Get rid of unpleasant smells and bring in better ones with these easy ideas.

By 

Blythe Copeland

Updated on September 3, 2024

8 Ways to Make Your Whole House Smell Amazing

Get rid of unpleasant smells and bring in better ones with these easy ideas.

By 

Blythe Copeland

Blythe Copeland is a contributing writer with more than a decade of experience as a freelance lifestyle writer.

Updated on September 3, 2024

Every house has its own scent. Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it isn’t. Creating the fragrance atmosphere that makes your home smell like, well, home, means considering all the different scents that permeate your space, from your candles and your cooking to your pet and your perfume. Clean out unpleasant odors, avoid nose-wrinkling combinations, and develop a home scent that is uniquely your own with these expert tips that will make your house smell so good.

• Marla Mock, president of Molly Maid
• Rebecca Gardner, founder and creative director of Houses & Parties
• Shaolin Low, owner of interior design firm Studio Shaolin

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Try a Stovetop Scent

The clean, fresh scent of citrus and florals is easy to create with a few key ingredients found in your refrigerator or pantry. “Place a mixture of your favorite herbs, spices, and water in a pot and simmer on the stove,” says Marla Mock, president of Molly Maid. “By mixing slices of lemon, orange, and lime with spices like mint, lavender, or basil, you can make your house smell great with things that are already in your kitchen.”

Rebecca Gardner of Houses & Parties also uses stovetop scents. “Fall is the perfect time to make a simmering pot of cloves, cinnamon, apple, and other seasonal treasures. The scents are organic, festive, and cozy,” she says. “Bay leaves, rosemary, and citrus smell fresh all year round.”

Use Candles Carefully

While candles, diffusers, and fragrance sprays are simple ways to scent your home, you should only use them when you aren’t cooking, says Gardner. She advises against burning scented candles when you’re working in the kitchen. “Save your scented candles for luxurious days at home, rainy days, packing days, and cleaning-out-your-closet days. If you are entertaining at home, allow the yummy smells to waft from the kitchen creating anticipation and excitement,” she says.

Run a Lemon Through Your Garbage Disposal

You may not notice the smell of your garbage disposal, but lingering odors can be an unpleasant welcome for guests. Luckily, there’s an easy way to eliminate the stink—and make your whole kitchen smell good in the process. “While running cold water, run an entire cut-up lemon through the garbage disposal for a fresh scent that will permeate throughout your entire kitchen,” says Mock.

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Make a Fabric Spray That Removes Pet Odors

While the smell of your wet dog or fishy cat food may no longer draw your attention, eliminating pet odors can improve the overall smell of your home (especially for guests). Mock recommends making a safe pet odor eliminator with these steps:

• Measure 1 tablespoon of baking soda into a bowl.
• Add 30 drops of wild orange essential oil and mix with a fork.
• Put the scented baking soda into a spray bottle and add 2 cups of distilled water. Shake.
• Spray in the air or onto fabric to remove smells.

You could also make a point of moving any pet food dishes out of the main room into an out-of-the-way space. While you might be desensitized to the smell of your own pet’s food, guests may be less so.

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Use Room Sprays With Subtle Scents

If you want your home to smell great all the time, you need to think about how all the different fragrances in your space work together, from your laundry detergent and your perfume to your partner’s shampoo and your kids’ body wash.

“Over time, your home scent almost finds itself and becomes a culmination of all the things you love and the layers of those smells,” says Shaolin Low of interior design firm Studio Shaolin. “For example, if you have a leather sofa, sandalwood candles, and wash your laundry in lavender, all of those things create a beautiful blend of your own scent.”

This means that if you’re looking for an airborne fragrance product to be standard in your home, you should opt for something mellow, like citrus or lavender. “When you’re in your home, you are cooking, taking showers, doing laundry, and all of those scents layer on top of each other—so you don’t want to go with something that’s too strong,” says Low.

Layer Fragrances to Create a Custom Scent

While custom scent studios will allow you to develop your own personalized blend of fragrance, you can do this on your own by layering different aromas and products in different parts of your home. Make your own essential oil-scented bath salts, put lavender sachets in your drawers, and infuse your own bar soap with delicate florals. Make your own candles, whip up a batch of chocolate-chip cookies, and use pretty indoor plants for a bright, clean fragrance.

Use Fresh or Dried Florals

There’s a reason so many home fragrances rely on natural scents of flowers and foliage: They’re soothing and subtle crowd-pleasers. Plant fragrant flowers, like roses, gardenias, lilacs, and freesias, in your garden; then harvest them and arrange aromatic bouquets in each room of your home. Hang eucalyptus in your shower (or anywhere, really) for an instant mood-booster, add a vase of lavender to your office, and make your own dried, scented potpourri from foraged petals. “What’s nice about dried florals is that you can always spritz them and the scent will hold for a few days,” says Low.  

Introduce Fresh Air

Don’t forget the power of adding some fresh air to the mix. Whenever you clean your house, make a point of cracking some windows to get a cross breeze that will flush out stale air and lingering odors. It makes a big difference in every room and sets the stage for whatever great-smelling cooking, candles, or floral aromatics you want to use. You also capture the freshening power of the outdoors by hanging bed sheets to dry on sunny or windy days.