Incorporating Scents with Your Interiors
Interior decorating is much more than just how something looks. If you remember from our most basic science lessons, we have five scenes. Those are sight, smell, taste, feel, and sound. With interior design, Chandra Interiors touches on the obvious ones which are sight and feel; but did you know you can also incorporate smell into your home’s interior design?
Smell is such an important aspect of developing the perfect ambience for your home depending on how you want it to be. There are so many different ways to play around with it which makes it so exciting! In this article, we’ll be going through a few reasons why scent into the interior design of your home and how!
Reasons to Incorporate Scents into Your Home
1. It Sparks Familiarity and Comfort
If you’re someone who’s thinking long-term, this is a fun little thing to consider! Our sense of smell plays a huge role in the way we remember a particular person, place, or event. Have you ever had those times when you smell a particular scent and you remember a moment in your life and you feel oh-so nostalgic? Like, the smell of grass to remind you of when you would visit your grandparents during the summer or the smell of rain to remember that one night you and your friends got lost in that new city and you were all drenched!
Smell can trigger so many emotions and memories because your sense of smell is processed in your brain’s limbic system in an area close to where your emotions, memories, and feelings are stored. So if you want people to really remember your home and the memories created in your home even years after this, you should really give a lot of focus to creating a unique smell!
Scents can also stand in as social replacements in moments of stress or discomfort. Smelling something familiar, like your home’s scent, can make you feel relaxed as it can trigger feelings of being at home which is where we are usually most at peace.
2. It Can Affect Your Mood
So now that we know that our sense of smell directly affects our feelings and memories, of course it can also be used to uplift our moods when done right! There are a lot of different scents to choose from based on the mood or ambience you want to develop in the room. Keep on reading because at the end of the article we have a few suggestions to really help you figure out how to play around with scent in your home!
What Scents to Incorporate into Your Home
Let’s discuss the best scents to incorporate into each room in your home! As I stated earlier, scents have a drastic effect on our mood and feelings so instead of just focusing on how the aesthetic of a room looks, we should really give focus into how it smells as well.
1. Foyer
The foyer is what greets your guests and, just like how we want it to be what wows our guests as soon as they enter, we also want them to feel good. The best scent for the foyer is the smell of oranges or of cinnamon! Both are very uplifting and calming scents which set the tone from the start.
2. Living Room
The living room is where you spend most of your time together as a family or this is where you usually entertain your guests for the most part. For everyday use, it’s nice to have a scent that’s very relaxing to put everyone at ease. For this you can try lavender, lily, or passionfruit. If you’re not into light, sweet smells there’s always sandalwood, cedar, and fig!
3. Kitchen
With an array of smells already cooking up in the kitchen, it can be hard to decide on how you want it to smell. The safest would be lemon or cinnamon scented! Lemon has the ability to make a room feel less stuffy as well as to wake people up, which is great for early morning rushes! Cinnamon is the best if you want a cozy vibe.
4. Bedrooms
Jasmine and lavender are the two most relaxing scents that are perfect for your bedroom. Having these make its way around your nostrils and into the Olfactory senses are sure to make sure you have a good night sleep and wake up feeling refreshed.
5. Bathrooms
For the bathroom, it would be nice to have a scent that’s light, airy, and will make you feel freshed. Tea trees, eucalyptus, and lemon scents are the best at this! So if you’re going to put other sprayers and whatnot as well, make sure they match the scent already in your bathroom so it doesn’t become too overpowering with numerous scents.
Ways to Incorporate Scents into Your Home
Everything we will be mentioning can be found in online shops, malls, or stores. It isn’t that hard to find any of these items and, anywhere you go, you’re sure to find an abundance. If you’re in an area that isn’t too interested in things like these, online is the way to go!
1. Essential Oils
For this, you can actually make your own! There’s a rise in making your own essential oils now so you can get a kit at a really low price and there are a lot of tutorials you can watch online. For essential oils, you will need a diffuser or humidifier.
2. Candles
You can find scented candles online or at the mall! There are a variety of scents to choose from; there’s fruits, sweets, floral scents, masculine scents, etc. Get your favorite scents and light them up at home once you’ve
3. Incense
Incense is a quick and easy way to make a room smell great. You just buy a few incense sticks, put it in a pretty case, and light them up!
4. Plants
You can’t really control how a plant smells but, either way, they give off very relaxing vibes to remind you of lush green forests and whatnot!
5. Potpourri
Potpourri is a mixture of dried plants that naturally smell amazing. They are very gentle so you can use this for areas like living rooms, bathrooms, and bedrooms. You’ll be needing a pretty decorative bowl for this one!
