five sixteenths blog: Beginners Guide to Blending Essential Oils

Creating your own essential oil blends can be a great way to develop your intuition and improve your emotional (and physical) wellness. Blending essential oils can seem to be an intimidating task! Perhaps you've gotten yourself a starter kit or you've collected essential oils that you feel drawn too, but you're not sure how to blend them to get the best emotional and/or physical benefits. Well....let's get you on your blending way.

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I've share quite a few seasonally specific blending guides as well as an in depth look at traveling with essential oils but this post is all about helping you create your own blends for your own needs. Below is the exact way I started to learn about blending essential oils and I can't wait to share it with you. You can also find some information on using essential oils topically here. Check out all the essential oils posts on the blog here. Let's get started.

Essential Oil Categories

Citrus

Wild Orange, Lemon, Bergamot, Lime - these oils are fruity, fresh, & clean. Most often citrus oils are top notes. Citrus oils are great for adding a fresh kick to your blend and can help to remove odors & purify the air.

Spice

Cinnamon Bark, Cardamom, Black Pepper, Cassia - these oils are warm & deep. Some oils in this category can often have a resinous scent - slightly sweet or with a vanilla like tone - to them. This attribute is called 'balsamic'. Oils in the category are often middle to base notes that add an interesting layer to a blend.

Herbal

Thyme, Basil, Rosemary, Marjoram - these oils are herbaceous. They smell green, herby, and grassy. Oils in this category are fresh & sharp and often are middle notes. They can add a spring time vibe to your blends.

Mint

Spearmint, Wintergreen, Peppermint - these oils have a minty fresh kick. Sometimes falling in the herbaceous category (Rosemary & Peppermint are related to each other!) but they have a distinct pep when added to your blends. Most often these are top notes.

Wood

Arborvitae, Cedarwood, Sandalwood - these are all wood oils with a grounding scent. These oils evoke a sense of stability. The scent is rich & woody. These fragrances are middle to base notes and can round off a relaxing blend.

Floral

Lavender, Geranium, Ylang Ylang - these floral oils smell soft, feminine, and powdery. Floral oils are mostly middle notes. These scents can be relaxing & supportive.

Getting Started

First off, determine the goal of the blend. Are you looking for immune support? Are you feeling nauseous? Are you looking to relax? Are you looking to focus? Determine what the purpose or end goal of the diffuser blend is. This will help you decide which oils to use.

Then, begin to gather a group of oils that fit the purpose or goal your going for. If you'd like focus choose oils from the herbaceous, citrus, and mint categories. If you'd like to feel relaxed choose wood & floral oils. If you'd like to feel motivated choose citrus, minty, & spicy oils. If you're looking for an immune supporting blend choose citrus, spice, and herbaceous. Need digestive relief? Choose a mint, floral, and herbaceous oil.

Once you've chosen a few oils from each category designed to target your end goal, you can begin to pair them together. There's no rule saying you can't have two of the same category oil in your blend so you can start by pairing together two citrus oils, two herbaceous oils, and so on. Once you get a little bit brave you can start to bring in other oils in the categories you've chosen to create blends you love.

More Blending Tips

Keep a Journal

Writing down your blends - including how many drops you used - will help you decide what you personally like & what you personally find effective. For me I know that adding in too much Peppermint to any blend will be too overpowering for me. I've translated this into how I approach other minty oils like Spearmint, Wintergreen, and the Breathe blend. Your journal doesn't have to be super fancy, you can even just make notes in your phone!

Get Creative

When you get brave enough just grab a base note, middle note, & top note OR an oil from a few of the categories above and just see what happens! You may find an interesting combo you never would have tried before! You can pick a few oil bottles, uncap them, and then hold the group of caps under your nose to see if their scents work nicely together. Sub out different oils until you find a blend you like. This is where cap labels can come in handy! You don't want to mix up your tops or you'll have a hard time doing this creative experiment again.

Store your Blends

Before you make a giant 5ml bottle of a blend you think you'll use all the time make a smaller batch in a 5/8 dram bottle. I phase through blends I make very quickly especially when I'm inspired. When I first started making blends I'd want to make a bottle to keep and use later....but then I'd get bored! So these smaller bottles are prefect to create a smaller blended batch & not waste the essential oils. And you can travel with these better too! You can also get smaller roller bottles in order to test out any topical blends.

Choose High Quality Oils

Essential oils are a popular thing right now leading a ton of companies to want to get in on the boom. This creates a situation where in order for companies to make the most buck, they cut corners. As there is little regulation on what can be labeled a 100% pure essential oil, bottles found in the grocery store, home good stores, and even health food stores may not be the best quality. They may be cut with synthetic fragrance oils or other carrier oils that dilute the purity & efficacy of the oil itself. I choose to use doTERRA Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade Oils for a myriad of reasons - one of the most important being quality. DoTERRA tests each & every batch of oils prior to bottling to ensure quality, purity, & efficacy. They also source high quality plant matter and process the raw materials near where they are grown.

Using high quality oils not only ensures that nothing unnecessary will enter your body if you're using these blends topically but it also ensure the fragrant profile of the essential oil is preserved. Working with a low quality lavender oil may not yield the same effects as working with a higher quality oil. Any synthetic fragrances may cause headaches or other adverse health effects....when the whole point is to help yourself out!

Creating your own essential oil blends is a great way to connect to your oils and get used to their physical & emotional applications. DoTERRA offers a chemistry handbook with more information on the chemical make up of oils and which oils blend together well based on their chemistry. This can add another level to your blending and works great to create things like cleaning solutions & skin care serums.

The proprietary blends offered by doTERRA can add another layer to your blending creativity as well. One of my favorite books regarding the emotional associations for essential oils is Emotions & Essential Oils. This book elaborates on the emotional balancing properties of both the single oils & proprietary blends. You can cross reference an emotion your feeling or an emotion you'd like to feel with oils that can help with that situation. The book also offers an emotional wheel that outlines which oils are great for different emotions.

I hope you found this post helpful and feel inspired to get started creating your own personal diffuser & roller bottle blends. It is a great exercise in both creativity & intuition! If you'd like to learn more about working with essential oils everyday join the Live & Create Facebook group!

Do you create your own blends? What is your favorite essential oil blend?

xoxo, Moe

Disclaimer :: These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This article is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.