Fragrance-Free Isn't Always Fragrance-Free - What Every Fragrance-Sensitive Person Needs to Know

I was the girl who liked fragrance.

Not just liked it - loved it. The more unusual the scent, the better. I was the person who always checked out the perfume counter at Macy's and Nordstrom when I visited the shopping mall. I sought out boutique perfume shops, just to smell perfumes even if I couldn’t afford to buy them. I was a devoted Lush customer - Ro's Argan body conditioner and Karma scented soap, both with very intense aromas, were my favorites. At one point I enrolled in a course in natural perfumery. My entire business was built around fragrance - scented lotion bars, massage bars, body oils, candles. I believed, genuinely, that fragrance was one of the most powerful tools for making a person feel good.

Then I caught a bug.

I lost my sense of smell completely for three months. When it returned, it came back weird.

"It smells horrible, absolutely horrible…

I'm standing in one corner of my bedroom…

I just opened the top drawer of my chest of drawers…

It's a jumble of bottles of perfume and pouches of colorful beads…

Beads from Ghana and Tanzania…

Seeing the beads bring back pleasant memories of my homeland Ghana…

And memories of Tanzania where I worked for 3 years…

But today, I'm here for the perfumes - I'm wondering which to wear today…

So many bottles of perfume, some opened, some unopened…

A few are almost empty….

I pick one of my favorites "Youth Dew" by Estee Lauder…

I spray one puff on my wrist expecting the familiar opulent amber smell…

I hold my wrist to my nose and whoa! wait! what's that smell?...

It smells horrible, absolutely horrible!...

It's a smell I have never smelled before…

I can't even describe it…

I grab another bottle of perfume and take a whiff – it smells off…

I'm thinking "what is going on? why do my perfumes smell so bad?"...

I check bottle after bottle: all smell bad….

I put the bottles back in the drawer, close the drawer and walk out of the room…

I feel a deep sense of loss and sadness….

It dawns on me that my distorted sense of smell is getting worse… Parosmia (distorted sense of smell) has robbed me of one of my simple joys…

That was a real moment in my life 8 years ago. I had parosmia for three years.

I was fortunate - I recovered. I can now use fragrance again, though I am more discerning about what I use, and occasionally a scented product will still smell wrong in a way that reminds me of that day in my bedroom. But many people are not as fortunate. Many people live with a distorted sense of smell and can’t use scented products. Beyond that, there is a much larger community of people who live with fragrance sensitivity every single day - not because of a temporary illness, but because their bodies simply cannot tolerate fragrance. A tough place to be since fragrance is all around us – in our bath and body care products, home care products, and spaces we live and work in.

That experience gave me a heart for the fragrance sensitive community. And it changed everything about how I make body care products.

I discontinued my scented body care line. I rebuilt my business around one standard: genuinely fragrance-free body care. Not labelled fragrance-free. Actually fragrance-free. And in doing that work, I learned that fragrance-free on a label does not always mean what you think it means. 

Fragrance-free products are often expected to have no smell - and people are frequently surprised to discover that fragrance-free products can have an aroma. Technically, fragrance-free means a product was formulated without the addition of fragrance oils, essential oils, or any other ingredient intended to add scent to the finished product. But the finished product will still carry the natural smell of its ingredients. A body butter made with shea butter and olive oil can be legitimately labelled "fragrance-free" - and it will have a smell.

 

Products labelled "unscented," on the other hand, are formulated to have no detectable scent - but may include masking scents and essential oils to achieve that neutral scent.

Ironic, isn't it? A fragrance-free product may have a smell. An unscented product may contain fragrance.

 

The second thing worth knowing is that fragrance-free does not guarantee that a product is gentle or safe. Fragrance is one potential irritant among many. Whether a product is truly gentle depends on every ingredient in the formula, the process by which it was made, its storage conditions, and how those ingredients interact with your body. People with fragrance sensitivity often have sensitivities to other ingredients as well.

 

So while "fragrance-free" tells you that one known irritant has been excluded, it does not tell you the full story. A product can be fragrance-free and still be harsh, reactive, or poorly formulated. Reading the full ingredient list - and understanding what you are reading - remains the most important thing you can do for yourself.

 

What fragrance-free means to me

When I formulate body care, fragrance-free means three things simultaneously:

No added fragrance. No masking scents. No essential oils.

Any aroma in a product I create comes only from the raw ingredients themselves - the plant butters, the oils, the extracts chosen for what they do on skin, not for how they smell. The aroma is mild or barely perceptible.

So how does one choose a truly fragrance-free product?

Read the ingredient list! If you are sensitive to fragrance, it is important to go beyond product claims to find out what ingredients are actually in a product. It is not enough that a product is labelled “fragrance-free” or “unscented”. As we have seen, both labels still leave room for masking scents and essential oils that trigger reactions in fragrance-sensitive people.

 

Seek out reviews from others with fragrance sensitivity. Their experiences can tell you more about how a product actually performs than any claim on the label.

 

Support groups for people with fragrance sensitivity are also an excellent source of product recommendations - these communities have often done the hard work of testing and vetting products so you don't have to.

 

Take time to research fragrance-free brands you are interested in and look for transparency about their ingredients and why they use them. Such transparency is an indication that the brand understands fragrance sensitivity and has earned the right to be trusted - not just with straightforward ingredients, but with the complicated ones too.

And if you are ever unsure - ask. A brand that is genuinely formulating to this standard will always be able to tell you exactly what is and isn't in their products, and why.

I rebuilt my business because of a drawer full of perfume bottles that no longer smelled the way they should. Because there were other people like me navigating a market that wasn't built for people whose relationship with fragrance had changed without their permission.

I recovered. I can wear Youth Dew now, on a good day. But I keep making fragrance-free body care - because for many people in this community, that recovery never fully comes. And because everyone deserves body care they never have to second-guess, regardless of where their sensitivity came from or how long it has lasted. That heart is what my business is built on."