How to Choose a Candle Scent for Every Room in the House
Choosing a candle scent by room comes down to three things: how big the space is, what you do in it, and what time of day you are usually there. Get those right and a house can carry several fragrances at once without any of them clashing. Get them wrong and you end up with a vanilla candle in a kitchen fighting last night's cooking, or a citrus scent in a bedroom keeping you alert at eleven at night.
Start with room size
A 200g candle will comfortably scent an average living room or bedroom. In a small bathroom or cloakroom, that same candle can become overwhelming within twenty minutes, so lighter fragrances or a reed diffuser are usually the better choice.
In large open-plan spaces the opposite problem applies. One candle will scent the area immediately around it and very little else. Two candles placed at either end of the room work far better than one large one in the middle.
Kitchens
Kitchens already have strong competing smells, so a fragrance needs to be bright enough to cut through rather than sit alongside. Fruit, citrus and herbal notes work best. Heavy vanillas tend to combine badly with cooking.
From our range, Blackberry Dawn and Lemon and Lavender Iced Tea are the two we would put in a kitchen. Both are crisp, both have enough structure to hold their own, and neither becomes sweet as the room warms up.
Living rooms
This is where you have the most freedom, because living rooms are usually the largest space and used at every hour. It is also the room where fragrance does the most work, since it is where guests arrive and where you unwind.
Warm, layered fragrances suit it best in the evening. Embered Mallow and Pear Pillow both fill a sitting room without becoming heavy. If you use the room during the day as well, consider keeping two candles and switching them with the light.
Bedrooms
Bedrooms want fragrance that settles rather than energises. Soft, creamy and lightly floral notes are ideal, and anything sharp or citrus-forward is best avoided in the hour before bed.
Moonlit Milk, with vanilla orchid and pistachio crème, is our most-chosen bedroom fragrance. Midnight Rose Marmalade suits a bedroom too, though it is considerably more dramatic. Light either around forty minutes before you want to wind down, and always extinguish before sleeping.
Bathrooms
Small, humid and often without a window, bathrooms concentrate fragrance quickly. Reed diffusers usually outperform candles here, because they give a constant low level of scent rather than a build-up, and there is no flame to worry about in a room full of towels.
Lemon and Lavender Iced Tea works particularly well as a bathroom diffuser. If you would rather have a candle for baths, keep the burn short and place it well away from anything flammable.
Hallways and entrances
The hallway sets the impression of the whole house, and it is almost always the wrong place for a candle. Hallways are draughty, frequently unattended and full of coats.
A reed diffuser is the right answer here. Choose something warm and welcoming rather than fresh, since you want the scent to feel like arrival. Milkmaids Biscotti and Pear Pillow are both excellent hallway diffusers.
Home offices
Working spaces want fragrance that is present but not distracting. Anything too sweet becomes tiring over a long day. Citrus and green notes with a soft base are the reliable choice, which makes Lemon and Lavender Iced Tea the obvious pick.
A note on not overdoing it
Two or three fragrances in a house is plenty. If every room has something different burning, the transitions between them become jarring rather than pleasant, and you stop noticing any of them. A good rule is one fragrance family for the ground floor and one for upstairs.
