limit for each. More generally, where a finished product is marketed for applications that cross several uses, the most stringent restriction should apply.[8]
⚠️ But “more restrictive” is per material, not per category. As the table above shows, linen is not always the tighter column.
There is no universally more restrictive category. There is only a more restrictive limit for a particular material in a particular use. Evaluate your material under each applicable category and take the limiting result.
The label is a formulation decision. Writing “also great on pillows” changes the intended use, which can change the applicable category and therefore the restrictions that apply. Decide what the product is before you decide what it contains.
Where the categories do not map cleanly
⚠️ This is worth saying out loud rather than smoothing over.
IFRA's split between 10A and 10B rests partly on how likely skin contact is, and partly on an assumption that hands are washed after application — reasoning that fits household cleaning products, where you handle the product and then wash.[1]
That does not obviously describe a linen spray. Nobody sprays a duvet and then washes their hands because of it, and the fragrance stays on the fabric rather than the person.
Two things follow, and only one is legitimate.
The classification requires judgement, and IFRA has made one. Fabric and textile treatment sprays are listed in 10A, and that is where they sit.
What does not follow is that you may pick 10B because it is kinder. A mismatch between the exposure model and real use is a limitation of the model. It is not permission to reclassify your product into whichever category lets you use more fragrance.
If the fit seems wrong, note that it seems wrong and follow the listing anyway.
One note on reed diffusers
Not covered by this guide, but adjacent enough to cause confusion: reed diffuser oil is Category 10A, and IFRA gives the reason in section 6.5.18. The more restrictive categorisation was chosen to reflect potential exposure during manual handling — flipping the soaked reeds, or handling the refill.[9]
Table 12 lists the entry as “fragranced oil for lamp ring, reed diffusers, pot-pourri, liquid refills for air fresheners (non-cartridge systems)”: it is the oil that is categorised, which matters if you sell refills.[1]
IFRA is not the law
An IFRA category and its maximum concentration are part of the fragrance industry's own safety standards. They do not, by themselves, establish that a finished room, linen or pillow spray complies with every law that applies to it.
If you are selling the product, check the regulations that apply to the finished product in the market you sell into — which may include labelling, classification, and product safety rules that IFRA has nothing to say about.
For EU sales specifically, those can include CLP for hazard classification and labelling, REACH for the substances themselves, and the General Product Safety Regulation (EU) 2023/988, which has applied since 13 December 2024. GPSR is deliberately horizontal — a safety net for consumer non-food products and for risks that sector-specific legislation doesn't already cover — so it sits alongside the others rather than instead of them.[11] IFRA conformity satisfies none of them.
⚠️ We have not found spray-specific guidance under GPSR; what is documented is the regulation's scope and application date, and that these products are not among its excluded categories. Treat it as an instrument to check with your own compliance advice, not as a settled account of what it requires. The fragrance oil guide and vessel guide carry the same note.
This section uses IFRA to answer a narrower question: what fragrance-use category does the product fall into, and what does the corresponding standard permit? The perfume guide sets out the three-way distinction between industry standards, law, and supplier documentation in more detail.
5 · One event, then evaporation from whatever it hit
A candle has an engine. The flame melts wax, the melt pool is warmer than the room, and evaporation continues as long as it burns. A perfume has body temperature — not much of an engine, but a steady one.
A room spray has no sustained heat source. There is one atomisation event, and evaporation after that is governed largely by the temperature and nature of whatever the droplets reach.
That difference explains most of how these products behave.
The sequence
Bottle → nozzle → droplets → air → surfaces → evaporation → your nose.
The step people skip is the one before last. A sprayed droplet is not suspended indefinitely — material either evaporates in flight or deposits on a surface.
What “lasting” actually means
Ask why a room spray does not last and the usual answer is that the fragrance dissipates. That is true of the airborne fraction and it is not where the smell comes from an hour later.
What reaches you later is increasingly being released from material that has landed — on the carpet, the sofa, the curtains, the floor — rather than from the original spray cloud.
Which reframes the question. You are not trying to keep something suspended in air. You are managing what it lands on and how fast it comes off again.
⚠️ I have not found published measurements of the airborne fraction against the deposited fraction for a consumer spray, or of how long the airborne portion persists. The mechanism follows from evaporation and settling, and the sequence is not in dispute, but I cannot give you numbers.
Two consequences worth knowing
Spraying more does not extend it proportionally. Using more spray increases the material available for deposition, but the release rate from a surface is set by temperature and the material, not by how much is there. You get a stronger initial impression and not much more duration.
And a cold room behaves differently from a warm one. Evaporation rate rises with temperature, so the same spray in a warm room releases faster and finishes sooner. That is the same relationship as the pulse point in the perfume guide, arriving at a different scale.
6 · Oil and water do not mix
This is the formulation problem with no candle equivalent, and it is where most first attempts fail.
Many fragrance materials are poorly compatible with water, and water is strongly polar. Put them together and they separate — not slowly, and not because you did something wrong. The fragrance oil guide covers the underlying polarity question in detail.
What a solubiliser does
Many common solubilisers are surfactants: molecules with a water-compatible part and an oil-compatible part. In water, above a certain concentration, those molecules arrange themselves into structures that keep the oil-compatible parts together and away from the water — and fragrance material sits inside them. Not everything sold as a solubiliser works this way, so read what you have bought rather than assuming this model.
The result is a single stable phase rather than oil suspended in water waiting to separate.
Why it goes cloudy
Cloudiness is a light-scattering problem.
If the fragrance is dispersed as droplets large enough to scatter visible light, the liquid looks milky. If it is held in much smaller structures, light passes through and the liquid is clear.
So clarity is a diagnostic. A clear spray means the solubiliser is holding the fragrance. A cloudy one means it is not, at that ratio, in that carrier.
⚠️ The threshold sizes and the concentration at which surfactants begin to form these structures are both measurable quantities with published values, and I do not have sourced figures for either. The qualitative mechanism is standard; the numbers should come from your solubiliser's documentation.
The ratio is not universal
Suppliers publish a starting ratio of solubiliser to fragrance oil, and those ratios differ between products because the solubilisers differ. There is no general number that works across materials.
Start from your supplier's figure, and treat clarity as the test.
“Shake well before use”
For a product meant to be one clear liquid, “shake well” usually means the formulation did not solve separation.
Shaking makes a temporary mechanical mixture. The droplets are large, they begin recombining immediately, and within minutes the product is separated again.
The practical consequence is worse than aesthetic: an unstable spray does not deliver a consistent product. Early pumps draw mostly from one phase and later ones from the other. You get a weak spray, then a spray carrying far more oil than intended — which is also the one that stains.
Some products are deliberately two-phase and shaken by design. That is a different thing, and it is stated on the label.
7 · The carrier
Short, because the perfume guide covers the physical chemistry of fragrance carriers in detail. What follows is what changes for a spray.
Alcohol dissolves fragrance material readily and evaporates fast and cleanly. At sufficient concentration it also changes the microbiological picture — SCCS gives alcohol content above 20% as its example of a case where end product testing may not be necessary.[2] It is also flammable, and it may not be what you want on some surfaces.
Water is cheap, non-flammable, and a poor solvent for most fragrance materials — which is why section 6 exists. It also raises the preservation question under Before you start.
A blend trades solvency and evaporation rate against cost and flammability.
Other systems — DPG, and various proprietary carriers — behave differently again. A formula built for one carrier does not transfer to another.
The thing to take from this: the carrier is not a filler. It determines how much fragrance stays in solution, how fast the spray dries, what it does to a surface, and whether the product needs preserving.
8 · What it lands on
Everything you spray goes somewhere. This section is the one people skip and then regret.
Three separate questions
Will it stain? Fragrance materials can leave residues or marks on fabric. Some are coloured, and some darken over time. A spray that looks clear can still leave a mark once the carrier evaporates.
Will it damage the surface? Alcohol and other solvents attack some finishes. Painted surfaces, varnished wood, plastics and screen coatings are all vulnerable to different things, and “it's only a light mist” is not a defence.
Will it stay there? Different substrates hold fragrance differently. A material that releases quickly from a hard surface may persist for weeks in upholstery.
The test
Inconspicuous corner. Full dry. Then look.
The reason for the second step is that some damage only appears after evaporation — water marks, oil rings, changes in sheen. A surface that looks fine while wet can look different an hour later.
Fabric is a different target
A linen spray is aimed at textiles, which changes things.
Fibres hold and release fragrance in their own way, the surface is chemically different from skin, and it sits at room temperature rather than body temperature. Which is why a spray can last dramatically longer on a curtain than in the air — and why the version on fabric can smell subtly different. It is not being modified by your skin chemistry.
⚠️ And if you are spraying textiles that touch skin, re-read section 4. The category may not be the one you assumed.
9 · Spray pattern and droplet size
The nozzle is part of the formulation, and swapping it changes the product.
What droplet size does
A given volume broken into smaller droplets has far more total surface area, and evaporation happens at surfaces. So smaller droplets can evaporate more rapidly in flight and immediately after landing, and a larger proportion stays airborne rather than reaching a surface.
A coarser spray puts more material down, in fewer places, faster.
⚠️ The release profile also depends on the actuator, the formulation's viscosity, the ambient conditions and how far you are from the target. Surface area is the mechanism, not the whole calculation, and I do not have measured droplet distributions for consumer sprayers.
The trade-off nobody mentions
A finer mist smells more impressive immediately — more material in the air, faster — and puts less on the surfaces that would have released it slowly.
So it is not simply better. It shifts the product toward a strong opening and away from persistence, which may or may not be what you want.
One thing droplet size does not change
⚠️ The nozzle does not change the category. A very fine mist aimed at a pillow is still a pillow spray. Classification follows intended use, not particle size, and no amount of atomisation converts a Category 11B product into a 10B one.
10 · What you notice, and what it might mean
| What you notice | Possible explanations | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudy from the start | Not enough solubiliser for that oil at that ratio; incompatible carrier | Supplier's starting ratio; try more solubiliser on a small test |
| Clear at first, cloudy after standing | Marginal solubilisation; temperature change | Whether it clears when warmed; whether it recurs |
| Separates into layers | The fragrance is not being held in the water phase | Solubiliser choice, ratio, and mixing order — oil and solubiliser first |
| Marks on fabric | Fragrance oil deposit; a coloured material; too much oil per spray | Test on a scrap; reduce concentration; check whether the material is coloured |
| Water rings after drying | Carrier and surface interaction rather than the fragrance | Test on the actual surface; consider a higher alcohol proportion |
| Smells strong, then nothing | Airborne fraction dissipating with little deposition | Section 5 — this is normal, not a fault |
| Barely smells at all | Concentration; or the material is one you are less sensitive to | Ask someone else. See the perfume guide on specific anosmia |
| Strong in the bottle, weak once sprayed | Dilution; rapid evaporation; poor deposition; or a material you are personally less sensitive to | Test on a surface; ask someone else; compare nozzles |
| Foams, or leaves suds on fabric | Surfactant load high relative to the fragrance | Reduce the solubiliser ratio on a small test batch |
| Sprayer clogs | Particulates; something coming out of solution and blocking the nozzle | Whether the liquid is still clear; filter if it is not |
| Cloudy after weeks in a cool room | Temperature-dependent solubility | Whether it clears at room temperature |
Sources
- IFRA, Guidance for the Use of IFRA Standards, 51st Amendment, 30 June 2023. Table 12, “IFRA categories and subcategories arranged alphabetically by product type”, pp. 56–58; Category 10A/10B and 11A/11B definitions, p. 17; Table 5, pp. 17–18, for the phototoxicity rule and which categories it applies in; planned review of Categories 10, 11 and 12 for the 52nd Amendment, p. 42. ⚠️ Table 5 establishes the rule; the per-category limits for a given material come from that material's own Standard, not from the Guidance. ↩
- Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety, The SCCS Notes of Guidance for the Testing of Cosmetic Ingredients and their Safety Evaluation, 12th revision, 2023. Appendix 9, “Guideline on Microbiological Quality of the Finished Cosmetic Product”, p. 152: “In some justified cases (e.g. alcohol content > 20%), end product testing is not necessary (ISO 29621, 2010).” ⚠️ SCCS cites the 2010 edition of ISO 29621; the current edition is 2017, and is paywalled. ↩
- IFRA Standard, Methyl N-methylanthranilate, 2023 (Amendment 51). CAS 85-91-6. Recommendation: restriction / specification; intrinsic property driving risk given as phototoxicity and systemic toxicity. Category 10A 0.50%, 10B 0.10%, 11A no restriction, 11B 0.10%, 12 no restriction. ⚠️ Do not confuse it with IFRA_STD_101, Methyl N-formylanthranilate, which is a different material. ↩
- Guidance for the Use of IFRA Standards, 51st Amendment, §6.5.20 “Pillow spray”, p. 42. ⚠️ The rationale states “Category 11” throughout and never specifies 11B; the subcategory is assigned by the phototoxicity rule described in §1.6 and Table 5, not by this section. ↩
- IFRA Standard, p-tert-Butyl-α-methylhydrocinnamic aldehyde (p-BMHCA), 2020 (Amendment 49). CAS 80-54-6. Recommendation: restriction / prohibition — prohibited in Categories 1 and 6. Category 10A 0.10%, 10B 0.63%, 11A 0.017%, 11B 0.017%, 12 16%. ↩
- IFRA Standard, Oakmoss extracts, 2020 (Amendment 49). Recommendation: restriction / specification. Category 10A 0.10%, 10B 0.10%, 11A 0.10%, 11B 0.10%, 12 no restriction. ↩
- Commission Regulation (EU) 2021/1902 of 29 October 2021, amending Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, adding butylphenyl methylpropional to Annex II (prohibited substances) as entry 1666, applying from 1 March 2022. ↩
- Guidance for the Use of IFRA Standards, 51st Amendment, §6.5.17 “Categorization of multiple uses products”, pp. 40–42. On p. 41 it sets out the intuitive reading, applying the more restrictive category, and says it “does not hold” where a material's Standard is not driven solely by dermal sensitization. On p. 42 it concludes: compare the limits in both categories for all ingredients and “identify the lowest limit for all ingredients in both categories to drive the overall MAC for the dual use product”, with the same principle applying to products with more than two intended uses. The general rule, “the most stringent restriction should apply”, is on p. 34 and repeated in FAQ 7.17, p. 68. ⚠️ Corrected 15 September 2026: the sentence above previously said “the most stringent outcome of the safety assessment applies”, wording the Guidance uses only for attars (§6.5.16, p. 40). ↩
- Guidance for the Use of IFRA Standards, 51st Amendment, §6.5.18 “Reed diffusers”, p. 42, sourced there to IFRA Information Letter 1107: the categorisation “was chosen by IFRA and RIFM to reflect the potential exposure during manual handling (flipping) of the soaked reeds and/or the refill.” ↩
- International Fragrance Association, IFRA 52nd Amendment – End of Consultation Letter, 31 August 2026, 16 pp. Read from the letter itself, 16 September 2026: §2.5 for the categorisation of reed diffusers, the current leave-on treatment of Category 10B, the change to “applicable incidental” and the alignment with the rinse-off limit (50 ppm); §3.1.1 for the 1 ppm / 5 ppm differentiation and the SPF-claim trigger; §3.1.2 for the rinse-off rationale; §7(f) for the renamed Standard and the two Standards revised for Category 10B. ⚠️ This is a consultation outcome, not a notified Standard. Nothing in the 52nd is binding until Notification, and every figure in this section remains that of the notified 51st. Notification is expected January 2027 — the letter's own p. 1 says the formal Notification “will be published in the coming months, likely in the second or third week of January 2027” — with Standards in force 11 months later for new creations and 30 months for existing ones, per the timetable table on its p. 10. ⚠️ Superseded reading, kept deliberately: this page previously called the reed-diffuser categorisation an unresolvable conflict between IFRA's news wording and Table 12 of the 51st Guidance (source 9). The letter resolves it — 10A is the current placement, 10B the proposed one — which is why a news item was the wrong instrument to settle it from. ↩
- 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 spray-specific guidance under it was located, and this page does not state what it requires of a room, linen or pillow spray. Same treatment as the fragrance oil and vessel guides. Checked 7 September 2026. ↩