Oils

Perfume Oils
Our proprietary blends are created using a combination of several of the 66 Urban Botanic perfume oils. These oils fall into one of six fragrance families: Floral, Fruity, Herby, Leafy, Spicy, and Woodsy. While most people enjoy a variety of fragrances, we each have a dominant fragrance family.

Urban Botanic perfume oils are pure, undiluted, and of the highest quality available on the market today. Perfume oils are not essential oils, as many essential oils are dangerous for direct body wear, and their fragrance fades within a few minutes. However our perfume oils are made from the most natural ingredients possible to avoid skin sensitivities and fragrance allergies.

See a full list of Urban Botanic single oils by Fragrance Family HERE.

Oil FAQs

ARE OUR OILS ESSENTIAL OILS?

No. UB oils are perfume oils. Essential oils have a completely different use from perfume oils. Essential oils are inferior to perfume oils when creating perfume and scenting the home, and perfume oils are inferior to essential oils from a healing and therapy standpoint. Our oils do not have medicinal properties and cannot cure illness. (Please see “Essential vs. Perfume Oils” below.)

WHAT IF I’M ALLERGIC TO SCENTED PRODUCTS?

Then you’re in luck! We have many testimonials from UB customers who can’t even sit next to someone wearing perfume without getting a migraine, and they are in love with our bath, body and home products.

What most people don’t know is, those with scent allergies aren’t usually allergic to the scent itself. They are allergic to the chemical preservatives that are also in scented products. But with UB products, all you get is pure fragrance. No fillers, no chemicals. Our perfume contains no alcohol, no formaldehyde, no benzene, or other harsh preservatives. Instead, we use natural preservatives in all our products which don’t cause sensitivities.

WHY IS LEMON IN THE FLORAL FAMILY?

The fragrances are sorted into family according to personality type. For example, a lemon is a fruit, but Urban Botanic’s Lemon fragrance portrays the personality traits of the floral personality: flirty and romantic, etc. Other oils that may seem out of place are:

• Juniper (floral) is really a coniferous tree.
  
• Vanilla (fruity) is a flavoring derived from a genus of orchid plant.
  
• Almond (herby) is a deciduous tree producing the nut we eat.

WHAT ARE BLENDS?

A blend is a special fragrance recipe made from several individual oils. Some of the blends may be made from the individual oils that we carry. Other blends contain oils that we do not carry. All of our blends are tried and true recipes that are loved by our customers!

You can create your own custom blends by combining any of our single oils into your own secret recipe.

Essential Oils vs. Perfume Oils

Essential Oil enthusiasts are sometimes skeptical when they hear UB perfume oils are not Essential Oils. This is because they do not understand the difference between the two types of oils.

There are many poorly developed fragrance oils on the market, so Essential Oil enthusiasts are right to be concerned. Most fragrance oils contain the same preservatives that perfumes and candles do, which cause sensitivities in many people. Urban Botanic perfume oils do not contain these harmful chemicals.

Essential Oils have a completely different use from perfume oils. Essential oils are inferior to perfume oils when creating perfume, whereas perfume oils are inferior to essential oils from a healing and therapy standpoint. Urban Botanic perfume oils do not have medicinal purposes, and cannot cure illness.

ESSENTIAL OILS BACKGROUND:

Essential oils are created by extracting oils from plants by distillation. The chemicals held in the plant are heated, pressed, steamed and condensed. When the steam cools, it turns to water and what’s left is the essential oil floating on top of the water. Because essential oils are extracted from plants, flowers, seeds, bark, leaves, etc, just as wine from the same wine vineyard varies from year to year, essential oils are never the same from batch to batch. It’s very hard to control consistency in scent when using essentials.

Additionally, only a few essential oils can be directly applied to skin safely, or “sniffed” directly. Most people use essential oils as a form of therapy in extremely diluted forms. There are healing properties in essential oils, and that’s what they are generally used for. Essential oils frequently contain some undesirable qualities that we don't want in a perfume, such as traces of toxins (e.g. bergaptene in cold pressed citrus oils). These offending chemicals are extremely difficult to extract from essential oils

Many people who use essential oils get them confused with perfume oils, or they feel perfume oils are inferior, due to their synthetic nature. You may run into customers who use essential oils, and are concerned that UB products aren’t “natural” or they’ll tell you our products contain chemicals, just because they are not Essential Oils. The truth is, Essential Oils contain chemicals, too.

CHEMICALS:

When most of us hear the word "chemical,” we think "not natural, toxic, dangerous". When we hear the word "natural" we think, "safe, healthy". The truth is, everything around us is made up of chemicals. Water is a chemical, vegetables are complex mixtures of structured chemicals, wood is made up of cellulose (chemical) and the earth is one big bundle of chemicals. We eat chemicals, we drink chemicals, we are chemicals ourselves. Some chemicals are better for you than others, though.

USES, PROS AND CONS OF PERFUME OILS VS ESSENTIAL OILS

(as pertaining to perfume and bath products)

Essential Oils

• Commonly used for healing and aromatherapy.
  
• “Natural”—made from items occurring in nature.
  
• Variable in quality; essential oils are never the same. Each “batch” is affected by soil, sunshine, water, wind, etc.
  
• Complex odors add depth  but may contain toxins or harsh chemicals.
  
• Changes in color and odor over time.
  
• Should not be used in cosmetics/perfume. Most should not be applied directly to skin. The healing properties are not needed for perfumes.
  
• The strength of chemicals in essential oils, although natural, can have unexpected, sometimes dangerous medicinal-like effects if not used carefully.

Perfume Oils

• Commonly used in perfume, lotion, other bath products sold in department stores and anywhere you buy high quality, commercial scents.
  
• Consistent quality; we can control for scent, meaning each new bottle of a particular scent will smell the same as the last.
  
• Interaction with perfume, lotion, etc can be controlled. Therefore, perfume oils are superior in cosmetic application.
  
• Industrial quality “perfume oils” are often sold as “food grade” and “cosmetic grade”. These lower grade copies could give the higher quality perfume oils a bad rap. (UB’s manufacturer is a huge perfume house. Your perfume oils are the highest grade, strength and quality, and do not contain harmful chemicals or phthlalates, phlalates, which are commonly found in lesser quality perfume oils.)
  
• Larger variety of scents are available. No healing properties.