What are fragrance families?

If you have any interest in fragrances, you’ve probably heard of fragrance families. You’ve probably also heard people describe perfumes using words like: “woody”, “floral”, or even the cringe-worthy word “oriental”. Have you ever wondered what it all meant?

Let’s unwrap the mystery around fragrance families so you can talk about scents like a pro.

Fragrance Family Basics

Let’s start at the beginning,

what are fragrance families?

Fragrance families are the categories that fragrance notes (aka “scent notes”) are broken into.

What is the Fragrance Family Wheel?

The fragrance family wheel is similar to the color wheel in art. It’s a visual representation of the fragrance categories and how they relate to one another.

How many fragrance families are there?

Most perfumers agree that there are four main fragrance families: Floral, Woody, *Amber, and Fresh. However, each of these families can be broken down into subfamilies.

The Base Fragrance Families

Floral

Characteristics: flowery, sweet, fresh, powdery

Common notes: rose, jasmine, lavender, tuberose

Popular Subfamilies: solifloral, floral bouquet, floral fresh/fruity floral, warm floral

Woody

Characteristics: warm, spicy, dry, clean

Common Notes: cedar, sandalwood, vetiver

Popular Subfamilies: mossy wood, dry wood, woody aromatic, spicy wood

*Amber

Characteristics: warm, herbal, spicy, deep

Common Notes: amber, vanilla, anise, myrrh

Popular Subfamilies: warm amber, spicy amber, woody amber, soft amber

Fresh

Characteristics: bright, clean, citrus

Common Notes: citrus, white blossom, bergamot

Popular Subfamilies: fresh aquatic, fresh citrus, fresh green, fresh aromatic

How to use fragrance families

You may notice a pattern among subfamilies; many of the fragrance families have similar subfamily categories. This is because there’s a lot of cross-over between fragrance families and their notes. While this seems confusing at first, it actually makes it easier to use fragrance families while buying and creating fragrances. Here’s how!

Using Fragrance Families perfumer:

Perfumers can use the fragrance family wheel to help them create complex scents in a similar way to how a painter uses the color-wheel. Understanding how different fragrance notes relate to one another helps the perfumer select the right notes to compliment or enhance each other as needed in their design.

Using Fragrance Families as a buyer:

Knowing how to describe the scents you like will make it easier to find the scents you’re looking for. Knowing the technical (or at least common) terminology makes it easier for you to know which fragrances are worth your time based on their description, and makes it easier for people to make recommendations for you based on your preferences.

*The Amber family used to be called “Oriental”, which is both outdated and offensive. I do not use this terminology in my practice.