Your Guide to Scent Layering

How does scent layering work?

Each fragrance is made up of a top, middle and base note. Top notes are what you’ll smell on first spritz, middle notes make up the heart of the fragrance, while base notes deliver the lasting impact. Scent layering is a great way to emphasize and enhance your favorite notes, giving you endless possibilities to personalize your perfume. 

But scent layering isn’t as simple as spritzing yourself with lots of perfumes and hoping for the best. There’s an art to blending scents and it can be done by combining more than just perfumes. Layer up on products with the same fragrance to accentuate the scents you love, or play around with ingredients you think might smell good together for a signature blend. 

Our products are filled with fragrant essential oils, so you can build a full beauty routine of complementary scents, from our enticing gourmand Super Milk Conditioning Spray to moreish body lotions and perfumes. Experiment with fragrance layering combos for a head-turning scent that’s all yours.

What scents go well together?

In the same way different tastes work well together in cooking, different fragrances also complement each other more than others. The best scent combos work in harmony, but this will be personal to you and what you enjoy. 

Try pairing sumptuous Sticky Dates Body Lotion with the buttery comfort of Let the Good Times Roll Body Spray for a good enough-to-eat cinnamon bun fragrance. Or blend banana-scented Sympathy for the Skin Body Lotion with strawberry-vanilla-scented American Cream Perfume for a marvellous milkshake fragrance. 

How you pair your products will bring out different notes. For example, you might build on Super Milk’s sweeter gourmand notes by pairing it with Vanillary Perfume, or emphasize its zesty notes instead with Avocado Co-Wash. 

We’re all about experimentation at Lush, so get creative with finding your scent profile made from notes you’re drawn to. Think of fragrance layering as a way to express yourself. Whether you’re a citrus fan or a gourmand groupie, start with your preferred notes and go from there. The result might just be a signature scent that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. 

How to make your favorite fragrances last all day

Looking to end the day smelling as fresh as when you started it? Scent layering can help create a long lasting fragrance. By building a fragrance cocktail from your best products, instead of wearing just one perfume, you won’t go nose blind throughout the day. 

But it’s also about how you wear your products. Hair products will soak into your strands so you’ll get a whiff every time you swish, body sprays will stick around when spritzed on your clothes, and the scent of our solid perfumes will intensify when placed on your pulse points. The wonderful thing about fragrance is that everything smells slightly different on everybody, so even your chosen fragrance layering combos will work with your skin and hair uniquely to you. 

How to find your signature scent?

Finding a signature scent that speaks to you might take time, but that’s part of the fun. Scent layering can be a mindful part of your beauty regime, so give yourself a moment to notice the different notes in the products you enjoy. Start with your most-liked Lush fragrance and build a routine around it by balancing the most prominent core notes with more subtle notes in other products.

If you’re feeling stuck, try blending some of these classic fragrance layering combos: earthy and green, citrusy and floral or sweet and woody. Once you feel confident with these, give some more adventurous blends a whirl—you never know what you might stumble across. 

Looking for more on Lush fragrances? Hear how our scents are thought up by our very own product perfumer Emma.