Is your house easy on the nose? Plenty of shops offer candles and other aromatic aids. Just don't mix rose and pine scents.
By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published May 2, 2003
DAVIS ISLANDS - Jeanne Lavettre has introduced a lot of people to incense over the years.
Her store, Serendipity Accents and Gifts, 231 E Davis Blvd., is known among regulars for its amalgam of gorgeous aromas that drifts out onto the sidewalk and street.
"Smell those from the bottom," she urges a customer who's doing what most people do when they enter the store: picking up fragrant packages of candles and inhaling.
Blissfully.
Lavettre, who opened her shop almost a decade ago, has long known that people want to make their homes smell good. She does a brisk business in candles, incense, diffusers, scented linen sheets and 40 varieties of essential oils that can be warmed on a lamp ring or dabbed behind the ears.
"I once said that anything that burns sells well, and it's still true," she says.
These days, having a home that smells like lavender rather than last night's lamb chops has become a trend, perhaps even a ritual. Home-fragrance products in scents ranging from fruity melon to laid-back vanilla line grocery and drugstore shelves. Walgreens on Platt Street in South Tampa stocks beautifully packaged potpourri in daisy and tulip scents, as well as a selection of scented candles in decorative jars and pillar shapes.
The National Candle Association estimates U.S. retail sales of candles at $2-billion annually. Industry research indicates that the most important thing people look for when buying a candle is fragrance. About 96 percent of candle customers are women.
Room spray and potpourri sales combined are estimated at nearly $300-million a year. And home fragrances are finding their way into products once available only in the toniest of linen stores. Online shoppers can now buy ironing water, French root balls (for closets and drawers) and elegant shelf paper.
The question is, how do you make your house smell good without overdoing it?
Yana Tobey, owner of Crabtree & Evelyn, 702 Village Circle S in Old Hyde Park Village, recommends sticking with the same scent or the same "scent family."
Even if you happily mix plaids and florals in your home-decorating scheme, when dealing with scent, avoid obvious clashes. "Pine and rose," Tobey warns, are simply a disaster.
"They're both extremes and just don't go together."
Her store has long peddled subtlety, offering its clientele a selection of home scents that conjure up images of the English countryside: Spring Rain, Rose and Lily of the Valley.
It's hard to imagine overdoing it, but it's possible.
"Home scent should be subtle, but there," Tobey says. "It's all about moderation. We tell people that less is better."
Barbara Jorgensen, a spokeswoman for the national retail chain Bath & Body Works, believes that how we choose to scent our homes is highly subjective.
"What's appropriate for some isn't for others," she says. "Some people don't have a strong sense of smell, and sense of smell can also diminish with age. Years ago, there were a lot of purists working in the fragrance business who we referred to as "the noses.'
"They could no more imagine layering scent than flying to the moon. Layering scent was a no-no, like wearing white cotton on Christmas Day."
Jorgensen compares the use of different fragrances in the home to the "sensory layering of ingredients in cooking."
You can achieve that effect with home fragrances, she says, by using scented products that blend harmoniously throughout the house. For example, lavender, rosemary and eucalyptus can be layered nicely, she says. And a highly scented lemon liquid soap in the kitchen might mingle well with closet sachets and fragrant candles.
Scents for the home are divided into "active" and "passive" categories, Jorgensen says, and should be blended accordingly. A spray is considered "active" because it's typically used to cover up odors, while a potpourri - usually made from dried flowers and other natural ingredients - is "passive" because it releases scent continuously.
Jorgensen believes that our longing for a sweet-smelling home may have something to do with a need to control our environment in a changing world.
"Smell can create or change mood," she says. "Just like the color of a room or a lack of clutter might be pleasing to you, so are certain scents. It's all about how we interpret fragrance. Lavender, for example, calms and helps some people sleep. It's a huge part of being able to control your environment."
On a recent Tuesday night, customers at the Bath & Body Works in WestShore Plaza - all women - were lingering over candles and other home products with scents such as eucalyptus spearmint, blue lavender palmarosa and green tea. A salesperson told one customer about a recent corporate decision to replace the word "stress" with "relax" on some of the labels.
Savvy marketers know that most customers want to feel as if they're relaxing rather than taming stress. At Tommy Bahama, which offers scented candles, sachets, potpourri and soaps in its home-products line, the idea is to feel as though you're on vacation - even in your own bathroom.
Its summer home-fragrance line includes names such as Mai Tai, Blue Hawaiian and Amber Isle. The ideas is to get customers to feel as if they're bringing a little bit of "paradise" home, says Kat Rentschler, manager of retail home-product development for Tommy Bahama.
But the strategy really goes a lot deeper, Rentschler explains.
