You can make a quite natural, eco friendly, and relatively cheap reed diffuser on your own, no need to buy expensive ones or use nasty chemicals. Try and make your own reed diffuser kit at home.
Reed diffusers can be made with homemade perfume, by blending ethyl alcohol with your favorite fragrance or essential oil. Add a bit of carrier oil, preferably one without any scent like sweet almond oil, to prolong your reed diffuser perfume, as with alcohol only it quickly evaporates.
There’s no need to use scent fixators: let your nose adjust to a milder perfume. Still, if you switch your reed sticks upside down every now and then, your reed diffuser will be very effective at scenting your room.
Table of Contents
- Why Make Your Own Reed Diffuser Kit?
- Reed Diffuser Perfume
- How To Use Your Reed Diffuser
- Related Posts
Why Make Your Own Reed Diffuser Kit?
Because you will be in control of the ingredients used and that’s important if you are concerned about your health and/or the environment. You won’t be using nastier chemicals than ethyl alcohol, best known as grain alcohol or ethanol, a vegetal-based alcohol you already find in alcoholic beverages.
Then you can use only essential oils and make this reed diffuser 100% natural. You may even use it for aromatherapy.
Environmentally Frendly…
Besides using natural ingredients, this reed diffuser can also be zero-waste, and you can go environmentally friendly by skipping the usage of plastics and reusing the same recipient.
Recycle a small glass bottle with a small opening, prefferably dark colored, and use it as is, or decorate it to your liking: with a pretty label or jute string. Make sure you use decoration you can remove or is washable, to wash the bottle regularly.
… And Save Some Money On The Way…
You can use kebab wooden sticks, or dried branches instead of reed sticks. Reed is more efficient at scenting your room, but wood also works well. By recycling and using what you already have at home, this reed diffuser can become very, very cheap.
… Or Go Home Design
Your wave is more about arranging pretty things? This might make your reed diffuser more expensive, but it surely turn your reed diffuser into a decorative item, and even give your room a different looks. Especially if you make an arranjement with aromatic candles, a jar with dried or fresh plants, several reed diffusers on a tray… you can go home design-crazy with your reed diffusers.
Reed sticks may come in many forms and colors: from simple natural-creamy reed sticks to colored ones, flower-shaped, branches, or natural dried plants, you can find a wide variety of reed sticks that might give your reed diffuser a very special look.
By search for reed diffuser bottles or small glass bottles, you can find again a wide variety of shapes and colors.
Here are some ideas of decoration with reed diffusers: all simple and pretty.
And while your reed diffuser will be more expensive, it is still environmentally friendly, as you use the same bottle and the reeds are all biodegradable. You are also avoiding electricity or battery sources for your home air freshener.
Reed Diffuser Perfume
This reed diffuser perfume is very similar to the recipe presented in Essential Oil Perfume Recipe. The difference is the oil addition to help slow down the perfume evaporation.
Using 30% essential oils, 70% grain alcohol only will make your reed diffuser to last only one week or so. Especially the first time, when your reed sticks are dry and soak a lot of liquid.
With the addition of a bit of oil (the quantity can even be eyeballed) the reed diffuser will last for months! So this recipe is basically 30% fragrance (an essential oils blend), 60% of grain alcohol, and 10% of sweet almond oil (which you can switch for any odorless oil)
Reed Diffuser Aromas
As for the scent, it’s entirely up to you. This is another advantage of making your own reed diffuser. It might give a little bit of work, to smell and attempt several essential oil blends – but the aroma can be fully costumized to your preferences.
The list of possibilities is endless and in my opinion, this is the most fun part of this recipe – to find out your favorite blend. You can buy a starter kit by using one of the following links:
- Now Foods Essential Oils Starter Kit
- Jade Bloom Essential Oils Starter Kit
- Plant Therapy Essential Oils Starter Kit
and start experimenting right away!
In the recipe below I also show a couple of examples just to guide you in the recipe, and below you can find a list of some blends I have already used so far (with both essential oils and fragrance oils):
- Lilly-Of-The-Valley + Rose
- Neroli (Orange Blossom) + Rose
- Neroli + Lavender + Amber Glow
- English Rose + Yasmine
- Indian Lotus + Neroli
- Sea Salt + Lavender
How To Use Your Reed Diffuser
Once you prepare your perfume, it should macerate inside the alcohol and oil. You may pour it into your bottle and place the reed sticks inside right away, but it’s normal if the scent is no big deal: the essential oils still need to macerate.
I do make everything immediately and let the perfume macerate in open air. However, it’s a good practice to let the perfume macerate for one week in a dark place (or inside a dark amber bottle).
Once your diffuser is in use, if you want to have a good wiff of its aroma, turn the reed sticks upside down, with the wetter part upwards. The scent will last for another few days.
Gone again? Turn the reed sticks upside down again, and the good aroma will come back again. Your reed diffuser may last for months like this, always giving a good aroma to your room. A reed diffuser will work better if used in a closed room, like a bedroom.
I hope you liked this post. Do give it a try at making your own reed diffuser, it’s quite fun and rewarding!
Related Posts
- Essential Oil Perfume Recipe
- Best Essential Oils for Soap Making
- Essential Oils For Skincare Products
Ingredients
- 15 ml essential oils blend fragrance blend
- 30 ml alcohol 96º (ethanol) cereal alcohol
- 5 ml sweet almond oil
Essential Oils Blend (example)
Fragrances Blend (example)
- 15 ml rose fragrance oil
Instructions
- Disinfect all your equipment before starting. You can use a solution of 1 liter of water with 1/2 cup of bleach. Make sure that when making your perfume, all items and clean and dry.
- Measure 15 ml of your favorite essential oil blend or fragrance blend. You can mix any essential oils or fragrances, this is 100% up to your scent preferences, there are no rules here. You can also use one single essential oil or fragrance.
- Measure 30 ml of alcohol into a cup and add your perfume blend into it. Mix well.
- Pour your perfume into the reed diffuser glass bottle.
- Add the sweet almond oil. The 5 ml quantity is not important, you can add more or less. The sweet almond oil will only make your reed diffuser last much longer, as the alcohol evaporates quite fast and your reeds will absorb it immediately.
- When you make your perfume the scent will be disappointing. This is normal, the essential oil blend or fragrance blend needs to macerate into the alcohol. Keep your glass bottle covered and in a dark place for one week, to macerate
- After one week, uncover your glass bottle and add the reed diffuser sticks. Your reed diffuser is ready to use!!
- I use a 30% concentration of perfume and for me this is strong enough. If you want your perfume to be lighter, you can change to a 20% concentration: 10 ml of perfume blend with 35 ml of alcohol + 5ml oil.
What is a Reed diffuser? I am sure it’s got something to do with your health seeing that your niche is all about healthy living. I am not really a fan of that but my sister is so I will be sure to share this article with her. I will let you know what she thinks of it
Hello Daniel, thanks for your comment.This blog is more about soapmaking and natural skincare, but I suppose that is part of healthy living 🙂
This reed diffuser is a bit off-topic, but fact is you can make a Essential Oil Homemade Perfume and use it on yourself or… in a reed diffuser. You would just need to buy a glass bottle and reed sticks.A reed diffuser is nothing but a natural air freshener, where a alcohol-based perfume is absorbed and then “channeled” along the reed sticks, and then evaporates in the room, making it smell good.
What this have to do with health? Because you CAN totally control the fragrance you use and avoid harsher chemicals/strong parfums present in commercial air fresheners. You don’t need to feel scent-overloaded or have headaches to have your room smelling good 🙂
You can even make it 100% with essential oils and then you will have a sort of aromatherapy treatment.
Hope this answered your question.
Cheers,
Sofia