A unique alternative to store-bought scents, homemade solid perfume is easy to make with minimal ingredients. By making your own, you can customize your fragrance.

Making your own solid perfume or cologne is a fun, simple project. Solid scents are convenient for traveling without the mess. They can be kept in small tins in your purse, or even poured into a locket for easy application throughout the day.
This project is much easier than most people would imagine. If you can warm up a bit of oil and wax in a double boiler, you can easily make yourself a solid perfume. The process is similar to making lip balm, lotion bars, or a salve.
Ingredients
For the solid perfume base, you’ll need a liquid oil and some wax. For the liquid oil, it’s best to choose an oil with a neutral scent like jojoba oil. (That is, of course, unless you want to add the scent of your oil to your fragrance. For example, coconut oil can add a bit of a tropical scent to your blend.)
For the wax, I generally use beeswax, but you can also use a vegan option like candelilla wax instead. Slightly more expensive and harder to find, floral waxes can add their own fragrance to your perfume.
Apart from the base, you’ll need essential oils or cosmetic-grade fragrance oils to add the scent to your perfume. While essential oils are the most natural option, their fragrance isn’t as long-lived as the more synthetic options. While you can increase the concentration of essential oils to strengthen their fragrance, adding too many can cause irritation to the skin.

Combining fragrances
When it comes to combining scents, the only rule is that there are no rules. Feel free to combine whichever scents you prefer. That said, there are some general guidelines you can follow to make a successful perfume blend.
The fragrance pyramid
When formulating a perfume or cologne, combining a variety of scents can help balance your fragrance. Ideally, you’ll want to combine different notes from each part of what is known as the fragrance pyramid.

At the base of the fragrance pyramid, you can find the ground notes that give depth to your fragrance and keep the scent lasting longer. The base notes include woody scents like sandalwood, cedarwood, or patchouli. They also include vanilla, ginger and cocoa or musk and frankincense.
In the middle of the pyramid, the heart notes last longer than the top notes, but not as long as the bottom notes. The middle notes include floral scents like jasmine and geranium and spices like cinnamon and clove. They also include fruit fragrances like strawberry and peach or herbs like rosemary, clary sage, and lavender.
Top notes are the first scents you note when you smell the fragrance. They’re the light, fresh scents that make the first impression and include citrus scents like lime, grapefruit, and tangerine. They also include sea-salt scents and herbal scents like lemongrass, peppermint, and eucalyptus.
Testing out combinations
A great way to test out combinations before combining the various fragrances in your perfume is to add a drop or two of each oil to strips of blotting paper. When you fan the blotting paper below your nose, you should be able to appreciate the scent of each oil. By fanning several strips with different oils below your nose, you should be able to appreciate how the different scents harmonize (or not) with each other.

Safety information
When using fragrance oils and essential oils, don’t go overboard. This will help prevent problems with skin sensitivity. Only use cosmetic-grade fragrance oils and follow the dosage recommended by your supplier. The best way to dose the fragrances is to use a small, inexpensive jeweler’s scale.
Essential oils are more “natural” than synthetic fragrance oils, but they don’t last as long. Generally, for safety, the concentration of essential oils should be kept at around 2% of most cosmetic recipes by weight. In the case of a perfume, you may want to go slightly higher than that so that you can note the fragrance more, but, again, be careful not to go overboard. How much higher you can go will depend on the essential oils chosen.
Some essential oils are more likely to cause allergic reactions or contact dermatitis on sensitive skin than others. (Common allergens in essential oils include limonene, linalool, cinnamal, and eugenol.) Keeping the more allergenic oils to a minimum will help make a safer product.
Procedure
Making the perfume base couldn’t be simpler. Add the wax and oil to a double boiler insert and gently heat them until the wax has melted. Once melted, remove the mixture from the heat source and add the fragrance oils. Immediately pour the mixture into aluminum lip balm tins or lip balm tubes for easy application. Allow the mixture to cool uncovered until solid.

Materials
- 1 Tbsp. sweet almond oil or other oil of choice
- 1 Tbsp. beeswax pellets
- essential oils
Instructions
- Measure out your oil and wax and place in the top of a double boiler. I used sweet almond oil this time, but have also used both coconut oil and jojoba oil in the past. Coconut oil is solid at cooler room temperatures, so the end product will also be a bit more solid in the end. If that concerns you, you can use slightly less wax to compensate.
- Warm your ingredients over medium heat until the wax melts.
- Remove from the heat and mix your wax into the oil thoroughly.
- Choose your essential oils and mix into your oil and wax mixture.
- Pour your perfume into small containers. It will set as it cools off. In the winter mine was ready in just a few minutes, but in the summer, it will take longer, of course.
This post was originally published on November 28, 2014. It was republished with more information about combining fragrances and clearer instructions.
Myra
Great idea! I live in Australia. Where would I get the lipstick moulds and lipstick containers from?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Myra,
I usually buy mine online either from a soap supply store, amazon, or eBay. It’s not the type of thing I can find locally in stores here in Spain either.
Usually you can get free shipping or very reasonable shipping, especially if you are also buying other things like the beeswax and/or oils. I hope that helps. 🙂
Daniel
Hi I get them on wish.com bought 30 and they are great here is a link. I think you’ll like 10PCS Empty Clear Transparent Lip Balm Tubes Containers Cosmetic Lipstick Bottles 5g. Add it to your wishlist!
http://www.wish.com/c/57709fbf723f936f8c7d5d96
Jackie
I have vegetable glycerine, can that be substituted for the carrier oil and will it make a smother product without it getting to soft. Thank you, Jackie
Tracy Ariza
Hi Jackie,
I have no idea what would happen if you were to combine glycerine with beeswax for something like this. I’ve never tried it.
If you don’t have almond oil, you can use another liquid oil, preferably one that doesn’t have much of a scent of its own. Solid oils like coconut oil would also work, but you may need to use a little less beeswax so that the mixture isn’t too hard in cold months.
I hope that helps!
Helena
Finally something I can use my beeswax for. I bought it and then forgot what I bought them for, tried to melt them and mix them with nothing but lipstick and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Of course it needs a softer oil. Thanks. Just wondering why you don’t use shea butter instead of mixing wax with oil? Is it the scent?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Helena,
I’m sure if you were to use a refined shea butter without a lot of scent, that that would be possible. The scents are pretty subtle, though, so using an unrefined shea butter would probably overpower the scents added. Otherwise, yes, you could do something very similar. I did something similar by adding natural color to shea butter to make a homemade blush stick of sorts.
Why did I use what I did?
I used the beeswax and almond oil because at the time I had been experimenting with that mix for making lip glosses. Shea butter doesn’t work well for a lip gloss because it sort of melts off right away. Beeswax gives these sorts of recipes a bit of staying power. The combination of oils and beeswax is also a lot cheaper around here than shea butter. I do use shea butter a lot, though, and love it too. 🙂
Margaret
Just lovely! Have you ever put your solid perfume in a lip balm container? I’d think “stick” perfume would be pretty neat.
Tracy Ariza
Hi Margaret,
I haven’t done that, but that is a great idea!
I made lip balms in the round aluminum containers and later decided I don’t like them as much as the stick containers.
I’ve recently bought a lipstick mold and lipstick containers, and I’m finding them very useful for lots of DIY projects- so much so that I haven’t even gotten around to making lipstick yet. Hahaha
I’m working on getting a few new DIYs using them up on the blog soon. 🙂
Kristen
Hi! Gathering my supplies to try this awesome DIY tutorial, but….I don’t have a stove on which to boil the water. Can I melt the wax and oil mixture in the microwave or in the convection oven? What would be your suggestion? I really want to try it, but I don’t want to mess up all my supplies for naught! Thanks!
Tracy Ariza
Hi Kristen,
I would think that either method would work. You just need enough heat to melt the beeswax. If it were me, though, I would probably try boiling the water in the microwave, and mixing the ingredients in a bowl over the hot water. If one time through wasn’t enough, I’d reheat the water and try again. I’m not sure what would happen if you were to microwave the ingredients directly, so I’d prefer just using the microwave to heat up the water and using the double boiler method. My microwave stopped working months ago and I never bothered to fix it, so I can’t really try it out to see.
I hope that helps! 🙂
Tracy Ariza
BTW, I should say that if you’re using small pieces of beeswax like I use, I’d think that just boiling once would leave enough residual heat to completely melt the wax. It usually melts pretty quickly.
Mlamli
Dear Tracy, please assist with the quantities for an alcohol based perfum.
Scent =
Essential Oil =
Alcohol =
Glycol =
Distilled Water =
Tracy Ariza
Hi Mlami,
I wish I could help you, but I haven’t gotten around to trying to make a liquid perfume myself yet. (Or maybe I have, long ago, but I haven’t given it a good successful try for the blog yet.)
It’s definitely something I can keep in mind for a future post- unfortunately, as of now, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be of much help as I haven’t played around with it enough to be able to make informed suggestions.
Monica
Hi. Where can we find those cylinder tins to store them in? Thanks.
Tracy Ariza
Hi Monica.
I bought mine through eBay because I couldn’t find any locally or through the Amazon here in Spain, but I found these tins on amazon that look just like the ones I bought. (Mine are 15ml aluminum tins, which is half an ounce.)
Bound for Style
Wow Tracy! I really love your post.
Mary
This is fantastic! I’m actually wondering where I can get one of those double boiler pots shown in your photo, with the pour spout and wire edge to hang over the saucepan… Thanks!
Tracy Ariza
Hi Mary,
Thanks!
I actually bought mine at a local store (here in Spain) so that probably doesn’t help you much. They sell them every year at the local ALDI, but I’m not sure if the same goes for the US. Mine was pretty inexpensive. I think it cost around 6euros ($8-$9?) at the store, but of course, I bought it at the right time at an inexpensive store.
The closest thing I could find online for the US was this one from Amazon (affiliate link):
It looks to be just like mine, albeit a tiny bit more expensive. I hope that helps!
Iris
My daughter wants me to make her favorite perfume from Dior. Where can I find the recipes for these. This is very exciting for both of us.
Tracy Ariza
Hi Iris,
Yes, it’s fun to experiment with these sorts of things.
As for trying to replicate another perfume, that’s a bit trickier. There may be people out there with recipes for that sort of thing, but I’m not sure about it. They would likely use synthetic ingredients, but I wanted to make a natural product to replace the commercial perfumes.
Made with essential oils, the scent doesn’t last as long, and the scent is lighter and more “natural” than commercial perfumes, so I think it would be difficult to replicate a commercial brand perfume only using EOs.
That said, it doesn’t mean that you can’t take some of the ideas of your favorite perfume and apply them to your own home blend. For example, my favorite sent used to be the DNKY original perfume because I loved the citrus notes it had. I made my essential oil blend with citrus-y scented EO’s, and I loved the results.
I don’t know about the new Dior perfume, but you can take a look at how people describe it and try to use EOs that are described in the same way to try to find a combination you like.
I know that’s probably not the answer you were looking for, but I hope it at least helps somewhat.
kylie bednar
How much essential oils do you use? Your citrus recipe called for 25-50 drops so is that the amount needed? Could we substitute essential oils for actual perfume?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Kylie,
That sounds about right. Certain oils are more potent than others, so I like to take a whiff as I’m adding in each oil. The final scent is usually a bit more subtle, so I like to err on the side of adding to many in.
As for adding actual perfume, it depends. If you have a perfume oil, you can use that and shouldn’t have any problems. If you are using a water based perfume, though, it likely won’t mix well with the oils and wax base. Normally when adding liquids, you need some sort of emulsifier and also need some sort of preservative. Perhaps the perfumes already have a preservative of some sort, and the wax itself may be enough to emulsify it if you were to carefully mix everything together as it was cooling, but I’m not really sure. Whenever you add liquids to homemade mixes, you are taking the chance of getting bacterial growth if you don’t know what you are doing so I tend to avoid it if possible.