r/DIYfragrance

hi there !! im like suuuper super brand new (havent even started just have person fragrance ideas written down) and i bought the beginners aromachemical kit off of the recommendation of a friend (who said it would be better to get the basic aromachemicals cuz it would be better to study instead of getting the premade dilution) and i would love to know any and i mean ANY recommendations anyone has for me !! im excited to try and to fail and to try and try again !!

Today I received my first small set of materials for experimenting a bit with perfumes. Once I opened up and smelled the Norlimbanol on a paper strip I realized I had "smelled" that exact smell before (except I haven't really). It is spot on the exact smell I experience if I stand up too fast and my eyes blacken a little bit (though this happens very rarely and only lasts a second or two). I however always just thought that the smell was the neurons was misfiring because of the low blood pressure and it was a nonsensical smell that didn't really exist anywhere else - until now.

Anyone else having experienced some imaginary smell (without smelling it) and then later realizing the smell existed as some sort of basic perfumery ingredient?

Hey everyone, I buy pre-formulated perfume oils for Santal 33 and Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille dupes—they get about 80% scent accuracy, but the projection and longevity fall short. I want to reinforce them using single aromachemicals, but I have no experience working with individual molecules. My local supplier currently stocks materials like Iso E Super, Hedione, Cedramber, Cashmeran, Ambroxan, Galaxolide, Habanolide, Etil Vainillina, Cumarina, Eugenol, Resina Benjuí, and Ionona Beta. From this list, which specific materials and dosage percentages would you recommend adding to each concentrate to boost performance like duration and projection without ruining or changing the original scent profiles to much?

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Hi everyone,

What materials do you use when you want a perfume to feel rich, deep, balsamic, sweet especially through the top and middle notes?

I’m trying to create a perfume with this kind of character, but I’m struggling a bit because most of the materials I want to use are quite heavy, and using too many of them doesn’t seem to work very well.

Do I need to incorporate lighter materials to give the composition more lift and diffusion? If so, what kinds of materials do you usually reach for?

I’m not really a fan of citrus or very fresh notes, although honestly I haven’t experimented much with them in this context.

What do you guys do when you have a heavy perfume formula but want to give it a bit more diffusion, airiness and “space,” so it doesn’t feel dense or flat?

Any advice or examples of materials you like to use for this would be greatly appreciated!

Has anyone encountered sellers providing GC-MS (Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry) documents for oddly underpriced oils? There are topics adjacent to this on this sub, but I'm interested in this exact scenario.

I made two perfumes: one with a musk base, a bit of vanillin, and Hedione, and the other the same but with Iso E Super. Now, after one day, I can still smell the base of the one with just musks, but not the one with Iso E Super. I’ve realized that the perfumes I make with Iso E Super often have much poorer longevity; do you know why?

Hi everyone, I’m back with a major update on Perfumer's Pricebook -- the free search tool for comparing live material prices (incl. dilution-adjusted) and stock availability across various raw material suppliers.

PSA: This is a pure hobby project, I am not affiliated with any vedor/company!

New Home: ladanon.com/pricebook

Domain & Visual Rebrand: With the suite growing beyond just the pricebook (and the old domain perfumers-pricebook.com being quite long) and maturing, I thought it was time for a rebrand. Everything has migrated to ladanon.com (ancient greek name for labdanum, a little nod from a self-admitted cistus & labdanum addict). The interface has also been overhauled with a cleaner, bespoke aesthetic and improved mobile responsiveness. I’m by no means a professional web designer, so any critique is welcome!

Expanded Multi-Currency Support (8 Currencies): Following community requests, you can now toggle prices in CAD, AUD, NZD, CHF, and INR alongside EUR, GBP, and USD. Live currency conversion rates and neat-equivalent price calculations are as always automatically applied.

6 New Suppliers Added (Now 24 Vendors Total): UK: With Pell Wall sadly entering liquidation and going offline in June, UK options were cut short. I've researched and added 3 additional UK suppliers: Perfume Extract, The Perfumer's Pop Up Shop, and the MBParfums natural ingredient surplus shop (alongside Harrison Joseph & The Fragrance Foundry who were already supported).
US: Added Surplus & Sundry Aromatics for fellow bargain hunters after seeing this post recently!
Australia: With the support for Australian Dollars, to support Aussie perfumers, I've integrated Australian Perfumery Supplies and Evocative Perfumes.
We are now at 24 different vendors being scraped for their stock daily, over 12.5k materials and 1980+ unique CAS numbers! Do let me know if you want to see anyone else added!

Google Account Sync & Live Cart Refresh: You can now log in via Google to sync your shopping cart, saved coupons, and formula workspaces (e.g. for my creative-formulas companion tool) across all your devices and browsers. You can now also click "Update Cart" to pull live, up-to-date prices and in-stock status for all previously saved items.

Material Taxonomy & Attribute Filters: I am also trying to categorize each material into a structured hierarchy for more granular filtering - perhaps even a future cataloging/info-database type functionality - this is still very much a work in progress, and will have some misclassifications, categorizing over 12k materials is hard!
The current categories being:
Aroma Chemicals -> 1.1 Synthetics, 1.2 Semi-Synthetics, 1.3 Natural Isolates, 1.4 Biosynthetics / White Biotech.
Natural Extracts -> 2.1 Essential Oils, 2.2 Absolutes & Solvent Extracts, 2.3 CO2 & Supercritical Extracts, 2.4 Concretes & Butters, 2.5 Resinoids, Balsams, Gums, 2.6 Natural Fractions, 2.7 Co-Distillations, 2.8 Tinctures / Infusions.
Bases & Compositions -> 3.1 Accords & Specialities, 3.2 Replacers.
Functional Materials -> 4.1 Solvents, 4.2 Carrier Oils, 4.3 Additives & Preservatives Optional
Attributes: MD, Rectified, Folded, Colorless, Dewaxed, Pyrogenous / Destructive Distillation, Enfleurage, Water-Phase, FCF, Terpeneless, Select, Total, Standardized, Solid / Raw / Crystalline

As always, any feedback like other trustworthy suppliers worth adding, feature requests or bug reports is very welcome! :-)

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Last update: https://www.reddit.com/r/DIYfragrance/comments/1u5va1b/added_to_perfumerspricebook_perfumersworld/

I've been working on a perfumery project for a while, and one part of it turned into something I thought might actually be useful on its own.

So I decided to make the raw materials catalog completely free and publicly accessible.

It currently contains 1,573 perfumery materials, with a substantial amount of structured information for each material, including:

• 1,148 CAS numbers and 4,300 synonyms / trade names
• A written odor description for every material (about 44,000 words in total)
• 21 olfactive families and 214 sub-families
• An impact rating and volatility band per material
• Estimated GC-MS constituent breakdowns (composition tables) for 588 materials, covering 3,177 constituent rows
• IFRA data: 291 entries from the 51st Amendment, including limits reconstructed and cross-checked entry by entry against the original IFRA source file
• Additional metadata and cross-references, including related materials and common pairings

The goal isn't to make another simple "ingredient list". I wanted something you could actually use when researching a material, comparing materials, looking for alternatives, or trying to understand how a material fits into perfumery.

It's completely free to browse, with no account required and one page per material:

https://perfumate.app/catalog

I'm mainly sharing it because I know how scattered this information can be when you're researching materials. You end up jumping between supplier pages, IFRA documents, CAS searches, GC-MS references and different fragrance databases.

I'd genuinely like feedback from people who actually work with materials:

• Are there fields you'd add?
• Is any information unclear or misleading?
• Which materials are currently hardest to research?
• What would make a material database more useful to you?

And one important note: the IFRA information is provided as a research/reference layer and should not replace checking the current official IFRA standards and relevant supplier documentation before making safety or compliance decisions.

Hopefully it's useful to some of you. If you find an error in a material page, please point it out - I'd much rather fix bad or inaccurate data than leave it there.

Is discoloration or degradation due to oxidation really a thing that I should care for? I am only making fragrances as a hobby. They're strictly for personal use in small enough batches (50ml bottles) that would only last a year or so if I keep 2 or 3 in rotation. But I do share with friends.

I do a lot of reading in this hobby and it's a steady refrain that when volatile materials like aldehydes and citrus oils as well as those materials prone to discolor from oxidation (Vanillin anyone?) need some extra care. Back in my hippie days, using primarily EO potions, I added a drop of Vitamin E and called it a day.

BHT pops up most frequently (Along with UV protection - Benzophenone). Should I buy me some BHT (et al)? If yes, choose one:

A. Include it in dilutions of relevant materials.

B. Include it as at the combined maceration stage (Concentrate plus SD40B).

C. It depends (A and/or B) Read some more.

D. Chill, have a drink and decant my stuff to amber or opaque colored bottles.

THANKS!!!

Hi,

I wanted to create parfums since i was a kid.

Now i have time and money, so i decided, it's time to start.

I made the following list for my starter kit:

Indol 1% in EtOH - 10g

Pink Pepper SFE (Firmenich®) - 5g

Stigemone (Stemone) - 10g

Ethyl Linalool - 20g

Aquaflor (Bedoukian®) - 10g

Mandarin Kit (Yellow, Red, Green) - 10-10-10g

Cis 3 hexenol (Leaf Alcohol) - 10g

Vetival® (Symrise®) - 10g

Dihydromyrcenol (Symrise®) - 10g

Ambrox® Super (Firmenich®) - 5g

Javanol - 1g

Exaltolide (Firmenich®) - 10g

Bergamote 136 (Firmenich®) - 10g

Galaxolide® 50% IPM (IFF®) - 20g

Hedione (Firmenich®) - 20g

ISO E Super (IFF®) - 50g

4 Flacons 50ml

6 Brownglass bottles 50ml

Third hand for soldering

Magnetic stirrer

5 Beakers (5-10-25-50-100ml)

Squirt bottle for Ethanol

1 l Ethanol for parfumery

Scale with range to 0,001g

Paper teststrips

30 Brownglass bottles 10ml (for dilutions)

20 Syringes with needle (one for each material)

5 flacons 10ml

I have a heater for coffee mugs, maybe it could be useful for solids to dissolve?

I want to start creating fresh, aquatic and citric parfums, i do not like gourmand or very fruity or sweet stuff.

Is this an okay list to start with?

Does anyone have any recommendations of body oils/lotions that actually have a lasting smell?

I don't like anything too vanilla-y or sweet or floral but would appreciate any recs of products where the scent will actually last!

Thank you in advance :)

I've bought a few online and they turned out to be fake and nasty smelling. There is a store in my town called Sage that sells a real sandalwood oil for $115, that's quite expensive for me. I'm wondering if anyone has found a good online source for real sandalwood that is not as expensive.

I was uploading SDS and noticed that Eden Botanicals has a warning about oxidized citrus oils on the product page for the green mandarin and bitter red orange oil I have. I have BHT and Tocopherol on the way, and I already own Solgard, but this sent me down a rabbit hole of questions--please help!

My goal here, as a hobbyist who doesn't go through materials that quickly, is to be conservative with safety and keep my materials fresh and fine to use for as long as possible.

1. Can I just dose the neat oils in my supply with tocopherol / BHT / both?
2. If I can and should dose the neat materials, what percentage should I do? Fraterworks suggests 0.13% and 0.5% in perfume compound for BHT and tocopherol respectively, but that's not super helpful for dosing a neat material. I want an effective dose while minimizing dilution if possible.
3. Can I dissolve the BHT in the tocopherol or will I need a solvent? (And if a solvent is the way: DPG? TEC? IPM?)
4. What about that Solgard? It contains tocopherol and I've dosed my perfumer's alcohol with it, but would that alone be enough to hinder oxidation? At what dose?
5. I also have some other FCF-free citrus oils. Should I also dose them, or does FCF free mean that's unnecessary? Would dosing them help them stay stable and fragrant longer, or would I just be diluting good materials? (Specifically I have Bergamot, Lemon, and 10-fold Sweet Orange.)

So i found this website (not scam ok!)

https://perfuwoman.livejournal.com/67224.html

But i couldnt find a link to purchase formulas from there.

I have tried vanilla oleoresin, vanilla absolute, and vanilla ex clove. The vanilla oleoresin was the best of the 3. The vanillin ex clove I had purchased had virtually no smell to it, but I also bought an awful smelling sandalwood EO from the same company, so I’m not sure if it’s the product in general or the supplier. Wondering if there are vanilla ex clove out there with a great smell to them, if it would be better to try vanilla CO2, or just suck it up and use a synthetically derived vanillin?

With the vanilla absolute, it makes the perfume very dark and sticky. The oleresin is similar, but much less than the absolute.