Fragrance Expert Reveals How To Transform Your Home Using Scent—and the Intriguing Message It Sends to Guests By Realtor.com

When it comes to home design, many consider traditional elements like paint color, furniture, decorative knickknacks, and, of course, layout. But one fragrance expert now reveals why we should all focus on another key aspect of our properties: scent.

According to Andrew Goetz, co-founder of iconic beauty brand Malin+Goetz, scent can have a huge impact on all manner of home interiors, from how relaxed you feel inside it to the way others view your house when they visit.

“We often smell things before we see things,” he tells Realtor.com® while celebrating the release of the brand’s new Tomato Home Spray ($52). “So, the scent of your home is often a guest’s first impression. How you choose to fragrance your home—or not—is likely to be noticed and is often impactful. Like a room’s furniture and paintings on the wall, scents help to create and define your aesthetic personality.

Getting hit with old cooking odors or overpowering chemical smells is not pleasant and not a good first impression. You don’t want to be olfactory assaulted when you enter someone’s home. Choreographing the home’s olfactory experience should not be ignored—for the sake of both you and your guests.”

Goetz points out that there are many ways to make a house into a home. And while he doesn’t think fragrance is a requirement, he insists it can make a home environment more pleasurable.

“Olfactory experiences really help to create a mood,” he says. “They can help calm and soothe your environment—at least pleasant ones can. Conversely, a bad odor can really put a damper on your home experience.”

When it comes to discovering the ideal fragrance for your home, Goetz suggests trial and error—and to be “curious” and “adventurous.”

“It’s great to try different things to see what works for you,” he adds. “Wearing a scent is like wearing clothes—it’s part of how we define ourselves. Your scent can reflect the season, the occasion, and your mood. Trust your instincts.”

He certainly took a (tomato) leaf out of his own book when it came to creating the brand’s new Tomato Home Spray. Goetz says he and his partner, Matthew Malin, took inspiration from their love of gardening and the verdant surroundings of their beautiful home in Columbia County, NY, when creating the product, which he describes as “clean and refreshing.”

Goetz concedes that tomato might not be the first scent people would think of when choosing a home fragrance, but that it actually offers an incredibly unique set of attributes that make it perfect for almost any property.

“Matthew and I are what one would call very enthusiastic gardeners,” he explains. “We grow a wide variety of annuals, perennials, flowers, and vegetables at our farm upstate in Columbia County. I love to cook, and we both enjoy eating the bounty of our garden. One of our favorite things to grow are tomatoes. They are the piece de resistance of the summer vegetable season.”

He adds that tomatoes are a “culinary and horticultural obsession” that he and Malin share, noting that they were an “extremely obvious choice” for them when creating the fragrance.

“We love the clean, refreshing scent released from the tomato plant’s leaves combined with the rich scent of fruit,” Goetz explains. “The balance between the two is just amazing. Our brand was built on the concept of balance—and Tomato embraces that concept with a scent that is irresistible in so many ways.”

The spray is not only meant to create ambience in the home but also to eliminate unwanted smells, using a special technology that “neutralizes odors by binding with malodorous molecules to create a new fresh scent,” the brand explained in a statement, which states that the fragrance was “imagined for use in the kitchen where the aroma of fragrant dishes overstay their welcome, and for any other space you want to refresh instantly. The alcohol-free formula protects surface areas and textiles around the home and enables prolonged longevity of the fragrance.”

Indeed, Goetz notes that the different methods used to scent a home also affect how the fragrance acts. For example, a spray is “usually the best medium for instantaneous effect,” he says, while a candle helps to not only perfume a room but also to create “ambiance.”

“Not only is a candle an ‘objet,’ but they also can scent the room mildly when unlighted—and assertively when lighted,” he continues. “So, they are a constant source of fragrance. As for reed diffusers, I am not a fan. I find them visually unappealing, and they can be very messy if they happen to spill over. Definitely not for me, but others really like them; and they do indeed scent a room.”

"Call Eli Torres at (832) 430-2107, for your home buying and selling needs."

Source: www.realtor.com