Get Creative With These 5 Fragrance Combinations

Finding a new fragrance can be tough, especially if you’re still wearing the fragrance your Mom gave you for your birthday seven years ago. Most people are familiar with popular scents like rosemary, peppermint, grapefruit, and geranium, but it can be exciting to step outside of your fragrance comfort zone (we’re looking at you, middle school body spray). 

Whether you’re on the hunt for your new signature scent or just looking to spice up your next date night, these five fragrance combinations can help you up the ante.

5 Scent Combinations To Help You Find Your Signature Scent

At Snif, we like to talk about scents without all the usual, and complicated, fragrance jargon. You won’t hear us dissecting the top notes, middle notes, and base notes in these combinations. Instead, we want to get right to the point and help you find your new signature scent. 

1. Bergamot and Juniper

Bergamot is a light, sunny citrus scent that’s often compared to lime. If you’re looking at a bergamot orange, it looks similar to a pear-shaped lime with wrinkled, bumpy skin. Unlike most citrus, bergamot has a slightly floral and spicy smell. If you love London fog lattes or have ever smelled a cup of Earl Grey tea, you’re already familiar with the smell of bergamot. 

Now, if you’re a fan of a good gin and tonic, you’re also already familiar with the smell of juniper. Juniper can be a powerful fragrance that’s fresh, sappy, and slightly bitter — imagine the smell of pine trees in fresh snow. If you’re not a gin drinker, you can also think of juniper like a cousin to pine and cedar (or skip the guesswork and take a whiff of your parents’ decades-old bottle of gin). It has a woody, spicy, and refreshing aroma, which makes it the perfect counterpart to bergamot. 

Sweet Ash is a fragrance that combines bergamot and juniper, then takes it up a notch with fir balsam, Tonka, vanilla bean, white moss, and patchouli. It’s a silky, woody scent that manages to be sweet and earthy at the same time. 

2. Musk and Sandalwood

Musk has a complex smell that’s sweet, but also woody and earthy. There’s often a slightly powdery after-smell to musk, but depending on the type of musk in a fragrance, it can also smell slightly fruity or floral. Long story short, musk is a versatile smell, which is why you’ve likely seen it (and smelled it) in a variety of different fragrances.

Sandalwood oil comes from a small tropical tree that is known for its small, red berries. To state the obvious, it has a woody fragrance. But unlike other woody scents, sandalwood is earthier, creamier, and richer. It leans on the sweeter side while still being warm and slightly leathery, and you can think of it like the smell of a new wooden boardwalk roasting in the summer sun. 

When combined, musk and sandalwood make for a subtle, alluring fragrance… and if that sounds like just the thing for you, reach for Way With Woods. This fragrance also features mandarin, amber woods, and vetiver to create a light, woodsy scent that you can easily wear in any setting. 

3. Peach and Black Walnut

We’ll cut to the chase here: everyone knows what peaches smell like. Peach is known for its sweet, juicy scent with just the slightest hint of acidity, and for many, that classic peachy smell perfectly captures a bright, sunny day in early summer. 

Black walnut, on the other hand, has a strong, earthy smell. The woody, sweet, and spicy scent of black walnut is perfectly bold and deep enough to balance the velvety scent of peaches. 

If you’re looking for a fragrance with this combo, look no further than Honorable Mention. Honorable Mention combines peach with Timur pepper, jasmine tea, lily of the valley, orange blossom, cypress, and vetiver for a woody floral that is bright, spicy, and smooth. 

4. Tobacco and Rose

Tobacco leaf has a woody, earthy scent that’s not at all the stifling, smoky scent many expect. Dried tobacco leaf can even smell sweet and powdery, meaning it pairs well with sweeter fragrances.

While tobacco steps more to deep, complex side of fragrances, rose is commonly thought of as a lighter, elegant scent — but all things floral aside, rose can also smell sweet and subtly fruity. 

Together, tobacco and rose create a toasted, bold fragrance that you can find in Burning Bridges. Burning Bridges features tobacco and rose alongside addictive smells like iris, vanilla, fresh spices, and oakmoss so you can make a statement wherever you go. 

5. Fig and Ylang Ylang

Fig is a unique, fruity smell that can’t be found anywhere else. Part of what makes fig so intriguing as a fragrance is the way it pairs a green grassiness with a sweet honey element. 

Often described as milky and creamy, the sweeter side of fig’s fragrance pairs perfectly with its more bitter, cool side. The complexity of the fig’s smell comes from the fact that the leaves, fruit, and sap of the fig plant can all be used when making fragrances. 

Fig goes well with ylang-ylang, a fragrance that comes from the yellow flowers of a tropical tree. Ylang-ylang smells floral and sweet, and you can usually pick up on hints of jasmine, banana, neroli, and honey in the smell of the ylang-ylang flower. It’s deep, floral, and creamy, making it a gorgeous partner to the sweet but cool smell of fig. 

If you’re craving something that features both fig and ylang-ylang, Ex On The Beach is the fragrance for you. Along with fig and ylang-ylang, Ex On The Beach features orange blossom, jasmine, peony, and cedarwood to create a warm, smooth, and bold fragrance. 

Find the Best Scent for You

Hopefully, you feel one step closer to finding the perfect scent combination. Maybe you’re leaning toward the earthy combination of musk and sandalwood, or the fruity, floral pairing of fig and ylang-ylang. 

Wherever your nose takes you, don’t be afraid to try out a few different scents to find your new favorite fragrances — you can always try a Snif fragrance at home before you commit to your purchase with the Snif Trial Kit. 

After seven days with your samples, you can keep as many of the fragrances as you want and send back the ones you don’t want, totally free of charge. And with Snif’s new 10 mL mini fragrances, you can choose a few new fragrances as your signature scents. 

If more than one of these fragrance combinations appeals to you, you can also try fragrance layering. By combining two or more fragrance combos, you can create your own unique signature scent.

Sources:

Re-discovering Sandalwood: Beyond Beauty and Fragrance | NIH

Flowering Tobacco, Nicotiana sylvestris | Wisconsin Horticulture

Ylang Ylang Essential Oil Uses & Benefits | Healthline