The Right Way To Wear Perfume
It seems easy enough to spray perfume, right? Just grab the bottle, spray the scent on your skin, and smell great for the rest of the day.
While it is easy enough to apply perfume, it’s much harder to apply perfume correctly.
The Right Way To Apply Perfume
Perfumes and colognes, however, are extremely persnickety and require the perfect application and environment. To ensure your scent lasts throughout the day and isn’t cloying, follow these perfume application tips from Fragrance Original.
1. Take A Shower
Perfumes do not work well with dry skin. In fact, warm and soft skin absorbs fragrances much better. So, before applying perfume, take a hot shower or bath to prepare your skin for absorption.
While you shower, be sure to use unscented and gentle body washes or soaps. Perfume, as you could imagine, does not work well when it’s mixed with other scents. You want your skin to be an unadulterated canvas for your scent — not a palimpsest of other smells.
If you apply perfume to your hair (which we’ll talk about later), make sure to wash and condition your hair. Perfume better attaches to hair fibers when the hair is soft.
2. Dry Off Well
While you want to be warm and moisturized before applying perfume, you also want to make sure you’ve dried your skin after bathing. Otherwise, the perfume will have a harder time sticking to your skin. The result? A fragrance that wears off after a few hours or never settles correctly in the first place.
Pay special attention to your knees, neckline, and hair. These “pulse points” are the best conduits of smell, so it’s important that they’re dry and ready to receive the scent.
3. Apply Perfume Before Putting On Clothing
We tend to think of applying perfume as the conclusion of a getting ready routine. Spritz the scent and be on your way. This isn’t the best order of doing things, though.
In fact, applying perfume directly to the skin is a much better option than applying it through clothing. Not only can perfume leave sloppy watermarks, but it can also affect the scent.
When you apply perfume directly to the skin, you ensure that it sticks and that it has direct contact with those pulse points.
4. Hold Perfume 5 to 7 Inches From Body
Whatever you do, avoid holding the perfume nozzle directly against the skin. You want to leave a healthy five to seven inches of space between the perfume bottle and your skin. A good rule of thumb is that your skin should not feel wet after it is sprayed. If your skin is wet after application, you’re too close to your body.
5. Spray On Pulse Points
Spray the scent where blood vessels are closest to the skin: your collarbone, knees, neckline, and scalp. This way, thanks to the extra heat from these areas, the scent is more likely to be disseminated.
Do not rub your wrists together at this point. All this habit does is break down the perfume molecules and weaken the smell. Instead, let your perfume dry on its own, waiting at least 10 minutes before putting clothes on.