ESSENTIAL OIL VS. FRAGRANCE: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

Do you know the difference between an essential oil and fragrance oil? 

Just like a lot of things in the skincare world, the marketing and jargon around these types of ingredients can be overwhelming, intentionally deceptive, or just plain confusing. 

In today's article, we're going to be discussing the main difference between essential oils and synthetic fragrances and why we prefer one over the other and you should too!

Fragrances and perfumes are ubiquitous in the skincare world and we totally get why people love them - they are, after all, manufactured in a lab specifically to smell amazing to us.

However, despite containing a mixture of synthetic chemicals, companies are not required by law to list these ingredients on their labels and some products can even be labelled 'natural' while containing synthetic fragrances.

All these mystery synthetic ingredients can be problematic for some by causing dryness and irritation to the skin, headaches and even vomiting and are totally unnecessary to keep your skin or hair healthy and smelling good.

To avoid synthetic fragrances lookout for ingredient lists that include phrases such as these: fragrance, fragrance oil, FO, perfume, fragrant oil, or parfum then it's synthetically scented and definitely not all-natural, no matter what the label might state!



Essential oils on the other hand, well we don't have a bad word to say about them and that's why we ONLY include all-natural essential oils in all of our products. 

Essential oils are volatile plant extracts made from steam distilling or cold-pressing flowers, bark, stems, leaves, peel, roots, seeds, resins, or other parts of a plant. 

They smell great and they hydrate, condition and nourish your skin and hair without affecting the balance of natural oils in your skin.

You have to be careful here though, watch out for products labelled "containing essential oils" or something of that nature, as these could include synthetic oils in combination with natural essential oils and still yield negative side effects. 

The bottom line, as always, is to choose natural every chance you can and always, always read your labels and ingredient lists before putting a new product on something as precious as your skin. 

STAY EDUCATED!