What Is Perfume Made Of? Ingredients and Notes

Perfume is made of aromatic materials dissolved in a carrier, usually alcohol with a little water. The aromatic part — the perfume concentrate — combines natural materials such as essential oils, absolutes and resins with synthetic aroma molecules made by chemists. Most perfumes sold today use both. The notes printed on a perfume’s description are the impressions those materials create together, not a list of what is inside.

This guide explains each part, introduces the materials you will most often see named, and links to a fuller article on each one.

The three parts of a bottle of perfume

The concentrate

The composition a perfumer designs: a formula of anything from a few to several hundred materials, measured precisely. It is usually a small fraction of what is in the bottle — the exact share is what the words eau de toilette, eau de parfum and parfum describe (see Perfume Concentrations Explained).

The carrier

Most spray perfumes use perfumer’s alcohol — ethanol prepared for cosmetic use — because it dissolves aromatic materials well, evaporates cleanly and helps the fragrance lift off the skin. Some contain a little water. Oil perfumes use a carrier oil instead; we compare the two in Perfume Oil vs Spray.

Small additions

Some perfumes contain a UV filter to protect the liquid from light, an antioxidant, or a colourant. They are present in small amounts and do not usually affect the scent.

Natural materials

Natural fragrance materials are taken from plants, and occasionally other sources, by a handful of methods:

Essential oils — usually steam-distilled from flowers, leaves, woods, roots or seeds: lavender, vetiver, patchouli, sandalwood.
Expressed oils — pressed from citrus peel: bergamot, lemon, orange.
Absolutes — extracted with solvents from delicate materials such as jasmine and rose petals, giving a richer, more complete smell than distillation can.
Resinoids and balsams — from tree resins and gums: benzoin, labdanum, frankincense.

How each is made is described in How Perfume Ingredients Are Extracted. A natural material is itself a mixture of many molecules, which is part of its depth — and part of why one harvest can smell slightly different from the next.

Synthetic materials

Synthetic aroma molecules are made by chemists. Some reproduce a molecule that exists in nature, such as vanillin, the main aromatic molecule of vanilla. Others have no natural counterpart and give perfumers effects nature does not offer: the clean musks of modern perfumery, the soft woods, the sparkling aldehydes.

Synthetics made modern perfumery possible — the story is told in How Synthetic Molecules Created Modern Perfume — and they are neither better nor worse than naturals as a category. We look at that question in Is Natural Perfume Better Than Synthetic?.

A perfume is not a list of ingredients. It is the impression they make together.

From materials to notes

A note is a name for something you can smell in a perfume: "pear", "rain", "rose", "leather". Sometimes a note corresponds closely to one natural material — bergamot oil for a bergamot note. Often it is an accord, a blend of several materials that together evoke something, because the thing itself cannot be extracted (there is no oil of rain) or because a reconstruction suits the composition better. Are Perfume Notes Real Ingredients? explains how to read a note list with that in mind.

The materials you will meet most often

Each of these has its own article: what it smells like, where it comes from, and what to look for.

Citrus and fresh

Bergamot in perfume — the bright, slightly floral citrus at the top of a great many perfumes.

Flowers

Rose in perfume — not one smell but many, from dewy and green to jammy and dark.
Jasmine in perfume — rich, radiant and, in larger amounts, warmly animalic.

Woods and roots

Sandalwood in perfume — creamy, soft and long-lasting.
Vetiver in perfume — dry, earthy and smoky, from the roots of a grass.
Patchouli in perfume — dark, earthy and sweet, and much changed since its reputation was formed.
Oud, or agarwood — the resinous heartwood of the agarwood tree, and the many accords named after it.

Sweet, soft and warm

Vanilla in perfume — sweet, but also smoky, woody and balsamic.
Musk in perfume — today almost always synthetic: clean, soft and close to the skin.

How much of each is used?

Proportions are rarely published, and they are less informative than they sound. Some materials are noticeable at a tiny fraction of a percent; others make up a large part of a formula and simply give it body. The relationship between quantity and what you smell is one of the things a perfumer spends years learning; RUŌOD Lab explains it for working perfumers in Odor Thresholds in Perfumery.

What about the list on the box?

The ingredient list printed on a perfume’s packaging follows cosmetics labelling rules. It usually names alcohol, water and "parfum" or "fragrance", followed by certain individual substances — linalool, limonene, citral and others — that regulators in some markets require to be named because they can cause allergic reactions in sensitive people. How to read it is explained in How to Read the Ingredient List on a Perfume.

Common questions

Is perfume made from flowers?

Some of it can be, through absolutes and distilled oils of rose, jasmine, orange blossom and others. But many floral notes are built largely or entirely from other materials, because some flowers yield no usable extract and natural extracts are costly.

Does perfume contain animal ingredients?

Historically some perfumes used animal materials such as musk, civet and castoreum. Today these are almost always replaced by synthetic materials; natural deer musk is protected by international trade rules. Ambergris, a material formed in sperm whales, is rare in modern perfumery and largely replaced by synthetic molecules.

Why do two perfumes with the same notes smell different?

Because the notes name only a few impressions. The proportions, the dozens of unnamed supporting materials, the quality of each material and the concentration all change the result.