You may have heard the term ‘cleansing the palate’ when it comes to smelling fragrances. It basically is a term to describe clearing out the smells of all the fragrances you’ve been smelling.

When you’re smelling a lot of fragrances, especially if you’re not used to smelling multiple at a time, you can get something called ‘Fragrance Fatigue’, which is when the body becomes desensitized to stimuli in order to prevent the nervous system from becoming overstimulated. This can also be called Anosmia, sometimes also called ‘nose blind’,  which is essentially losing your sense of smell. Temporarily. Sometimes you can also get a form of Rhinitis, where your nasal tissue can become inflamed, and your nose can become stuffy, runny, or itchy(this happens to me personally when I smell too many fragrances).

In essence, if you smell too many fragrances, you start to not be able to smell anything, or everything starts smelling the same.

For a long time it has been recommended to sniff Coffee Beans to clear your nose, but recent research suggests otherwise. 

Studies with Coffee, Lemon, and simple fresh air have been done and it has been proven that Coffee doesn’t do anything to ‘reset’ your senses when smelling fragrances. 

With Coffee, you’re actually just introducing another strong scent to your olfactory receptors, continuing to overstimulate your senses. It’s more like a psychological distraction. 

There are things you can do to cleanse the palate that will work. 

~Stick with one fragrance family before moving onto the next. What this means, is start with one type of fragrance, like Vanilla scents, spicy scents, Fruity scents, etc, then move on to a completely different type of scent category. This will help you to be able to differentiate the smells when you want to smell a lot. 

~Smell unscented skin or fabric. A lot of perfumers recommend smelling clean skin, especially the inner elbow, and even do this themselves. This usually works because we are typically so familiar with our own scent that it becomes neutral and becomes a good baseline for clearing out other smells that we are more sensitive to.

~Smell some fresh air. Fresh air is another great way to clear out aromas from your nose. Sometimes you just need to leave the space where you've spraying fragrances, take some deep breaths of fresh air, give it some time, and then go back. It can clear out some mucus or irritants, leaving you ready to smell some more fragrances. 

Over time, the more often you’re smelling fragrances, your nose will become more attuned to taking in many aromas. Your olfactory senses are capable of retaining a great number of aromas, and you can eventually get to a point where you can smell hundreds of fragrances without going nose blind. 

At Parfumerie Nasreen, you are always welcome to come in and just smell until you’ve had your fill. You also have the option to order samples, if you’re not able to come to the store yourself, and begin your scent journey by mail.

Let us know what you think on this topic. We always love a good fragrance discussion:)