The Truth About Home Fragrance

The Toxic Truth About Home Fragrance

When you consider the fundamental reasons for using home fragrance, whether it be a plug-in device, candle, wax melt, reed diffuser or a room spray, what springs to mind for you? 

We’d imagine the desire to improve the ambience of your home by infusing a beautiful array of scents into the atmosphere. Not to mention, to make the space feel more inviting and homely, both for your family as well as any visiting guests. At least that’s how we do things here at Four Scents!

If you’re familiar with Four Scents Botanical, you might have noticed we’re proud to distinguish ourselves as a company that only uses 100% natural ingredients. But for those who are unaware of what the vast majority of other home fragrances companies are adding to their products, there are some important things you need to know.

Here is why you need to get clued up on the importance of the Four Scents difference for the health and wellbeing of you and your family.

What Is A Synthetic Fragrance?

A synthetic fragrance means the scent is lab derived rather than using the real ingredient. 

Synthetic fragrances are everywhere and not just in home fragrance, but in perfumes, skincare and even cleaning products. We challenge you to take a look at the ingredients of some of your favourite fragrance or cleaning brands right now if you don’t believe us! We promise you’ll be shocked. 

Sadly, there is a large disconnect between the way nature intended us to experience various scents such as thyme, lemongrass, neroli and rose geranium and how the majority of the home fragrance industry delivers them to you. 

When a fragrance is natural and botanical in origin, as is the case with all Four Scents products, the plant is distilled or cold pressed to extract the fragrance. We then directly add the pure essential oil this creates into our soya wax bean melt to create our scented candles, or we infuse the oils into our reed diffusers.

At no stage do we get our lab coats on - in fact, we don’t even own any because you don’t need them when working with nature! 

We even hand pour our candles in Kent meaning we can oversee every aspect of the process to ensure we retain the highest level of quality within each of our products. Plus, this ensures we can trace every aspect of the production process from the original plant the fragrance was distilled from to the moment your chosen product arrives at your door. 

But what the vast majority of the home fragrance industry does is create the entire fragrance in a lab meaning at no time does nature or indeed that real fragrance ever get used in your product. Even if some of the real product has been used, it will often be watered down in a lab with lots of synthetic preservatives added to cut costs with no consideration of quality.

While you might think faking the fragrance of real plants is bad enough, have you ever stopped to think about how they are creating the likes of ‘stripped leather’ or worse still, ‘unicorn fluff’? Spoiler alert: it involves a lot of chemicals.

Why Is Synthetic Fragrance Bad?

While we don’t use any synthetic ingredients in our products we do allow in a few puns to our blog, meaning we could wax lyrical about why synthetic fragrance is bad for your scented candles for days on end. But alas, here is a quick summary. 

First and foremost, we don’t find it particularly ethical that a company states its products smell like a particular scent on its packaging when it doesn’t mean the real ingredient has been used. When that brand also happens to be on the luxury end of the market, this is even worse as even though you the customer may have spent £££ on purchasing their product, you still aren’t getting the real thing. 

If that wasn’t bad enough, there are also many health concerns surrounding the usage of synthetic or toxic ingredients, especially when they will be released into the air of your home. Just for context, some of the synthetic ingredients that at the time of writing are perfectly legal to add to home fragrance products in the UK include formaldehyde and paraffin wax.

As paraffin wax is derived from petroleum, burning a candle containing paraffin wax is essentially like burning fossil fuels in your home. These chemicals are known as BTEX for short, standing for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, and have links with various health conditions including nervous system damage and fertility challenges.

In addition, some of the symptoms associated with synthetic or toxic ingredients include: 

Dizziness - Headaches - Forgetfulness - Loss of coordination - Sinus problems - Throat irritation - Worsened asthma - Watery eyes

Long term exposure to synthetic fragrances has even been linked with cancer and kidney damage. So, that’s even more reason to clean up your home by removing synthetic fragrances in favour of 100% natural scents. 

Doing so with the likes of Four Scents candles and reed diffusers will allow you to enjoy beautiful home fragrance in a way that’s clean and safe for your family, without losing out on the potency of the pure natural scents. Aka: you’ll get the best of both worlds!

Children & Pets

Spare a thought for your children playing in your living room while breathing in synthetic fragrance. Not to mention the effect on pets, especially on any dogs, who have a sense of smell that can be between 10,000 and 100,000 times more powerful than humans. 

It’s all well and good avoiding harsh cleaning agents to protect your children and pets, but if you then introduce synthetic or toxic ingredients into the environment in the form of candles, room sprays or plug-ins, has your mission really been achieved? 

When you light a Four Scents candle or place one of our reed diffusers in your bedroom, hallway, living room or bathroom - you’ll never have to worry about what we’ve put in our products and whether they are safe for you, your children or your pets because they always have been and always will be

How Do You Know If A Candle Is Toxic?

Our best piece of advice is do not purchase a candle or home fragrance without having a quick read of the ingredients list first. We know it’s tempting just to purchase a candle based on a brand name or even a special deal, but this is no guarantee the product is using all natural, safe ingredients. Yes, even if it’s made by a popular brand! 

Here at Four Scents, you can view the list of ingredients each of our products have by clicking the ‘ingredients’ tab. The candles themselves are made from natural soya beans that are eco-friendly and sustainably sourced. No chemicals, synthetics or toxic ingredients feature in any of our product lines nor have they ever.  

Better still, if you have any further questions, we are a UK based company and we’re always available if you have any product queries. You can even join the Four Scents community over on our Facebook and Instagram page where we talk all things candles and home fragrance. We’d love to see you over there!

Are All Candles Toxic?

No, but unfortunately the vast majority think they can get away with using toxic or synthetic ingredients in their products and charging a premium for them. 

Don’t be fooled by fancy packaging either! As we mentioned above, please read the ingredients of any candle or home fragrance you wish to purchase. If lots of chemicals are listed - you have your answer about whether it’s toxic or not.

The Four Scents Difference

We’re proud to be different here at Four Scents and we’re not shy in telling people about it. 

Furthermore, we’ve worked hard to address all the current issues within the home fragrance industry before launching our brand to ensure our products never make the same mistakes. 

Here is an overview of our core ethos, including what we say no to as a brand and what we welcome with open arms.

The Four Scents Yes's