That wonderful, freshly washed scent
Everyone recognizes it: you take a load of laundry out of the machine and press your nose into a freshly washed towel. There it is: that wonderful scent of "clean". Fresh and just washed. This blog answers the uncomfortable question of what you are actually smelling at that moment. Because "clean" in principle doesn't smell like anything at all.
Check out our affordable range of laundry and cleaning products here.
Why some scents are "fresh"
Our nose is not a neutral machine. It is tuned to what many people consider "pleasant" or "unpleasant"; that is how our nose is trained. This happens a lot during your youth, when you learn to associate certain scents with judgments. This is the result of your family, advertisements, and habits.
By way of illustration, psychologists at Radboud University showed in a well-known study (“Smells Like Clean Spirit”) that people who were subconsciously exposed to citrus-scented all-purpose cleaner recognized cleaning-related words more quickly and thought about cleaning. Your thoughts about a scent are therefore predetermined.
In this way, associations with scents like citrus, lavender, or "ocean breeze" are not innate, but learned—ingrained over decades by advertising and habit. In other words, we don't just buy clean, but we primarily buy the feeling of clean.
What is perfume actually?
The scents you associate with clean are often synthetic or natural perfumes. A perfume is not a substance, but rather a recipe. It can be composed of dozens of different components. Some fragrance mixtures contain as many as one hundred. The international fragrance trade association IFRA counts almost 3,000 different chemical substances that can be used in the formulas. From this enormous bin, a unique mixture is put together for each product.
This mixture consists—simply put—of three different categories of ingredients. First, the fragrance providers. These can be synthetic or natural substances, such as bergamot, lavender, or sandalwood. Second, the fixatives. These ensure that the scent lingers longer (to fix). A well-known example of this are phthalates. Finally, there are also synthetic musk substances such as galaxolide, which provide a long-lasting scent.
How should you read the labels then?
If you want to know exactly what composition the perfume in your product consists of, you won't get very far with the average ingredient list on your detergent, deodorant, or body lotion: there's a good chance that it simply says "parfum". The exact composition does not have to be listed because it may be considered a "trade secret" according to regulations.
For a product you rub on your skin every day, that is a pretty strange thought. If you still want to see through this, it is good to pay attention to the list of allergens. Since 2023, there has been an EU regulation that requires companies to indicate 82 different perfume allergens on this list if they are present in the product.
Unscented vs. fragrance-free
One final catch: although many people think otherwise, unscented and fragrance-free do not mean the same thing. The same applies to scentless versus scent-free. The meaning of fragrance-free is clear: it must not contain any ingredients intended to add scent. This applies to both synthetic perfumes and natural fragrance substances.
In contrast, "unscented" refers more to the noticeable scent. To achieve such a neutral scent, chemical or natural fragrance maskers or "neutralizers" may indeed have been added to hide the original smell of the ingredients.
What scentless masking means
Finally, fragrance is by no means always added because a product needs to smell nice. It often also has the function of hiding something. Think of a cleaning product: a heavy citrus or pine scent smells "clean," but in fact just overpowers other smells—those of the ingredients that do the actual work.
Many deodorants also mask sweat with perfume. In doing so, they do not address the main cause. Sweat doesn't actually stink at all. Want to know more? Then read our latest blog: Why doesn't your deodorant work after a few hours anymore?
Why does all this matter for your skin?
Good to know, but why should you worry about this? Well, your skin often notices the use of perfume. Research shows that fragrance components often cause contact allergies worldwide. People with sensitive skin or eczema also regularly react to perfume. The EU itself estimates that between 1% and 9% of the European population is allergic to fragrance allergens.
That sensitivity weighs extra heavily with products that stay on your skin all day. A deodorant also stays on an extra sensitive area for hours. Baby care ends up on supple but very vulnerable skin. These are precisely the places where you don't want a vague fragrance mixture doing its work all day long. Suffering from sensitive skin? Then read our new blog about the difference between skin allergies and irritations.
Fragrance-free is not boring
Do these risks mean that everything has to smell like nothing from now on? Fortunately not. We already touched on the difference between natural and synthetic fragrance mixtures. Take a deodorant with bergamot and lime. This smells subtle and the scent is not a separately added layer of perfume: it is simply how those ingredients smell naturally.
And do you prefer to smell nothing at all? That is also possible and there is nothing wrong with that. There are plenty of products that are completely fragrance-free and do their work scentlessly. Think of the Derma line without added fragrances: exactly what you want for your sensitive skin.
The quality mark that does your homework
Even easier than deciphering labels is asking for help. The independent quality mark AllergyCertified helps you make an allergy-friendly choice with an ingredient index and a seal on products that have been assessed by toxicologists. This seal checks for hormone-disrupting and carcinogenic substances and allergens.
View our AllergyCertified range here.
Start small
The message you are used to from us: start small. You really don't have to empty your entire bathroom cabinet tonight. If you want to change something, start with the products that stay on your skin the longest and closest: your deodorant and care for your little one. And who knows, perhaps your "clean" will soon smell in a very different way.
Shop your suitable skincare and household items at Grace is Green now.
Sources: Sofia Botvid et al. “Contact sensitization to fragrance mix I and fragrance mix II among European dermatitis patients: A systematic review.” Contact Dermatitis. | **Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, “Fragrance allergens labelling.” European Commission. | Rob W. Holland et al. “Smells like Clean Spirit: Nonconscious Effects of Scent on Cognition and Behavior.” Psychological Science. | Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1545 | Made Safe Certified | EIN Presswire | KRO-NCRV | Ethique