Home Fragrance Making

Home fragrance covers the ways of scenting a room that do not involve burning anything. A reed diffuser is the simplest of them: fragrance oil cut with a carrier thin enough to climb the reeds, usually 20% to 30% oil with 25% as a reliable default. Below 20% the scent fades into the room; above 30% you are mostly paying for oil that evaporates at the same rate either way.

The carrier matters as much as the ratio. DPG or a purpose-made diffuser base travels up the reeds by capillary action and releases scent steadily. Water does not work, because fragrance oil will not dissolve in it, and a thick carrier oil cannot climb the reeds at all.

The reed diffuser calculator turns a bottle size into milliliters of fragrance oil and base, and prices the bottle if you enter what you paid. Fill to the volume you will actually use rather than the bottle's rated capacity, since the reeds need headroom.

A diffuser that has stopped throwing scent usually has one of four problems: too few reeds, reeds that have saturated and need replacing, a base too thick to wick, or a fragrance load that was too low to start with. Swapping the reeds fixes more of these than topping up the liquid does.