I'm a huge fragrance fan and my love for all things scented transcends into the home too. There is nothing like walking into various rooms of a house and having a gorgeous scent hit you. There are three main types of home fragrance products, including candles, diffusers and room sprays. Candles help create temporary scent and ambiance, diffusers provide a permanent scent and room sprays give you instant scent, making them perfect for times things smell a little funky.
The home fragrance market is huge, making choosing the right brand and products quite tricky. Luckily I have a few favourites to share with you....
The first is my new favourite home fragrance brand, Lavender & Lillie. If there was an award for the most beautiful home fragrances, Lavender & Lille would win, hands down.
Lavender & Lillie is inspired by the recollection of memories through fragrance, something we've all experienced at various points in our lives. The brand also has a strong focus on design, creating candles and diffusers that become visual, as well as sensory, accessories for the home. There are four complex fragrances in the range and they each represent a global destination - evoking memories and inspiring your imagination to help transport you to those very destinations. My favourite in the range is Dover Street, London (I'm unbiased, I promise!), as it is an invigorating and fresh fragrance that contains notes of bergamot, black tea, ylang ylang, lily, vetiver, rosemary and mandarin. I have the diffuser and love it - the scent fills my entire bedroom and everyone who visits comments on how unique and beautiful the scent is. It cost £48 for 200ml and is available from lavenderandlillie.com.
Next up is Cochine, a premium fragrance brand that uses high performance eco-friendly cotton wicks, the finest essential oils and the creamiest, sustainabley sourced botanical palm wax in its candles.
Cochine was created in 2009 by Kate Crofton-Atkins. After moving to Saigon, Kate became inspired by the city’s unique style, elegance and romance and started designing a range of fragrances that could capture Saigon’s distinctive charm. She partnered with an international fragrance house based in New York and spent over a year working with essential oils to produce the perfect combination of scents that would reflect Saigon’s diverse floral and distinctive blend of oriental charm.
Each Cochine candle burns evenly and cleanly and has great projection. The brand has eight fragrances to choose from and my favourite is Vanille Tabac Noir. It cost £45, has approx 50 hours burning time and is available from cochine.co.uk.
Talking of visually appealing home fragrance brands, Urban Apothecary is another one. This British brand, created by perfumer-alchemist Tajinder Banwait, creates premium candles and diffusers that are handcrafted in England by skilled artisans. I'm a huge fan of the brand's diffusers - they come presented in a mouth blown glass apothecary bottle and look slick af in the home. Each Urban Apothecary diffuser gives out a gorgeous scent for a maximum of 12 weeks and really fills a room well. My favourite diffuser is Fig Tree, the smell is worth dying for. It costs £35 for 200ml and is available from urbanapothecarylondon.com.
Another great home fragrance brand worth getting acquainted with is AEQUILL, a British candle co. created by Jintana Khieochuam. From an early age, Jintana began to learn the powerful therapeutic properties of essential oils and this passion eventually led her to create her own candle brand which celebrates the art of candle-making. There are five candles in the AEQUILL range, including Juniper Berry & Cedarwood, Lavender & Marjoram, Grapefruit & Vetiver, Orange & Ylang Ylang and Lemon & Rose Geranium. Each of the candles are hand poured by Jintana and her team, into 100% recycled artisan mouth blown glass. They have a clean burn and a scent that last long after the candle has been blown out. Costing £24 each, these beauts are available from aequill.com.
Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Apotheke is a lifestyle brand that creates gorgeous handcrafted candles that smell gorgeous. However candles aren't the only type of scents this brand creates for the home - Apotheke also produce soaps, diffusers, lotions and hand creams. So far I've only tried the brand's candles however, if they are anything to go on, I'm sure the rest of the products in the range are perfection. There are several fragrances to choose from in the Apotheke range and each candle is made with a high quality soy wax blend and burns clean for an average of 50-60 hours. They are exclusively available at SONDER Living in Harrods.
Another great home-fragrance-meets-lifestyle-brand is Abahna. The brand, founded by Claire & Ed Croft, is inspired by the exotic bathing ceremonies and spas of India and the Far East. The brand has a huge variety of products on offer - from parfums and soaps, to diffusers and candles. I recently tried the brand's Mountain Flowers & Spring Water candle and love it. It gives off the most beautiful scent incredibly quickly and burns evenly. All Abahna candles have a burn time of 40 hours, cost just £26 and are available from abahna.co.uk.
Like Apotheke, mbotanicals is not just a fragrance brand. In fact it is known mostly as an organic skincare brand that also creates some gorgeous candles. Mbotanicals candles are created using 100% soy and vegetable wax and are hand-poured and scented with essential oils and fine fragrance molecules. They each come in an amber glass jar and have an approx burn time of 20 to 25 hours. They burn clean are very quick to deliver scent. They are also super affordable - my favourite is the Gardenia Candle and it costs just £15! It is available from mbotanicals.co.uk.
If you're on the hunt for some affordable home fragrance options, I recommend Yankee Candle. After all, who doesn't love a Yankee. The brand is easy to get hold off, every candle is strongly scented (filling the largest of rooms) and there is a huge library of fragrances on offer. Yankee is my go-to brand for seasonal offerings and this year they have some amazing limited edition scents available, including The Perfect Tree, Christmas Magic and Cracking Wood Fire. Yankee candles cost just £23.99 per candle and they each come with a seriously impressive burn time of 110 - 150 hours! You can get them at yankeecandle.co.uk.