Perfume notes are the individual scents you can pick out in a fragrance, and the order in which you smell them. A perfume doesn't smell the same after three hours as it did in the first minute, because its ingredients evaporate at different speeds. Perfumers describe that change as top, heart and base notes. This guide explains the three, shows how to read a note list, and ends with a glossary of what common notes smell like.
Top, heart and base notes
Every perfume material has a different volatility, meaning how fast it evaporates. The lightest molecules reach your nose first and are gone soonest; the heaviest are slow to appear and stay for hours. The fragrance pyramid sorts them into three layers.
| Layer | When you smell it | Typical notes |
|---|---|---|
| Top notes | The first 5 to 30 minutes | Citrus, bergamot, mint, light fruits, pink pepper, lemongrass |
| Heart (middle) notes | From about 20 minutes to a few hours | Rose, jasmine, lavender, geranium, spices, green notes |
| Base notes | From about an hour to the end of the day | Sandalwood, cedarwood, vetiver, patchouli, amber, musk, vanilla, oud |
The timings are rough and depend on the concentration of the perfume, your skin and the weather. In UAE summer heat, top notes burn off noticeably faster.
Top notes
The top notes are your first impression: bright, sharp and quick to fade. They are what you smell on a tester strip in a shop, which is why buying a perfume on the first sniff so often goes wrong.
Heart notes
The heart, or middle notes, appear as the top fades and form the main character of the perfume. When someone says a fragrance is "a rose" or "a lavender", they are usually describing its heart.
Base notes
Base notes are the heaviest materials. They anchor the lighter notes, slow their evaporation and give the perfume its staying power. What people smell on you in the afternoon is mostly the base. Many base materials also work as fixatives.
How to read a note list
Product pages and perfume sites list notes in the three layers. A few things help when reading them:
- A note is a description, not an ingredient list. "Sea salt" or "cashmere" in a perfume usually means an accord (several materials blended to suggest that scent), not the thing itself.
- The base tells you the most. Two perfumes with the same citrus opening can dry down completely differently. If you know you like woody or musky drydowns, look at the base first.
- Families group similar scents. A perfume described as "woody aromatic" or "floral fruity" belongs to those fragrance families, which is often more useful than the individual notes.
- Test on skin and wait. Smell the perfume again after 30 minutes and after three hours before deciding.
If you are building your own blend, the same pyramid is the starting point. Our guide to making perfume oil at home uses it to put together a first formula.
What common notes smell like
A short glossary of notes people often ask about, grouped by where they usually sit in a perfume. Each links to the single-note oil in our range, where you can read more and, for most, see how much to use.
Top notes
- Bergamot: lemon zest with a soft, tea-like bitterness. Less sharp than lemon and drier than orange. The classic top note of chypres and colognes.
- Lemongrass: sharp, lemony and green, with a dry, grassy backbone. More vegetal than fruity.
- Citronella: bright lemon over a dry, slightly bitter grassiness. Close to lemongrass, with more bite.
- Juniper berry: crisp and piney with a gin-like freshness and a light peppery edge.
- Pink pepper: a light, rosy spice that fizzes rather than burns.
- Petitgrain: the leaves and twigs of the bitter orange tree: green, woody and citrusy.
Heart notes
- Lily of the valley: clean and dewy. One of the freshest white florals, closer to green than to sweet or creamy.
- Freesia: light and slightly citrusy, with a soft powdery warmth underneath.
- Gardenia: rich and heady, with a creamy texture and a faint green stem note. A lush white flower.
- Jasmine: intensely floral and honeyed, with a slightly animalic depth that makes it feel warm.
- Geranium: rosy and green, with a minty, leafy edge. Drier and sharper than rose.
- Osmanthus: a soft floral that smells of apricot, with a light leathery, tea-like undertone.
- Rosewood: between a rose and a creamy wood: gently sweet, lightly spicy, refined.
- Clove: intensely spicy and slightly medicinal at the edges. Powerful, so used in small amounts.
- Fig: green and a little milky, from the leaf and bark more than the fruit. Dry rather than sweet.
Base notes
- Cedarwood: dry and clean, like pencil shavings, with a warm, slightly smoky depth.
- Sandalwood: creamy and milky. The softest of the woods.
- Vetiver: smoky and rooty, with a cool, almost ashy dryness.
- Patchouli: dark, earthy and woody, faintly sweet. The backbone of many modern chypres.
- Oakmoss: damp forest floor: mossy, resinous, slightly bitter.
- Labdanum: a warm, honeyed resin between amber, leather and beeswax.
- Myrrh: dry, bittersweet resin, earthy and slightly smoky. Used in bakhoor as much as in perfume.
- Frankincense (luban): clean, bright smoke with a citrusy lift and a balsamic base.
- Amber: warm and honeyed. Amber is an accord rather than a single material, usually built from resins and vanilla.
- Tonka bean: a smoother cousin of vanilla, with hints of almond, hay and light tobacco.
- Vanilla: creamy and sweet, like the bean rather than sugar.
- Praline: caramelised nuts and browned sugar. A rich gourmand note.
- White musk: clean and airy, like fresh laundry. It stays close to the skin.
- Black musk: dark, smoky and warm, with far more presence than white musk.
- Baby powder: soft, clean and powdery, built from white musk and light aldehydes.
- Animalic: warm, musky and skin-like, with a leathery edge. A blending note, used in small amounts.
For every note above and nearly two hundred more, browse our perfume oils, or explore them by fragrance family.