Spring Refresh: Scent Styling Tips From Nate Berkus and Carlos Huber
The interior designer and luxury perfumer talk refreshing your home with scents, just in time for spring.
Rejoice!—spring is only a few days away. While you're cleaning out your closets and organizing your beauty supplies in an effort to start the season anew, you might be overlooking one important detail—the scent of your home.
Scent styling, or creating a curated fragrance for your space, is a trend that's gaining traction in the decor world. Airlines and hotels are also onboard with the idea of customization. Delta sprays "calm"—a lavender and chamomile mixture in its cabins, while boutique hotel WestHouse in NYC has a signature bespoke fragrance made for the bedroom suites by branding firm 12.29 scent.
While businesses often spring for high-tech systems to create a unique experience for patrons, achieving luxury air is easy to do at home with the help of affordable systems like the newly released Unstopables collection, which includes air fresheners, candles, fabric refreshers, plug-ins and in-wash scent boosters to elevate your environment and wardrobe.
At the brand's launch last month, interior designer Nate Berkus and luxury perfumer Carlos Huber shared their top three tips for creating your signature scent:
1. Be Bold
Believe it or not, smell is heavily linked to emotion and memory. "I still remember what my grandmother's house smelt like when I was a kid," Berkus shared. "The best interiors over time—the classic, renegade breakout stars of interior design—have always been when people took risks, and the risks were based on personalization." Being bold with your choices differentiates your taste and allows another layer of personality into your life.
Huber, creator of Arquiste Parfumeur, suggests thinking of scent styling as a fragrance wardrobe for your home. Just as you have different perfumes that evoke various feelings when worn, you have different spaces with different uses that deserve the same attention. "I think you can actually mix and match from these sort of layers that you’re adding and give each room a different feeling and a different function," he says.
2. Make a Space Your Own
"A lot of things shift as we move through our homes and our lives change—we have children, we move, we leave one place for another—we make those decisions about what we leave behind. Scent is one of those things that can come with you," Berkus explained. Once you develop your own signature scent, you can begin to craft your own fragrance story that can change and evolve with your life. "It’s an opportunity to keep experimenting just like we do with what throw pillow we love on our sofa."
Huber recommends going for notes that can be tailored to join you in your life, not overwhelm your space. "Scent is important. Appreciate it a little bit more and involve it a little bit more in your life."
3. Invest in Affordable Luxury
According to Berkus, affordable luxury isn't about buying high-end and designer names. It's about having things with character in your space, so not only does it become a comfortable living area, but also it becomes an environment with all the labels ripped off. "Once you start to interact with scent and live with it for a bit, you start to realize very fast that it was missing," he says. "It really is that final touch."
Ready to craft your own signature scent and dive into the world of scent styling? Try our picks below to refresh your space just in time for spring cleaning.
