Top up, don’t re-douse: the smart way to reapply

Mid-afternoon, you lift your wrist, smell nothing, and reach for the bottle. Three sprays later the opening blooms again and you feel fresh. The person at the next desk feels something else.

Reapplying is reasonable. Most fragrances won’t carry a long day on their own. The trick is reapplying for the perfume that’s actually there, not for the one you can still smell.

The first rule: it’s still there

By the time you feel the urge to reapply, you’ve almost certainly been adapting to your perfume for hours. Your nose quietly stops reporting a smell it’s been breathing all day [1, 2]. The perfume hasn’t gone. Your attention has.

That’s why the urge to reapply arrives too soon, and why people re-douse. If you’ve not read it yet, Why you stop smelling your own perfume explains the science in full.

A top-up is not a reset

When you spray again, the new perfume doesn’t land on clean skin. It lands on the base of the first application: the slow woods and musks still sitting on and in your skin. Skin studies are precise about this. A reapplication should be thought of as a new dose added to what’s already there, not as starting the clock again [3]. Repeated applications don’t simply add up on skin, either [4].

Two things follow:

• The bright opening comes back. Top notes are the first to go, so a fresh spray brings back the citrus, the aldehydes, the sparkle.
• The base builds. The slow materials from the first spray are still there. Add a full dose and you double down on the part that was already holding.

So the right top-up is small. One spray, sometimes two, rarely the full morning dose.

In the sample curve, a single spray at the top-up moment, at 3.6hmodelled, carries the scent until it’s over at 11.9hmodelled. Without it, it’s over at 7.4hmodelled.

When to top up

There’s no universal hour. It depends on the formula, the dose, the weather and your skin. But there are good signals and bad ones.

Bad signal: “I can’t smell it on my wrist.” That’s mostly your nose getting used to it.

Better signals:

1. Step away and come back. After a few minutes in fresh air, if you can find the perfume on your skin, you don’t need to top up yet.
2. Check an unsprayed nose. If a friend or partner can still smell it at a normal distance, hold off.
3. Plan by the clock, not the moment. If you know a bottle usually starts thinning out around the middle of your day, decide your top-up time in the morning. You avoid the panic spray.
4. Top up before an event, not during one. A spray before you leave for dinner settles before you sit down.

Where to put the top-up

Spray somewhere different from the first time. Your morning spots are adapted territory, both for your nose and, in a sense, for the skin, which is already holding perfume.

• If you sprayed your neck, top up on the inner arm or chest.
• If you sprayed your wrists, try the back of the neck.
• For evenings, a single spray on a scarf or collar gives you a slow, fabric-held layer that won’t overpower.

More on surfaces in Where to spray.

Desk, evening and travel

At the desk. One spray, away from your keyboard, ideally somewhere other than your wrists. Then leave it alone for the afternoon.

From day into evening. If you’re changing perfume, give the first a chance to settle and spray the new one on fresh skin or fabric. If you’re staying with the same one, a single spray at the neck is usually enough.

Travelling. Decant a small amount into a travel atomiser. Keep it out of the sun and away from a hot car, because heat and light are hard on perfume in any bottle. More in How to store perfume.

How many sprays is “one spray”?

Not the same amount for every bottle. Pumps, nozzles and fill levels all change how much comes out with each press [5]. If one spray of a particular bottle feels like a lot, it probably is. Learn each bottle’s sprays separately, and let your top-up follow that.

The polite test

If you’re not sure whether you’ve overdone it, the elevator test works: if people can smell you clearly from a metre away an hour after a top-up, it was too much. A good top-up should be noticed by you, and only mildly by anyone else.

Bottles that reward a light top-up:

• Eau Sauvage: a classic citrus whose bright opening is the part a top-up brings back.
• Terre d’Hermès Eau Très Fraîche: fresh enough that a single spray refreshes it well.
• Allure Homme Sport: a sporty citrus that rewards a light afternoon top-up.

Sources

1. Stuck, B. A., Fadel, V., Hummel, T., & Sommer, J. U. (2014). Subjective olfactory desensitization and recovery in humans. Chemical Senses, 39(2), 151–157. doi:10.1093/chemse/bjt064
2. Berglund, B., Berglund, U., & Lindvall, T. (1978). Olfactory self- and cross-adaptation: effects of time of adaptation on perceived odor intensity. Sensory Processes, 2(3), 191–197. PMID 749200
3. Kasting, G. B., & Miller, M. A. (2006). Kinetics of finite dose absorption through skin 2: volatile compounds. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 95(2), 268–280. doi:10.1002/jps.20497
4. Berthaud, F., Smith, B., & Boncheva, M. (2013). The impact of surface loading and dosing scheme on the skin uptake of fragrances. Toxicology in Vitro, 27(8), 2169–2174. doi:10.1016/j.tiv.2013.09.002
5. Law, J., et al. (2017). Atomization of high-viscosity fluids for aromatherapy using micro-heaters for heterogeneous bubble nucleation. Scientific Reports, 7, 40289. doi:10.1038/srep40289