Luxurious, warm, and decadent are just a few ways consumers would describe the feeling of smelling their favorite candle. Candles and particular candle scents never go out of season, but the home scents that decorate your favorite place to rest or entertain can change depending on the month, holidays, or event.
Trending Scents For All Occasions
Whether you’re looking to jump on the pumpkin spice craze for the fall or incorporate the smell of evergreen into your holiday scents for winter, there is no shortage of scents to add to your line up. There are several ways candlemakers can expand their candle scents to stay competitive in the market. While it can seem like the candle market is oversaturated, this proves to be a competitive edge a business can leverage since they have the ability to stand out with a quality product.
Clean & Fresh Candle Scents
In the midst of a pandemic that businesses everywhere are trying to bounce back from, we’ve seen the workforce embrace remote work. With the rise of remote work projected to increase to 87% by 2025, consumers are looking for refreshing, clean scents for their homes. Candles can help set a mood for concentration and creativity which can help improve a person’s workflow.
Entrepreneurs can look to create a “remote work” scented line with fresh fragrance notes like citrus, rose water, eucalyptus, and lemongrass to elevate a person’s workspace and increase their productivity. There have been several studies that correlate with performance and smell. For example, citrus smells are great for staying alert and lemon has been linked to improving cognitive functions.
Tip: A niche line like scents designed for remote workers also allows you to get creative with your candle design. You can incorporate elements such as dried fruit or wax emblems to make them stand out on the shelves.
Mellow & Relaxing Scents
To say it’s been a stressful few years is an understatement. Due to increased stress levels in 2021, consumers are looking for candle scents that evoke a sense of calmness and clarity. People want to relax and between remote work, virtual learning, and adapting to being back in the world, having a little peace at home is a necessity.
Get inspired by the art of relaxation and expand your line to include calming fragrance notes like lavender, chamomile, bamboo, and vanilla. Lavender has been a favorite aromatherapy scent used in candles, spas, and massage businesses to help release tension and soothe racing thoughts.
Chamomile is commonly used in herbal teas but can also ease anxiety and promote stress relief. Choosing an array of mellow home scents that can help your customers unwind at home is a great way to stay on trend with self care and to have fragrances you can use year round.
Tip: Don’t be limited by the scents you choose to inspire relaxation. You can get as granular as possible with the type of wick you use to influence the flame brightness of a candle. Also, consider creating a minimalistic label using cool colors like purples and blues to match the sensory mood of a calming candle scent.
Nostalgic Candle Scents
Nostalgia has never been more popular than in the past decade with people clamoring for the moments of yesteryears. Whether it’s a funnel cake at a fair or the smell of grass during a football game, there has been no shortage of home scents and candle fragrance oils used to help inspire your favorite memories. Scents that remind people of past times are trending in 2022 because they allow brands to tell a specific story through a token scent.
Consider creating scents that will resonate with your customer base, with themes structured around a specific decade or niche moment that resonates with people. The key to imagining nostalgic scents is reflecting on different scenarios that have a unique scent. For example, camping could remind a customer of any number of woody undertones, amber, and smoke, a sleepover could invoke scents like popcorn or candy, even morning cereal could take a customer back to sitting over their favorite bowl of crunchy goodness.
Nostalgia is done at its best when you can layer and capture the essence of a memory within a particular scent. The goal is to evoke positive or sentimental feelings within your customer to trigger those nostalgic memories.
Tip: Think about where your primary customer base is located whether that’s in a rural area, metropolitan city, or specific country. Scents that personally resonate with consumers will encourage them to make a purchase so make sure to research what scents are memorable for your customer’s demographics.
Natural & Sustainable Candle Scents
Customers are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits that supporting eco-friendly products can have on the environment. Cozy never goes out of style and whether it’s a luxury candle fragrance oil or popular candle scent, you can support ethically sourced and environmentally friendly candles through a few methods. We’re seeing more brands move towards including soy and nontoxic candle blends in their ingredients which can have cleaner, longer burn times, and be safer for the environment.
In addition to non-toxic soy wax, there is also vegetable-derived wax which is never tested on animals, beeswax, and stearin candles made from palm oil. The benefit of including these wax types in your candle scents is that you can also promote that they are compostable or biodegradable which can strengthen the messaging around these specific lines.
You can also pair sustainably sourced candles with natural & earth notes like garden, botanical or, woody, which are all aromatic and can enhance the natural scent of the wax being used.
Tip: Being sustainable isn’t limited to just the candle itself, you can also add a wooden wick for clean-burning. Wooden wicks are becoming increasingly trendy and pair perfectly with soy wax because soy wax tends to burn at a slower rate.
You can also look to use eco-friendly items like glass to create different sized candles and promote upcycling to your customers. Selling natural wax melts that could be placed in glass jars, will also cut down on production and promote sustainability from reusing the glass products.