This article was prompted by my visit to a store the other day to buy some beeswax and essential oils to make some aromatherapy candles and was taken aback when I was handed a bottle of an exotic fragrance oil blend with a lusciously delicious-sounding name like "Yummy Cranberry". Since I am allergic to certain chemicals, I tried to coerce the salesman to give me essential oils but his "Ma'am, this smells really good" while shriveling his nose at the earthy aromas of pure essential oils told me that my efforts would be in vain.
So, what is the difference between a fragrance oil and an essential oil? In one succinct sentence - there is a world of difference between the two!
For starters, essential oils are all-natural liquids or resins, extracted from various parts of plants. They contain the "essence" of the source plant and embody the healing properties of the parent plant and are employed for not only their scent but also their therapeutic properties. Fragrance oils are also known as perfume oils or flavor oils and they are synthetic chemicals that offer nothing by way of therapy but are available in an array of scents (those fruity flavored products hardly have any real benefits).
So why would someone want fragrance oils over essential oils? The answer lies in the fact that it takes over 2000 pounds of rose petals to extract one pound of rose essential oil which means an exponential rise in cost! Pure essential oils are pricey. If you were making commercial batches of candles and you wanted them to just smell great, perfume oils would be a better bet. However, a word of caution if you are using fragrance oil to perfume soaps - often times, the synthetic ingredients could cause allergic reactions on skin and it is good practice to invest in quality, tested fragrance oils.
Fragrance oils are available in various grades and only superior quality grades should be used for cosmetics or you can get a rash from using products with synthetic chemicals. Of course essential oils being natural don’t guarantee that you wont be allergic to them but often when you get rashes from using certain products, it could mean that the product contains artificial ingredients.
However, a drawback of essential oils is that they are extremely volatile and need to be stored in dark bottles away from sunlight. Fragrance oils are quite "low maintenance" and retain their scent for years on end as opposed to essential oils that have an expiry date and don’t have a long shelf life. And since fragrance oils are available in a plethora of interesting scents (there are 500 fragrance oils for about 150 naturally-available essential oils), they are the choice of candle and bodycare products manufacturers.
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