Let's start with the main question here. How to pick a perfect perfume for any occasion?

And the answer can be found by splitting the problem into two main parts - subjective and objective.

So what is this subjective part?

We wanted to say that you need to like the perfume before anyone else. If you don't enjoy some scent, or you don't feel special and amazing while wearing it, it is not the best idea to use it. Even if it would work great for the occasion you will attend.

The sole purpose of any perfume is to enhance our outfits and make us feel complete and confident in any situation. And if you do not enjoy the scent, you will not feel like a million dollars for sure.

So before starting our talk about the objective part of the perfume picking process, which will be the main star of this post, we just wanted to let you know how important it is for you to like the perfume before anyone else.

If you struggle to find an excellent perfume for you, we might have just the right post for you. It is called "How to pick a perfume that is perfect for me?". As the title suggests, we will focus on teaching you how to pick a perfume that you will like with great certainty in that post.

So now that you know that you need to make sure that you are the most important person to like the perfume, we can start talking about the objective part of our story.

What is the objective part?

The objective part is our way of saying that some perfumes, no matter how much you enjoy them, are not well suited for every situation (some universal perfumes might be ok for every situation, but that is not our point). If you wear perfume that is a bad choice for the event you are attending, it will negatively affect you. Instead of making you appear complete, well-rounded, and more attractive, it will easily make your aura too aggressive or obnoxious.

But we got you covered in this post. After reading it, you will for sure not make this kind of mistake again. Put on your learning cap and enjoy the ride!

What are some general things you need to know?

To get the most out of any perfume on any occasion, you have to consider its scent, performance, and longevity.

When we say scent, we actually mean to think about notes that are a part of that perfume. You want to know what perfume accords and notes are dominant for that perfume. If you need help with perfume accords, find our "What are perfume accords? Complete guide" post. In it, we have shared the most common perfume accords and what you can expect from them.

This is vital to have in mind because some perfume notes are not very suitable for specific occasions. We will elaborate on this statement a lot in this post.

We can start by discussing what types of perfumes you want to wear during different seasons of the year. Keep in mind that this list is not strict. It talks about general concepts that we want to follow. Maybe you live in the part of the world where winters are not cold. The upcoming talk is supposed to teach you about different temperatures and weather conditions and how we should pick perfumes based on them.

1. Winter

Perfumes you wish to wear during cold winter days are strong, dominant, and heavy. The only time when you can wear perfumes that are really heavy and grab tons of attention is during cold winter days.

Why is that the case?

Science will explain it all. As we discussed in our posts, "Why do perfumes contain alcohol?", perfumes usually contain alcohol, and that alcohol evaporates into the air, thus spreading the scent of fragrance oils mixed in with it. That is the only way for our perfume to travel through the air and linger around us. Not just very close to the location where we have applied it.

But for a perfume to evaporate, thus spreading the scent, it needs heat. That is why in our post called "Best body parts to apply perfume" we explained what makes a great body part for applying perfume. In it, you will see that the first thing we were considering is if the area of application is warm or not. That is because perfume needs heat to spread its wings.

When we combine this with our talk about heavy winter fragrances, we can easily deduct the following. Winter fragrances are very heavy and strong, which means that the scent that gets into the air as the alcohol evaporates is much stronger and more potent than with light, zesty perfumes. But also, the low temperature that is present during cold winter days prevents alcohol from evaporating as easily as it would be during other seasons of the year.

So now, when you add up these facts, you will get the result of strong perfume being released a bit slower than it would be released at higher temperatures, thus making it a perfect candidate for our winter season.

If we were to use some lighter perfume during cold winter days, the fact that alcohol is evaporating slower would mean that the perfume would not be able to be released quickly enough for people around us to smell it.

And also, if we were to apply this strong, potent, winter-friendly perfume during hot days, the fact that a lot more perfume would be released into the air would mean that our sense of smell would get overwhelmed by the number of stimulations that were created by these strong scents.

Great perfume notes that work wonders during cold winter days are (this is a short list of notes, many others would work great as well):

Another way to look at this story is from the perspective of heavy notes. Heavy notes are the ones that tend to stick the closest to our skin, creating chemical reactions with our skin's top layer. These scents are the hardest ones to be released into the air, which is exactly what we need with our winter fragrances.

So you can consider dark, masculine notes from the following categories here:

If you are not sure about perfumes that might be a great pick for your cold winter days, why don't you head right to our "Top Perfumes" page and there look for our top picks for winter perfumes?

Here are a few we feel you might enjoy:

2. Summer

What is the story like when it comes to warm summer days? Very simple, complete opposite to the one about cold winter days.

During summer, we have a lot of heat. That heat makes it really easy for our perfume's alcohol to evaporate, thus releasing a lot of scents into the air. So if we were to use some strong, potent fragrances, people around us would probably start moving away from us right away.

That is why you wish to pick perfumes from the light side of things. Light perfume notes tend to be released into the air quickly, and when you combine that fact with the fact that during warm days it becomes much easier for alcohol from perfume to evaporate. We get a very simple guide for our summer best picks.

We want those fresh, clean, sharp, zesty scents around us. Those scents will not feel heavy or strong, even when a lot of oil is being released into the air very quickly, which is the case during summer.

Another thing to have in mind is the fact that we tend to get sweaty during hot days and that sweat reacts with our perfume's chemistry. That reaction gives us the result of an altered scent being released into the air compared to the scenario when we are not sweaty. This also means that sweat washes away a part of perfume's oils from our skin, which is a very bad thing because it lowers the performance and lifespan of our perfume.

Why are we saying this when we can't prevent sweating?

Because we want to tell you that light perfume notes get along with sweat and its chemicals a lot better than heavy perfumes do.

Why is that the case?

As we explained in our talk about the dry-down phase of our perfumes, heavy perfume notes tend to stay on our skin, and bond with our skin's top layer, thus creating new chemical reactions which result in new scents. While on the other hand, light fragrance notes tend to get released into the air much quicker, thus evading this process from taking place.

That is why, if we sweat while wearing some heavy, sweet, spicy perfume, the chances are much higher to get a scent that will be awful to you and the people around you.

Some perfume notes that are a great pick for summer fragrances are:

Again, loads of perfume notes would make a perfect ally for us during hot summer days, but we leave the exploration to you. Here are some note categories that are a good pick for hot summer days:

And finally, if you were wondering which perfumes are great picks for your warm summer days, we've got you covered there as well! You can see our full list of top picks for the summer on our "Top Perfumes" page, but we have prepared a few perfumes for this post.

3. Spring

This is one of two seasons of the year which are not too extreme. Temperatures tend to be optimal for perfume performance, which means we can experiment a bit.

The main trait of spring is that you can try out almost any perfume type, and you should be fine, as long as you do not go to extremes. That is due to the fact that temperatures are optimal for alcohol evaporation. It is not going to go away too quickly, nor too slowly. And that fact leaves us with a lot of maneuvering grounds.

Spring tends to be the part of the year when flowers are blooming, which makes it a perfect time for us to do our part and try out our stashed floral scents.

Why can we experiment during spring without bad consequences, in most cases? Because the heat is not too high, even some potent perfume's scent would not get too strong and intolerable. On the other hand, those fresh and light summer perfumes will not get lost in the air because we will have enough heat to activate them enough to make them work.

Some interesting notes we recommend you to enjoy during fresh spring days are:

As usual, options are plentiful, even more so when working with flexible spring days, which, as we already mentioned, provide us with a lot of options. Here are some perfume accords that you might explore and enjoy during spring days:

Finally, we do not dare to leave you without a dedicated list of our perfume recommendations. We know that you will love these top picks, most people do, and that is for a reason! Of course, more top perfumes can be found on our page dedicated to them exclusively.

It is time to end things similar to the spring season. And that is, of course, autumn.

4. Autumn

As you probably know already, autumn and spring tend to share a lot of common traits. That is when we consider only the heat. If we consider things like rain potential, wind, and other weather conditions, we begin to see the difference.

Of course, autumn provides tons of flexibility, the same way as spring. But we have to address the differences and what do they mean for us and our perfume selection process.

We wish to prepare for the winter. Spices, mildly sweet scents, and fruits tend to be your best picks for the autumn season. Do not get us wrong. Everything else can easily work great as well. But there is something special when you smell a warming perfume scent during a windy day.

Rains are hard to handle with perfumes. You have to be ready that the rain is probably going to diminish the performance of your fragrance, so feel free to apply something on the stronger side of things. You will not be too off if you show up wearing some bold and musky perfume in this scenario.

Stronger wind also gives us the green light for a more potent scent because it will be blowing scent much quicker than it would without the wind.

If we have to select a few perfume notes that are great picks for the autumn season, we will have to go with the list containing all scents from all seasons but with limitation for the aggressive nature of perfumes. So everything can work, only while it is not too strong and "in-your-face".

Here is a list of perfume accords that should be considered for sure. But the list is very long. Remember that you can pull off most of the perfumes during autumn days. Just calculate with parameters like heat, wind, rain, and you will do just fine!

As you are already aware, we will end things up with our top perfume picks for the autumn. We hope you will at least give them a chance and try them out!

That is it. You are ready as a whistle to pick a perfume for any season of the year as a true perfume professional. We hope that you enjoyed our approach and that you have found it beneficial!