Fragrance vs. Essential Oils

Fragrance vs. Essential Oils

This is a question we often get in store. “Do you use fragrance oils or essential oils?” Well, both, actually. When we first started we had more of a focus on the earthy, crunchy kind of scents. We had bergamot, cedar, rosemary mint, blood orange, etc. Only to realize the majority of our customers preferred fragrances.

So, what’s the difference? Essential oils come from plants, through various methods of extraction. Fragrance oils are man-made, and contain isolated “scent” compounds.

For many of our products we prefer to use fragrance oils for a number of reasons. Dirt is a great example here. Dirt--being dirt and not a botanical--doesn’t have an essential oil. But chemists have identified and isolated the component that gives dirt that very specific scent and recreated it in a lab. And, to complicate matters more, many essential oils won’t stand up to the process of soapmaking and any benefits are lost.

We understand that some people prefer the “all natural” route. Don’t get us wrong, we love essential oils. But we also feel there’s a lot of misinformation surrounding them and the term “natural.” Just because it’s an essential oil doesn’t necessarily make it superior, or even safer for that matter.

Does this mean we use just any old fragrance oil that smells good? No, of course not. All of our fragrances--and our essential oils--are carefully vetted to ensure they’re of the best quality, specifically created for safe use on skin and don’t contain any harmful ingredients.

We like to have fun with our products, and our data shows that you like it too. Using strictly essential oils in our products would greatly limit our creativity and our offerings. So to sum it up, fragrance oils are just more practical for us in so many ways.

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