Scented Candles: A Guide

The thing about scented candles is that you have to be very careful what scents to go for, and for what area of your home. For instance, it's very odd to walk into a bathroom and smell cinnamon apple or gingerbread. "Food" scents go best in the kitchen and dining room, and sometimes in the living room (especially during the holidays). You smell gingerbread in a kitchen and it smells homey and comforting; you smell gingerbread in a five-year-old's bedroom and you automatically accuse that child of stealing cookies and ground them and make them cry, and that's no fun for anyone (well, it might be a little fun for you if you're a rotten parent, but that's not the point).

You must be very careful about the scent you choose for your bathroom. "Sea Breeze", for instance, is a good bathroom choice because not only does it not really smell like a breeze at the beach, but nobody really has a concrete idea of what that should smell like. Some sea breezes smell like salt; others smell like cheap cologne and sunblock; still others smell like rotting fish. The typical "Sea Breeze" scented candle smells like none of these. Another good bathroom choice is a name like "Autumn Whisper" or "Spring Song" or "Sunshine". These are things that either do not, in fact, exist, or are things that have no smell at all. If it smelled like a bathroom every time the sun came out, I think we'd all live in caves. This brings me to my main point in bathroom scent choices, which is that you want to make sure you use a Pretend Smell because you don't want to associate any Real Smell (like "Oranges"), with your bathroom because no matter how good it smells in the store when you buy it, eventually you will equate that smell with rogue pubic hairs and constipation. I would be very saddened if the smell of cinnamon apple reminded me of bowel movements, mainly because I would get sick every time my grandmother made cider at Christmas.

Likewise, bedroom scents must be chosen carefully. The bedroom is both a place to relax and unwind and a sensual, romantic den of love. Or, in my case, it's a place to amass dirty laundry and pass out after a night of hard-drinking and/or weeping. Either way, you want to create the right mood, and scented candles can help you to do this. Personally, I prefer musky scents because they compliment my incense which I light every day to mask the smell of failure and loneliness that permeates my bedroom. Men tend to prefer these scents for their homes, and these candles can usually be found at more high-end candle shops: You want to look for brown or gray or dark red mottled candles, because society has deemed dull colors masculine, and these candles tend to have names like "Freshly Moved Dirt" or "Dirty Baseball Cap". No, I'm only joking. They have names like "Napa Vineyard" or "Sandalwood" and tend to smell exactly like mens' cologne, deodorant and shampoo because products aimed at men can't have too much variety; otherwise, men would become confused and disoriented like they do in shopping malls. I like these "masculine" scents very much as well, because they relax me - and I always use them along with the most reliable scent in the world: "Vanilla". This might be thought of as a "food" scent, and it certainly does work in the kitchen, but it's the little black dress of candles: It goes with everything. But you women might prefer something like "Rose" or "Jasmine" or "Sunflower Fields" because they are light, airy and very feminine. You need to be careful with that, though, because your man might not feel too manly in a room that smells like flowers, lying on a pink chenille bedspread and surrounded by your Beanie Babies. If that's the case, there are also Pretend Smells for the bedroom, just like there are for the bathroom. Pretend Smells that go well in a bedroom have names like "Romance" or "Sensuality" or "Relaxation". I think they should make one called "Safe Sex" that smells like a latex condom, but that is just me. That is also why I do not work in marketing. These are usually a mix of a feminine flowery scent and a deeper, muskier scent, and I guess it makes people feel romantic. It makes me a little nauseous, but what do I know? I think drinking out of matching beer steins is romantic.

Of course, there are a lot of people out there who are either allergic to perfume of any kind or simply don't like anything that smells nice, or as they call it, "artificial". When these people are guests in your home, be sensitive to them and keep the candles unlit. But make sure you make a big production of stripping them down and hosing them off outside and spraying deodorant into every crevice on their bodies before you let them in your house. Hey, you went to a lot of trouble picking and choosing the perfect scents for your house, and you'll be damned if you let some smelly hippie with hyper-sensitive olfactory glands ruin the ambience you've created.