The Best Holiday Scents for Your Home
Warm, elegant holiday scents for your home: amber, sandalwood, cedar and incense, plus how to make the house smell festive without a single candle.
Holiday scent doesn't have to mean cinnamon candles and pine spray. The most elegant homes smell warm, deep and quietly festive, like a hotel lobby in December.
The scents that feel like the holidays
- Amber and saffron: warm and glowing. Try Ambre Safran.
- Cedar and spice: a forest at dusk. Try Cèdre Noir, with cedar, cardamom and a thread of cinnamon.
- Incense and myrrh: candlelit and quiet, without the candle. Try Midnight Vellum.
- Oud and sandalwood: rich, for evenings and gifting. Try Oud Nº1.
How to scent the house for guests
- Entryway: a warm scent that greets people as they come in from the cold.
- Living and dining room: one scent in the same family, placed away from the food.
- Guest bathroom: a travel reed diffuser.
Set them out a few days before a party so the scent has settled.
Flame-free, all season
With trees, wrapping paper and kids around, a reed diffuser gives you the holiday scent without an open flame, and it lasts 60–90 days, right through to the new year.
Gifting? Our holiday gift guide has ideas from $29.
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More from the Journal
- The Best Scents for a Bathroom (and Where to Put the Diffuser) — Which scents keep a bathroom smelling fresh and hotel-like, the right size of diffuser, and where to place it for the best result.
- The Best Scents for a Bedroom — Which fragrances suit a bedroom best: soft, clean and warm scents that feel calm rather than loud, and how to scent a bedroom without overdoing it.
- Home Fragrance Gifts: A Guide for Every Budget — Thoughtful home fragrance gifts from $29: scent sample sets, travel reed diffusers and luxury reed diffusers, with tips for choosing a scent for someone else.