The Best Candle Scents You Should Have In Your Living Room

Every space in your home should be a direct reflection of who you are, and your living room is no exception. Even with a top-notch design aesthetic, your living room can lack personality without a scented candle to set the mood and elevate the overall experience of those who enter it.

Candles offer more than just a pleasant scent and can be used to boost your mood or set the overall tone of a room. According to a psychology expert at Brown University via Scientific American, scents, like the ones emitted from candles, evoke certain moods through associative learning. This process refers to what happens when we smell something that reminds us of a specific memory. Our brains automatically relate the smell to the memory associated with it and, in doing so, influence your mood accordingly.

Your living room is where you likely spend much of your waking hours and where you likely entertain guests most often. Therefore, the candle you choose to burn in your living room is important, as it can impact your mood and the mood of your guests in a very real way.

Candles that emit warmer scents are best suited in the living room, according to House Fragrance. An example would be a sandalwood scented candle. Warm scents are most often associated with being pleasant and inviting, which is the feeling you will most likely want to convey in a space like your living room.

According to Best Home Scents, patchouli is another popular warm scent because of its ability to relieve depression and boost your overall mood. It can also affect human pheromones, boosting your confidence level and helping you feel more outgoing, which could be beneficial in social situations such as entertaining guests.

If you have a large living room, one candle may not be enough to fill the entire room. House Fragrance recommends burning a second candle in this case, but only if the scent notes work together and are not too conflicting. In this case, lighting two warmly-scented candles should complement each other just fine, but if you aren't sure, you can simply light two of the same candle.

You should never leave candles unattended, and you most definitely should never leave a candle lit if you aren't home. This doesn't mean that you can't keep your living room smelling fresh and inviting while you're gone, however. If you want to give your living room character through the smell of a scented candle, even on days you won't be home to light it; you're in luck. It turns out you can enhance the smell and experience in your living room through scented candles without actually having to light them. According to The French Bedroom Company, placing unlit candles near fabrics in your home, such as curtains and drapes, allow the fabric to absorb the candle's scent. This can provide a subtle, inviting scent for you to return home to after a long day. Just make sure you remember to move the candle away from any fabric before you light it again!

Using leftover candle wax in a wax warmer is also a great alternative to lighting a candle. Melting candle wax in a wax burner allows the scent to last longer than burning a candle would, leaving your living room smelling warm, fresh, and inviting without the need for a flame. This is a great alternative for living rooms with pets and kids and in any other situation where you wouldn't feel comfortable having an open flame.