Tag: interior design

How to ‘Scent Scape’ your Home for Summer

Scent Scaping (sometimes known as ‘fragrance zoning’) is THE fastest way to change-up the feel of your home this summer – think of it like layering your perfumes, but creating a unique ‘signature scent’ for your home, instead. We’ve got top tips from an interior design expert on exactly how to do this, and have selected the perfect perfumed candles and luxury diffusers from Cochine’s sublime collection, to achieve this scented bliss with ease…

 

As a renowned designer, lifestyle blogger and TV presenter, Maxine Brady is always in demand by glossy magazines and lifestyle-led TV shows. A huge fan of using scented candles – for shows such as Grand Designs, Kirsty’s Homemade Home, George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces and This Morning – Maxine explains the trend for scent-scaping our homes no matter the weather, really boomed during lockdown. Indeed, according to John Lewis, during the end of 2020 ‘the average online searches for home scents went up by 600%. For diffusers, the searches were up by over 1000%.’ Says Maxine:

 

‘It’s about using aroma and scents to zone our homes, either room by room or during differing times of the day. I like using a different fragrance in the morning to evening. I like decorating a home with candles and diffusers and arrange them much as I would art in a room, to bring them to life. I never think a room is finished until I put a candle on my sideboard… using home fragrance allows me to transfer from a work space feel to a more homely escape. It’s a very clever way to balance our mental health as well as making our homes smell beautiful.’

 

This ‘trend’ has continued with such an upward trajectory, to the point of becoming a perfumed ritual we can all welcome into our lifestyles. It’s not only those who continue to work from home (though there are many, many more companies seeing the sense of this) who are pushing the perfumed home product sales higher – there’s also been a dawning in our culture that candles aren’t really used for their light-giving properties anymore – it’s the ambience we seek. The way we can choose to immediately change-up the atmosphere of a space.

 

Kate Crofton-Atkins – founder of Cochine fragrance

 

It’s not all about candles, though. Reed diffuser sales are similarly off the chart, because people who are away from home, who want to continually scent an area, or perhaps have small children and are concerned about candles burning) love their ease of use, and that ‘unwrap it and forget it’ feeling. However, we promise you won’t be forgetting any of these – the fragrances are so incredible, they’ll give you pleasure every single time you waft past, or open your front door and think ‘ahhh, yes. I’m home!’

 

Maxine Says: ‘All these tips are ideal if you rent rather than own, because you’re unable to change wallpaper and paint, or sometimes even furnishings, you can make the space your own by stamping your personality with home scents…’

 

Maxine’s Styling Tip 1. Use your nose as well as your eyes to decorate your home. Perhaps a hallway is where you put a lovely diffuser to welcome your guests and having it smell gorgeous at all times? As a decorating tool, home scents are a really clever way to bring up & coming trends into your home without changing all the furnishings! Use complimentary coloured vessels to your wallpaper or furnishing colours. People are loving sharing #shellfies on social media.

Maxine’s Styling Tip 2. Use aroma to mark the changing seasons. Fresher sunny scents in summer, and warmer woodier scents in colder seasons. Changing those scents and bringing them into your house really helps stop one day blending into another. According to John Lewis, the average online searches for home scents went up by 600%. For diffusers, the searches were up by over 1000% A candle is an instant pick me up when you need a treat.” Michelle: “I like to use home fragrance to enhance my mood or to change up my mood.”

Maxine’s Styling Tip 3. Create an indoor garden bringing the outdoors in. We know home plants have become incredibly important – the flow between spaces can be between your garden and indoors. Dot plants and succulents around a diffuser – reuse the containers when empty as plant pots or the diffusers as mini vases.

Styling Tip 4. Press the reset button with the power of scent. After a busy and stressful day, it can be hard to mark a line between weekdays and your weekends – reclaim your home and say the weekend starts now. Clear away work things, laptops from tables, shove the kids toys in a box and light a candle as a scene-setter and mood re-setter.

 

 

Cochine’s sumptuous fragrance creations are no longer only for skin – with their gorgeous, top quality home fragrance collection, they can now whisk us to exotic Saigon whenever the mood takes us (which will be often, you will discover…) from where this exciting perfume house takes its inspiration. With over 50 hours’ burn time, Cochine candles will gently infuse any room to create a delicately evocative and inspiring atmosphere. The Cochine diffusers, meanwhile, containing the finest essential oils, and will visually and aromatically give your room a unique and subtle elegance. They easily last you four months of continual use (and we find they last even longer if placed in cooler areas of your home and away from direct sunlight!) Close your eyes, breathe the exquisite notes – and you’re half-way there already.

Now, your only question remains, where will you find best to place these stunning, summery scents in your own home…?

White Jasmine & Gardenia Candle £45 for 230g

This elegant candle evokes the lush floral scents that infuse the sun-filled streets and gardens of Saigon. White petals of jasmine, gardenia and peony combine to unfold an enchanting aura that is soft yet elegant.

Frangipani & Neroli Candle £45 for 230g

Allow yourself to be carried away to soft white sands, brushed with the shade of Frangipani trees. Smooth, honeyed tones of frangipani are combined with the delicate freshness of neroli to create an idyll of blissful tranquillity in your home.

Vietnamese Rose & Delentii Candle £45 for 230g

Capturing the delightful freshness of newly cut flowers, this candle has a light and delicate tone, combining top notes of rose and bergamot with hints of violet, rosewood and the scented orchid, Delentii.

 

 

Tuberose Absolute & Sandalwood Diffuser £60 for 150ml

Exclusively created with master perfumer, Maurice Roucel, this is the scent of exotic and unforgettable nights. Feminine, alluring and intriguing tuberose notes combine with rich leather and sandalwood in this intoxicating, utterly addictive fragrance.

 

 

Water Hyacinth & Lime Blossom Diffuser £60 for 150ml

The immediately uplifting and utterly unique scent of lime blossom is combined with calming, aqueously woody notes of water hyacinth to create an invigorating and fresh fragrance reminiscent of lazy afternoons on the banks of the Saigon River.

 

 

Juniper & Ginger Diffuser £60 for 150ml

Combining the crisp scent of juniper with the sweet spiciness of ginger. Reminiscent of lush, green woods and exotic, evergreen mountains this uplifting scent has hints of clove, bergamot and patchouli blended with the freshness of eucalyptus.

 

Written by Suzy Nightingale

A peek inside Penhaligon’s Covent Garden home

Penhaligon’s opened their very first boutique in London’s fashionable Jermyn Street in1872 and have since gone on to open locations spanning the globe – you can read all about their fascinating history on our page dedicated to Penhaligon’s.

Instead of merely reproducing the same look in each store, Penhaligon’s work with the history and location of each building, making sure to reflect differing aspects and using unique materials and interior decor for every single one. And now, we’re delighted to take a sneak peek into their newly refurbished home in Covent Garden’s Wellington Street...

And you know, it really is just like walking into a home – albeit that of a fragrance fanatic! – with rich, gleaming wood floors, fixtures and finishes, and a supremely elegant style to the architecture. The space feels airy, yet with enough intimacy to ccomfortably explore the scents arrayed on the walls and a magnificent central display table.

We think there’s a Gerogian-meets-contemporary vibe to the whole store – clean lines preventing clutter, and allowing the eye (and nose) to rest on everything there is to explore. And with the ever-gowing range of family members in the Penhaligon’s fragrance wardrobe, you can be sure there’s something fo all tastes – from the more modern scents of recent years in the Portraits collection, right through to the vintage archival fragrances they made their name by, and have made British perfumery famous for generations.

Many Penhaligon’s store offer private Fragrance Profiling appointments, including Wellignton Street, where you will be asked a series of questions to match you to the perfect scent – a service they now offer online, too, for those not able to get to boutique – something many couples like to experience for their wedding fragrances, or to find a great gift for a loved one or mark a special occasion.

We love visiting perfumeries who make an effort to dress their spaces differently – gone are the days when everyone wanted idetikit, could-be-anywhere boutiques; and it’s always lovely to have a relaxed atmosphere to soak up the scents, don’t you agree?

Penhaligon’s: 41 Wellington Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 7BN

By Suzy Nightingale

Scenting the ‘sulking room’ with candles we covet…

Which candles should you scent a boudoir with? Here’s a list of just some we’re swooning over…

The word boudoir comes from the French ‘bouder’, meaning to pout or sulk, and for centuries has been a private, feminine space to indulge ones desires. Boudoir-type fragrances evoke images of face powder and rosy lipsticks, be-ribboned furnishings and velvet chaise-lounge to swoon on while reading love letters – or to recline on silken cusions while eating violet cremes and idly flick through the latest papers, searching for scurriolous gossip.

In fact, the boudoir was often the only place a woman could do as she liked, historically, and so they became intimate places of great mystery, a sanctuary to write and dream in, or a hotbed of sensual power.

In our just-published ‘We’ll Always Have Paris’ issue of The Scented Letter Magazine (which recently won another Jasmine Award from The Fragrance Foundation – we’re so thrilled to say!) we foucused on boudoir perfumes you should try; but there are so many more ways of scenting this ‘sulking room’, and here we’d love to share with you some of the candles we’re currently coveting for our own boudoirs and bedrooms.

A dreamier duo you’d be hard-pressed to find – burn this limited edition separately or (our favourite) together for a deliciously naughty infusion of soft, powdery caresses that follow, perhaps, a crack of the whip…?

Diptyque Leather & Violet Duo Set £94 for 190g candles

Evoking memories of orchid-hunting trips – tales regaled to you while you recline in something too sheer to be seemly – this blend of exotic blooms and smooth cedar will certainly get your senses swooning while he drones on.

Urban Apothecary Ambrée Noir Candle £30 for 300g

Lady Blanche is busy lady, dispensing ‘female-friendly advice’, so Penhaligon’s intriguing story goes, from within her boudoir. There, the scents of rice powder and makeup mingle with rose perfume, and (we gather) utter lasciviousness.

Penhaligon’s The Powder Room Candle £48 for 290g

Narcotic tuberose was once banned by polite, Victorian society, for fear the heady scent was causing flighty females to experience involuntary orgasms. My my. We can’t vouch for that, but it is very lovely.

Kilian French Boudoir Candle £60 for 220g

Written by Suzy Nightingale