How to Make Your House Smell Like a Luxury Hotel, According to Experts

Maybe you don’t have the kind of bank account that’ll let you enjoy a White Lotus-style five-star hotel experience. But you can bring a little taste (or should we say, whiff?) of that home with you by following the same scent strategies that high-end resorts use to create a complete sensory experience for visitors. Here’s everything you need to know to make your own home smell just like a luxury hotel. Now you just need to talk someone else into putting the chocolates on your pillow for the nightly turndown.

Look Up What Scent Your Favorite Hotel Uses

Perhaps the easiest way to pull off that luxury hotel smell? Check out your favorite posh hotel’s website. Many of the top hotel chains, including Four Seasons, W, Ritz-Carlton, and others, offer their own signature fragrances in candles or diffusers, so you can bring the scent of your vacation back home with you. It makes a wonderful souvenir!

Opt for Something With Strong Woodsy Notes

“There’s something about wood that says luxury,” says Caroline Fabrigas, CEO of Scent Marketing, Inc. and Scentfluence, who collaborates with high-end hotels to create customized fragrances for their properties. “Most of our most popular scents have a woodiness to them. But it doesn’t have to be a dark, heavy wood to get that luxury feel.” Wood notes such as cedar, sandalwood, and teak can be perfect base notes for a luxe fragrance.

Other scents that tend to appear in luxury hotel blends are bergamot, a citrusy note, white tea, and green scents like herbs or aloe.

Strategize Your Scent Delivery

We all have that friend who slathers on several different products with very different fragrances every day, which just gives your nose a confusing jumble of scents. Your best bet to avoid a hodgepodge of fragrances: Keep your scents all in a family (or ideally, a single line of products) to make it cohesive. So if you love bergamot, opt for citrusy scents throughout your home.

If you do have a large enough space, you can create a more targeted scent strategy, Fabrigas says. You might want something soothing like lavender in the bedrooms, while you might pick something different and energizing—with mint or citrus notes—to keep you focused in your home office.

Change It Up With the Seasons

Just as you might change up your living room throw pillows or your bedding as the seasons change, you can also opt for a different home fragrance, too. Fabrigas recommends sticking with lighter fragrances in spring and summer, such as Mediterranean linen or sea-salt and sage. “They’re brisk and light and have a lighter, cheerier scent.”

For fall and winter months, people look for more festive scents with notes of evergreen or spice—such as winter pine or green spruce.

Use Fresh Flowers and Other Natural Scents

The easiest way to give your home a subtle yet luxe fragrance may be just to go back to the basics—a beautiful bouquet of flowers, a bowl of tangerines or oranges, or fragrant herb plants, says Malka Helft, founder of Think Chic Interiors. You don’t even have to splurge on a pricey bouquet. “Fresh flowers that you can pick up in Trader Joe’s or the grocery store—that makes a huge difference in homes, and makes them feel like they are put together.” And in addition to the scent, you get the visual boost from the flowers, too.

Splurge on Your Scent

A high-end scented candle or diffuser may be a worthwhile investment to help your house smell like a luxury hotel. Cheaper home fragrance products generally use artificial fragrance instead of natural oils and have a more overwhelming scent than their pricier counterparts. Cheaper candles usually use paraffin wax, which is made of petroleum and can produce more emissions in your home than higher-end options.

Keep It Subtle

No one wants to be walloped with scent when they enter your home. Electronic diffusers are a way you can easily control and change up the amount of scent delivered in your home—so you can boost the amount after you’ve cooked a strong, oniony dish, for instance.

With candles, you may need to move the candle around the room, or blow it out to better control the scent, Fabrigas says. (And keep in mind that most candles are only meant to burn for up to four hours at a time and should always be supervised when lit.)

Layer Your Scent In

Candles and diffusers help scent the air, but you can also use fabric refresher sprays, hand soap, lotion, and even your laundry detergent and dish soap to keep a consistent fragrance theme across your space (and yourself!). Just again—be mindful of not going overboard. “You want scents that are clean and fresh. That make us feel like a house is taken care of—not anything too strong,” Helft says.