What smell can do to you is fascinating. For starters, smell is personal. No one can determine whether a smell is actually bad or nice. Smell can give a certain feeling. It links to experiences and events. This way it can evoke memories and feelings from back then.
Forest and apple pie
Did you often walk through the woods with grandma? Chances are you think of that, when you smell the first fresh leaves on the trees.
And you know the theory of the freshly baked apple pie, when your house is for sale and there are viewings. The smell of apple pie gives everyone the feeling of coming home, homeliness and cosiness.
Now that apple pie is very thick on it; it can be a lot more subtle. But what feeling would a strange-smelling house leave you after a viewing? Fortunately, there are already estate agents who provide a pleasant smell in the houses, by placing scented vases or using a room spray as a service.
The scotch and soda smell
Hotels and shops also increasingly have a signature scent that is subtly spread through the room by means of scent machines. Fragrances that are composed based on the experience they want to give customers and guests. Scotch & Soda is perhaps the best known example. As soon as you enter the shops you can smell the scotch & soda smell. But the smell is also in the clothing, so you will also be confronted with it when ordering online. And do you want to use the scent more often? Then you buy the perfume or the detergent.
Fragrance in society
But scent is certainly not only used for commercial interests. Hospitals and care centers use scent to calm you down and secretly also to mask bad smells. And there is an ongoing project in which calming scents are spread at night in a busy and often restless nightlife area, in the hope of less aggression. And the first results are positive!
So your brain links smell to memories. So let's make a lot of positive memories and associate scent with them. For example: buy a new/different one especially for during your holiday fishy (can also be shampoo or shower gel). When you smell that scent again after your holiday, the memory machine in your brain immediately starts working and you imagine yourself in that same nice place again.
So, what smell can do to you is fascinating. But what you can do with scent is just as interesting!
Tessa Dijkhuis of Takai Scented Private Labels (nowadays Blueyse ) realizes collections for brands and companies in the field of fragrance. This can be for both interior and beauty. "A private perfume or a collection of home fragrances… we always look for the right look and scent." Takai and Happy Whatever joined forces and released our Happy Scents together.
