Christmas scents for your home: from DIY to scented candles

On this page: What defines Christmas · DIY · Essential oils · Scented candles · Wax melts · What lasts longest · Which scent suits you · Frequently asked questions

Christmas scent is built from three components: spices, citrus, and resin or wood. Cinnamon, cloves, and star anise provide the warmth; orange provides the freshness; fir or frankincense provides the depth. Almost every scent you perceive as Christmassy combines at least two of these.

There are five ways to achieve this in your home, and they differ primarily in one thing: how long the scent lasts. A pot on the stove smells as long as it is simmering. A 220g candle burns for about forty hours—and smells as long as it is lit.

Here are all five, with recipes, a comparison table, and an honest assessment of when each is worth it.

What is a typical Christmas scent?

Three scent families carry the festive season:

Spicy. Cinnamon, clove, star anise, cardamom, allspice. This is the core—gingerbread, mulled wine, speculoos. Warm, sweet, and instantly recognizable.

Citrus. Orange and mandarin. They make the spicy scent lighter; otherwise, it tilts toward being too heavy. Orange with cloves is therefore no coincidence, but a craft.

Resinous and woody. Fir, spruce, cedar, frankincense, myrrh. This is the tree in the living room and the church on Christmas Eve. These notes give the scent depth and make it feel mature rather than like a child's punch.

Added to this is a fourth direction that is increasingly considered Christmassy: Gourmand—vanilla, caramel, butter, pastries. Less traditional, but more suitable for everyday use. If you don't like cinnamon, you usually end up here.

If you want to delve deeper into what each note does: we have explained the 15 most popular fragrance notes.

Making your own Christmas scent: the pot on the stove

The classic, and it really works. You don't need anything that isn't already in the house.

What goes in:

• 1 orange, sliced (with peel)
• 2–3 cinnamon sticks
• 1 tbsp whole cloves
• 2 star anise
• optional: a few apple peels, a fir branch, a piece of vanilla bean
• water, until everything is covered

How to do it: Put everything in a small pot, cover with water, bring to a boil, and then let it simmer on the lowest heat setting. Two hours is standard, but you can go longer—though you need to keep an eye on the water level. The pot must not boil dry, so top it up regularly and do not leave it unattended.

You don't have to throw the mixture away afterwards: pour off the water, keep the ingredients in a cool place, and set it up again with fresh water next time. This way, you can get up to four days out of the same batch.

What the pot can do: It smells like real ingredients rather than fragrance oil, the steam distributes it evenly throughout the room, and it costs almost nothing.

What it can't do: It only smells as long as it is simmering. It requires supervision, energy, and a free spot on the stove. It cannot be placed in the bedroom and certainly cannot be given as a gift. And when guests arrive, you have to remember to set it up in time.

For an Advent Sunday: ideal. For the whole of December: impractical.

Essential oils in a diffuser

A few drops of orange, cinnamon, and spruce oil in a diffuser or on a scent stone. Fast, adjustable, without a flame.

However, essential oils are not automatically harmless. Cinnamaldehyde, the main fragrance component of cinnamon oil, is one of the substances that must be declared in cosmetics because of its potential to cause allergies.

And if there is a cat in the house, caution is advised: cats have a harder time breaking down terpenes and phenols—major components of many essential oils—than humans because they lack a specific liver enzyme. Diffusers and scent lamps are more critical than a candle because the exposure lasts for hours. When in doubt, ask your vet before setting anything up.

Scented candles: the easiest way

Light it, done. The scent builds up over a few minutes and then carries on as long as the candle burns.

What you should look for so that it smells good:

The size of the room. A 220g candle scents a normal living room. For an open living area, you need two—or a larger one.

The wax. Vegetable waxes like rapeseed, coconut, or soy burn cleaner than paraffin. If there is nothing about the wax on the product page, it is usually paraffin.

The dosage for the room. A candle made for a living room quickly becomes too much in a small bedroom. If your head feels heavy after a while, it's rarely just the candle—usually, the combination of candle and room size isn't right. Less is actually more here: in small rooms, one candle is enough for scent and atmosphere.

And most importantly: Air out the room after burning, trim the wick to a maximum of one centimeter before every lighting. Why this makes more of a difference than any material choice is in our article Are scented candles harmful?

Our scented candles in glass are made from European rapeseed-coconut wax, without paraffin, with French fragrance oils. 220g, around 40 hours burn time, hand-poured in Vienna.