Two people smell the same candle. One says it reminds them of home. The other says it reminds them of a cupboard at school.
They are both noticing the cedar.
For one, there might be a chest where winter blankets were kept. For the other, shelves, pencil boxes and a door that never quite closed. Neither person was looking for a memory. They were trying a fragrance, and something familiar arrived with it.
A third person might smell the candle and think only that it is woody. No room comes to mind.
People can respond differently to the same scent because they bring different experiences, learned associations and preferences to it. Present context can influence its evaluation, and biological differences can affect perception too.[1–7] These explanations overlap. There is rarely a single reason that tells the whole story of someone's taste.
At Stillness & Ember, this matters whenever we recommend a fragrance for an intention. We can explain why we placed a candle within Stillness, Ember or Sanctuary. We cannot assume that everyone will find the same meaning there.
A fragrance recommendation is a starting point, not a verdict.
A scent arrives with a history
A particular sunscreen might bring back a swimming pool. A perfume might recall a relative before you can remember the last time you saw the bottle. Sometimes the reminder is welcome. Sometimes you would rather it had stayed away.
Researchers call memories of personally experienced events autobiographical memories. Studies reviewed by Maria Larsson and colleagues suggest that odor-cued recollections can feel especially vivid or emotionally involving compared with memories prompted by words or pictures. But the findings are not uniform, and odors do not reliably produce more memories. In several studies they produced fewer, with longer retrieval times.[1]
That is a more useful account than the idea that smell opens a perfect archive of the past. A recollection feeling vivid does not establish that it is accurate. Nor does every familiar smell have a scene waiting behind it.
You may know the soap without remembering where you first used it. You may recall a hotel corridor very clearly and have no wish to smell it at home. Recognizing something from your life and wanting it in your living room are separate responses.
In Why Feeling Comes Before Scent, we put it this way: “You encounter fragrance as someone who has already lived among scents.” Those encounters include ordinary things: the cleaner used in a kitchen, dinner cooking, the inside of a car, someone's coat hanging near the door.
A fragrance description cannot list all of that. “Cedar” tells you something about the composition's character. It cannot tell us whether cedar belongs to a place you loved, somewhere you disliked or no particular place at all.
Some of our responses are learned
A remembered scene is one way a smell can become personal. Learning offers another part of the explanation.
In two experiments, Rachel Herz and colleagues paired unfamiliar target odors with positive or negative experiences. Later evaluations of those odors shifted in the direction of the paired experience.[2] The researchers used controlled conditions and comparison groups; they were testing whether experience could change an odor's evaluation.
That finding supports a possibility. It does not show that every preference was learned, or that an association will form on demand. It certainly does not mean that using a candle repeatedly will make it produce calm.
Consider lemon as an everyday illustration. Someone who mostly encounters it while preparing food may think of cutting fruit. Someone else may think of the cleaner used after dinner. The descriptions could be quite different even if both people like the smell. And either person might dislike it in a candle.
Knowing those histories would help explain their reactions. Without knowing them, we should leave the explanation open. It would be presumptuous to tell a customer that they dislike a note because of something that must have happened in childhood.
The future remains open too. A fragrance might eventually belong to evenings with a friend or to a home you have not moved into yet. The Candle Is the Beginning explores how an object can find a place in life after purchase. That possibility gives us no reason to ask you to train yourself to enjoy a fragrance you do not want.
You can simply say that it is not for you.
Familiar does not always mean pleasant
There are several different questions inside “What do you think of this smell?”
Does it seem familiar? Can you recognize it as something encountered before, or identify its source? How strong does it seem? Do you enjoy it? Does it bring anything to mind?
The answers need not agree. A smell can be unmistakable and unwelcome. Another can be difficult to name and immediately appealing. You might love the idea of vanilla while finding a particular vanilla fragrance too sweet.
Research on repeated exposure makes the distinction especially clear. In a study by Sylvain Delplanque and colleagues, participants became more familiar with the presented smells over several sessions. Liking did not rise across the board. Some initially neutral or mildly pleasant stimuli received higher pleasantness ratings, while unpleasant and very pleasant stimuli did not show the same improvement.[3]
Getting used to a smell, in other words, is not a guarantee of liking it more. The result also depended on what was being smelled and how it was evaluated at the start.
This is why “give it time” should never become an argument against someone's preference. You may choose to revisit a fragrance because you are curious. You may find something you missed the first time. You are equally entitled to stop exploring it.
A familiar scent does not have to become a favorite. A favorite does not need a childhood story to justify it.
The description is part of the encounter
What happens around a smell includes the words used to introduce it.
In an experiment by Ivan de Araujo and colleagues, the same test odor was presented with the descriptions “cheddar cheese” and “body odor.” Participants rated it more pleasantly with the cheese description.[4] The sample was small and the odor deliberately suited to that comparison. It was not a test of candle names or emotional outcomes.
Still, it shows why chemical composition alone does not settle every question about how a smell is evaluated. What someone thinks they are smelling can matter.
For a fragrance house, that creates a responsibility. A name, a photograph and a description arrive alongside the candle. They offer a frame for approaching it. We should be clear about what that frame represents.
Calling a candle Rest tells you about the intention we have chosen for it. It does not establish that the fragrance will make you restful. The labeling study gives no support for that promise.
Descriptions can be helpful without becoming instructions. “Woody,” “citrus” or “softly sweet” gives you something to consider. You may agree, notice another part of the blend or decide the description does not match what stands out to you. None of those responses requires you to pretend that the words on the page are stronger evidence than the fragrance in front of you.
The present occasion matters to your choice as well. You might enjoy a scent at a friend's dinner table and still decide that you do not want it beside your own reading chair. Enjoying something somewhere does not obligate you to want it everywhere.
Culture matters, but does not decide for everyone
The smells available in ordinary life differ between places and households. Food, local environments and familiar products give people different opportunities to encounter odors. It makes sense to ask how much those differences contribute to preference.
The research supports a more complicated answer than either “culture determines taste” or “everyone likes the same things.”
A cross-cultural study led by Artin Arshamian found substantial agreement in pleasantness rankings for ten individual odor molecules across diverse communities. There was also considerable individual variation.[5] The study did not establish that shared preferences must be innate; common experiences remain one possible contributor.
A later study led by Piotr Sorokowski, using fifteen odor samples in five populations, found both similarities and notable differences. Familiarity was associated with pleasantness where it was measured.[6] The tasks and samples differed from the earlier study, so this was not a direct replication. Taken together, the papers support shared patterns without making culture or experience irrelevant.
These studies asked people to evaluate particular odor samples. They did not establish which candles would feel like home to those participants, or which fragrances would belong to an evening they described as peaceful.
That distinction matters. Agreement that a smell is pleasant would not tell us that everyone finds it comforting. Nor would a population average tell us what one particular person wants to buy.
We should also be careful with cultural shorthand. Knowing where someone grew up is not the same as knowing their household, tastes or experiences. Two people raised on the same street can disagree about the smell of coffee. We do not need to treat one as an exception that has to be explained away.
Biology contributes too
Personal history is important, but it is not the only source of difference. Variation can begin with the detection of odor molecules.
In research involving 332 participants, Casey Trimmer and colleagues examined olfactory-receptor genes alongside odor ratings. They also tested receptor responses in cells. Certain genetic variants were linked to differences in perceived intensity or pleasantness for particular stimuli.[7]
This offers evidence that two people may differ in aspects of perception before we can account for their memories or tastes. It does not provide a genetic explanation for every disagreement about fragrance.
Some differences are especially specific: a person may have difficulty detecting a particular odorant without lacking a sense of smell generally.[7] That is different from recognizing a smell and disliking it. “I barely notice that” and “I wish I couldn't smell it” describe different experiences.
The limits matter when discussing candles. Controlled receptor studies do not let us predict how someone will experience a finished blend in their home. A note on a fragrance description is not a diagnosis of which receptors a customer has, and we cannot infer someone's genetics from their opinion of lavender.
There is no need to turn an ordinary preference into a biological profile. The useful point is simply that disagreement need not come from inattention, lack of fragrance knowledge or unwillingness to appreciate something. People can differ in what they perceive as well as in what they make of it.
What the Three States can tell you
Stillness & Ember organizes its collection around intentions. Stillness describes a return inward, with balance, peace and presence in mind. Ember offers gentle movement forward: clarity, focus and renewal. Sanctuary speaks of homecoming, release and rest.
These are editorial and navigational choices. They describe how we organize the collection and the kinds of moments we think a fragrance may suit. They are not scientific mappings from notes to emotional states.
Nightfall — Rest, for example, sits within Sanctuary. Its notes include lavender, sandalwood, white musk, soft amber, cedar and mahogany teakwood. That placement expresses a creative direction for the complete fragrance. It is not evidence that lavender causes rest or that woods have the same significance for every person.
Someone might associate those notes with an evening at home. Another might think of a soap, furniture or a place they would rather not revisit. Someone else might like the blend without finding anything particularly restful about it.
Clear Path — First Light offers another example, with lemon, petitgrain, white woods, white musk and oak moss. Citrus may seem bright and familiar to one customer; another may find themselves thinking about cleaning the kitchen. Neither impression demonstrates whether that person is capable of clarity or needs a different State. It tells us something about their encounter with this fragrance.
A recommendation can bring a composition and a possible use into view. Its usefulness depends on leaving you room to decide whether they belong together in your life.
Your preference has the final word
If a candle called Rest does not feel restful to you, you are not using it incorrectly. If you dislike lavender, an intention should not talk you into buying it.
You can accept our suggested direction, explore a different one or browse by scent instead. You can also like a fragrance for reasons that have nothing to do with its name. A candle associated with quiet evenings might become something you enjoy when the house is full of conversation.
This is the same respect for personal meaning discussed in What We Mean by Ritual. We offer a way of approaching an object. We do not decide what owning it must mean.
That freedom does not make recommendations pointless. People recommend books, music and food while knowing that taste varies. A thoughtful recommendation explains enough for you to consider it and remains useful even when your answer is no. It can help you discover a preference rather than replace one.
We want the same honesty around fragrance. We can describe the composition and explain our choice of intention. We can listen when you find something different. A candle cannot guarantee peace, focus or rest. You should never have to defend your preference against the intention on its label.
Back at the cedar candle, the two people might exchange stories. One talks about winter blankets. The other remembers reaching for supplies on a high shelf. After another smell, they may still disagree about whether they want it at home.
The fragrance has entered two different lives. One person puts it back. The other stays a little longer. Both have answered the question we could not answer for them.
Sources
- Larsson, M., Willander, J., Karlsson, K., & Arshamian, A. (2014). Olfactory LOVER: Behavioral and neural correlates of autobiographical odor memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 312.
- Herz, R. S., Beland, S. L., & Hellerstein, M. (2004). Changing odor hedonic perception through emotional associations in humans. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 17(4), 315–338. DOI: 10.46867/ijcp.2004.17.04.05.
- Delplanque, S., Coppin, G., Bloesch, L., Cayeux, I., & Sander, D. (2015). The mere exposure effect depends on an odor's initial pleasantness. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 920.
- de Araujo, I. E., Rolls, E. T., Velazco, M. I., Margot, C., & Cayeux, I. (2005). Cognitive modulation of olfactory processing. Neuron, 46(4), 671–679. Author-hosted full paper.
- Arshamian, A., et al. (2022). The perception of odor pleasantness is shared across cultures. Current Biology, 32(9), 2061–2066.e3. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.02.062.
- Sorokowski, P., et al. (2024). Is the perception of odour pleasantness shared across cultures and ecological conditions? Evidence from Amazonia, East Africa, New Guinea, Malaysia and Poland. Biology Letters, 20(6), 20240120. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2024.0120.
- Trimmer, C., et al. (2019). Genetic variation across the human olfactory receptor repertoire alters odor perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(19), 9475–9480. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1804106115.
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