Shopping for a perfume can be fun — but also overwhelming. Sniffing dozens of samples can bring on a headache fast, and competing scents you’ve spritzed on your wrist can all start to blend together. It can be hard to determine which is the best perfume — a scent that’s really “you.”
To help you sort through the scads of perfumes out there, here are some tips for finding that perfect scent that will stay with you for a long time:
Get out a pen, and jot down a few of your personality characteristics. If this is hard to do, close your eyes and put yourself in the shoes of someone really close to you — your mom, best friend or boyfriend. How would that person describe you? Are you bubbly, quiet, reserved, raucous, girly, serious or elegant?
Having trouble? Then, get specific. Even trying to look through someone else’s eyes, it still can be difficult to describe yourself. Jot down some of your favorite things: favorite color, favorite movies, favorite hobbies and so on. You might start to see a pattern emerge — maybe you’re a romantic, an adventurer, a homebody.
Match your personality and likes to perfume notes. You might have your own associations with various perfume notes, but here are some general ones. Cheerful women tend to like perfumes with citrusy notes, such as grapefruit perfumes or lemony perfumes or blood orange perfumes. Elegant women tend to like perfumes with soft floral notes, such as gardenia perfumes and rose perfumes. Earthy women tend to like perfumes with woodsy notes, such as oakmoss.
Are there any scents you particularly love? There’s no rule that says your personality alone must determine your scent — your fragrance preferences can and should play a role too. Close your eyes again and think about some of your favorite smells. Think back to your childhood and through your whole life. Are there any smells that you just adore? Maybe it’s the smell of daisies from that field you used to play in as a kid, or blackberry pie baking or the pine scent from the forest where you love to hike. Write these scents down.
Put it all together to find your fragrance. Now, you should have some excellent clues to narrow down your choice of fragrance. You will have some personality characteristics written down, some scent notes that you associate with those as well as smells you love. Now, just go searching online for perfumes that have those notes, and write down their names. If you can, go to a large department store and test as many of those perfumes as possible. (And don’t get distracted by the lady who wants to spray you with some new perfume — unless you want to.)
With the new, narrower field of choices, you should have no problem picking the perfect scent for you!