Best Candle Scents for Masking Unpleasant Odors

Need to cover up a strange or unpleasant odor quickly? Lighting a scented candle is a great way to get your room smelling clean and pleasant again. Here are our top recommendations for candle scents that can help mask odor.

Freshen Your Kitchen with Lemon

Whether it’s recently used ovens, garbage disposals, dishwashers, or areas on the floor with crumb build-up, kitchen surfaces and appliances can develop an unpleasant odor quite easily. 

You can minimize this by cleaning up immediately after cooking. However, even if you maintain a tidy kitchen, there are still instances in which foul odors will linger. It’s instances like this where a fresh scent, like lemon, can come in handy.

Lemons (Citrus limon), are the universally beloved fruits of small evergreen trees from the Rutaceae family. These oval-shaped bright-yellow fruits have a clean, sparkling, citrus scent that comes from the chemical compound limonene.

Fresh lemons are commonly used as a cleaning agent in the kitchen. The peels, fruit, and juice are used in various combinations to improve the odors of garbage disposals, microwaves, and refrigerators.

The key to the fruit’s odor-masking success lies in its acidity. 

Lemon juice has a pH between 2 and 3, meaning it is very acidic. The recognizable clean, sharp scent adds an air of lightness to the room that will make you forget that there was a bad smell in the first place. 

For a wonderful lemon-scented candle, we recommend trying our newest addition to the Harlem Botanical Collection: the "Joy" Luxury Candle.

Mask Bathroom Odors with Eucalyptus

It doesn’t matter how gorgeously designed your bathroom space is, if there are foul odors (which is bound to happen from time to time), it creates an uncomfortable atmosphere. 

Before taking any steps to mask the unwanted odor, we recommend identifying where it’s coming from and cleaning accordingly. After you’ve cleaned the source of the foul smell, light a refreshing eucalyptus candle. 

Eucalyptus is a genus of hundreds of flowering trees from the Myrtceae family. Native to Australia, these trees produce woody, bulb-shaped fruits, referred to as “gumnuts."

The scent of eucalyptus is woody, camphoraceous, minty, and slightly sweet. Terpenes, a group of hydrocarbons produced by conifer plants, give eucalyptus it’s minty vitality.

If you’ve ever been to a hot yoga studio, it’s likely that at the end of class, the teacher might have pressed a cold towel against your forehead doused with eucalyptus oil. The powerful fragrance masks the musty smell of sweat in warm, enclosed spaces. 

The same revitalizing effect can be applied to bathrooms.

Our a great eucalyptus scented candle, try our "Holiday" Luxury Candle. This aromatic candle will make your bathroom smell as fresh as can be with notes of eucalyptus, green pine, hyacinth, fir balsam, and cedarwood. 

Cover Pet odors with Clove

If you have dogs or cats, you know that pet odor can be overwhelming. The source of the unpleasant scent can be hard to pinpoint, and it can feel like the smell is, mysteriously, coming from everywhere. 

In actuality, pet odor is formed by bacteria and yeast that grows on wet areas of your pet’s body. Your pet spending time outdoors could also contribute to the smell. These smells transfer to your living space in several ways including through dog toys, paws against the floor, and urine-stained carpets and dog beds. 

Luckily, there are ways to clean your space that can reduce pet odor. There are also strong fragrances, like clove, that help subdue animal smells.

Cloves (Syzygium aromaticum) are the flower buds of a tree in the Myrtaceae family. They originated in Indonesia, and nowadays are used as a cooking spice, and as an ingredient in fragrance and cosmetic products.

Clove is the perfect option for covering pet odor, due to the warmth and spiciness of it’s strong aroma. Eugenol, the main chemical compound in clove, is responsible for the spicy, woodsy, autumn-like scent of the essential oil. 

Lighting a clove scented candle, like our “Langston” Luxury Candle, will help replace unpleasant pet odors with a warm, peaceful aroma. 

Cut through Smoky Odors with Bergamot

The smell of smoke is strong, musty, and can leave you feeling a bit nauseous with a headache. Try removing the smell and adding a fresh scent, such as bergamot, to help cover lingering odors. 

The bergamot orange (Citrus bergamia), is a hybrid between a lemon and bitter orange that is mainly cultivated in southern Italy. 

Bergamot is one of the most popular scents used in the fragrance industry because of its fresh aroma, which comes from the chemical compound linalool. 

Its popularity can also be attributed to its versatility. Bergamot provides the best of both worlds with both citric and floral notes. It’s got the citrusy appeal of a lemon, thanks to the chemical compound limonene. It also has the sweet smell of flowers because of the chemical compound linalyl acetate. 

Experience the essence of bergamot with our “Dream” Luxury Candle. This refreshing and serene aroma will help mask the odor of smoke and leave you in a relaxing state of bliss.