Tricks and Hacks to Make Your Favourite Perfume Last Longer

Do you know someone who always smells like they’ve just rolled out of a bed of roses even after a long train ride and a double shift at work? We are willing to bet our month’s salary that they aren’t spritzing themselves every hour. Who has the time?! Especially since there are a few hacks that ensure that dousing yourself once is more than enough. Just like most things in life, applying perfume is also like a game of chess. If you strategize well, you will always end up smelling wonderful.

We’ve amassed a list of tricks and hacks that will help you make your perfume last much, much longer than it did before. Inculcate these into your daily routine and you’ll never have to carry a bottle of perfume around ever again. Besides, life is hard as it is, do you really want to have to worry about your perfume evaporating too?

Spray yourself after a shower

This is a hack I am sure you’ve read before but bear with us because if you want to smell like a meadow all day, this is the golden key. After a shower, your pores are open which helps to lock in the fragrance. Not to mention, the moisture on your skin acts as a binding agent of sorts.

Of course, you are not to spray yourself when you are dripping wet. Pat yourself down, then apply a coat of unscented moisturizer which will trap in the fragrance. Another plus—doing this post a shower will prevent your perfume from staining your clothes and jewellery.

Spritz, don’t mist

Do you know how in old movies actresses walked through a cloud of fragrance? It might make you feel like Audrey Hepburn but this method of applying perfume yields no results. All it does is waste a considerable amount of your product leaving you with a fragrance that will evaporate the first chance it gets.

Instead, spritz directly onto your bare skin and allow the fragrance to get absorbed.

Apply perfume on your pulse points

Neck, armpits, and stomach. This is the general route most people take while spraying perfume. But if you spray perfume arbitrarily, it’s not going to work. You’ll smell great while getting into the cab but by the time you reach your destination, it’s all gone. Sound familiar? Remember, you have to be strategic about this. Target your pulse points. Wrists, neck, inside your elbows, behind your ears and below your midriff. Even your ankles and calves are good areas to spray.

If you’re wondering what ears and elbows have to do with perfume, there is good science behind that. Your pulse points are where your skin is the thinnest. Thus, these areas are much warmer than the rest of your body. The warmth helps to diffuse the fragrance all over your body.

Pro tip: Spraying your hair also leaves you smelling fresh all day. The fragrance latches onto hair fibres. This will leave a trail of fragrance as you move from one place to another, especially if you’re wearing your hair down. Although, this begs the question: won’t the alcohol in most perfumes dry your hair out? The way to sidestep this: spritz some perfume onto your hairbrush before running it through your hair.

Talk about a game-changer!

Prep your skin with Vaseline before using your perfume

Knowing the hotspots to spritz away is essential, but sometimes it’s not enough since fragrances need an external binding agent. Enter Vaseline Petroleum Jelly. The overachiever of the beauty world. It does much more than keep your lips hydrated. Apply a little on your pulse points before spritzing your perfume. It will bind with the fragrance and hold it in place for longer.

If you’re out of Vaseline (if that’s even possible), you can also use this hack with an unscented oil-based moisturizer. It has the same effect!

Don’t store perfumes in your bathroom

While it’s advisable to spritz yourself after a shower, it’s not wise to keep your perfumes in the bathroom (no matter how convenient the shelf below your basin might be). Heat, extreme temperatures, humidity, and light are all factors that cause perfumes to lose the intensity of their fragrances. On this note, the fridge is off-limits too.

The best place to store your fragrance? A closet or your dressing table drawer. Any place which is dark and dry. If you store your perfume in the wrong place, no matter how many times you spritz it through the day or how you layer your fragrances, it won’t last. It’s a tricky, sticky situation.