As I’ve gotten older I have started to love collecting fragrances. But picking out a fragrance is a bit of an annoying process. You smell a sample in the store and love it but when you take it home and try it on yourself it smells completely different.

I am going to help you understand fragrances a bit more so that you understand what you are buying and how fragrance changes over time. (If you are looking for a fragrance buying guide, check out this previous article.)

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Fragrance Concentrations

The first thing that many are unsure about is the difference between eau de toilette and eau de parfum. Typically these are portrayed as eau de toilette being a cheaper or lower quality item and eau de parfum as being more expensive and higher quality. And when the same fragrance is offered as both an eau de toilette and an eau de parfum that is usually the case, but most fragrances are only offered in one format. This is where the eau de toilette tag becomes less about quality and more about how the fragrance is created.

While the terms that are most common are eau de toilette and eau de parfum, there is also eau de cologne and perfume.

What do these mean? Well, these terms denote the concentration of perfume oils in the fragrance. Perfume has the greatest amount, followed by eau de parfum, next is eau de toilette, and the least concentrated fragrance type is eau de cologne. The concentration categories do have a range of concentrations that fall under each category so eau de toilettes from different companies may contain different concentrations of perfume oils within a certain range.