Here’s what will keep you smelling fresh all day long

How you smell to others can have consequences. Take mosquitoes, for example. They prefer people with blood group 0 – for the little pests, these people apparently emit a nice sacrificial odour. Your height also has an effect on body odour. According to research, larger people emit a stronger smell than smaller people. However, it’s also true that how you or I or your best friend perceive odours is highly variable and genetically determined.

These 9 tips will show you how to leave a good lasting impression:

1. Apply perfume correctly

Fragrances rise from the bottom to the top. Spray your ankles, the area around your pubic bone and your chest with your favourite fragrance – gently! You want to smell good for a long time, but not in an obtrusive way. Don’t rub the fragrance onto the skin, as this destroys the fragrance molecules. A spray on the left and right side of the neck is also allowed – if you hug someone later, he, she or they will be enveloped in your delicate perfume. Perfumers swear by rubbing the skin with a neutral vitamin E oil before spraying. This makes the perfume last longer – especially citrus fragrances, which evaporate more quickly. Fragrances with woody base notes, oud, vanilla or tobacco last longer. An eau de cologne is lighter and therefore doesn’t last as long as an eau de parfum.

2. Spray your hairbrush or use hair perfume

With every move you make your hair can give off the scent of your perfume, so spraying the top of your head is worth a try if you want to smell good for longer. But sensitive or dry scalps can be dried out by the alcohol in your fragrance, so the alternative is to spray your hairbrush with perfume. You can also use special hair perfumes or mix a neutral hair oil with an essential oil of your choice and wet your hair with it several times a day.

3. Fresh bed linen

How often you change the sheets also influences your smell. If you want to smell good, wash your bed linen regularly. Once a week is a good frequency or, if you sweat a lot, wash them more often.

4. Apply cream to wet skin

Many perfumes also have matching body lotions. If you apply the lotion after showering, it’s best to apply it to slightly damp skin – this also preserves the perfume scent for longer. Alternatively, you can mix a neutral body lotion with a few drops of a fragrant essential oil.

5. Always have a fragrance with you

No perfume lasts all day. So, it’s important to top up the fragrance when necessary. There are small travel-size spray bottles you can fill your perfume with for this. In summer, body sprays are also a refreshing alternative. These body sprays, also known as body mists or eau fraiche, give your skin an extra dose of moisture and a light hint of fragrance for in between.

6. Shower less often (but thoroughly)

Now we’re getting medical for a moment. If you want to smell good, you need to wash less. Or: wash properly. Your skin works in black and white: there are «good» bacteria and «bad» bacteria. A healthy acid mantle has a pH value of 5. At this acidic pH value, the good bacteria feel at home. These are beneficial to skin health and can drive out other, unwanted inhabitants – such as fungi or staphylococci, which can make you smell bad.

However, if you wash with an alkaline soap that has a pH value of 8 to 10, the healthy protective acid mantle is destroyed for many hours – and with it the basis for the desired bacteria. If the good bacteria are gone, your body first has to rebuild the skin’s protective acid mantle – and in the meantime, bad bacteria and the like can spread and cause bad body odour. Showering regularly with the wrong soap for your skin doesn’t help. In fact, it does the opposite.

It’s best to use a pH-neutral soap, which is available in solid and liquid form. Coconut and sugar surfactants are the mildest on the skin. Plus, dermatologists only recommend washing «smelly areas» with soap, that is, under the armpits, in the intimate areas and the feet. For the rest of the body, you can just use warm water.

7. Dress properly

Yes, Grandma was right: child, don’t wear so much polyester! Especially in tight-fitting clothes, you sweat more – and washing them at 40 degrees doesn’t get rid of all the germs. Nor does it rid the undesirable stench of sweat caused by the microorganisms. If you can’t do without synthetic clothing, for example for sports, treat your clothes to a vinegar bath from time to time. Mix vinegar and warm water in a ratio of 1:4 and soak the garment in it for an hour. Don’t worry, the vinegar smell will disappear when you wash them in the machine afterwards.

8. If you always want to smell good, you have to eat the right food

Do you like eating meat? Then brace yourself. A study has shown: people who don’t eat meat for two weeks smell better –at least to women – than those who regularly eat steak, schnitzel, etc. And this study is similar, concluding that eating lots of fruit and vegetables makes you smell better than eating lots of carbohydrates.

Things get interesting when it comes to foods like garlic: it’s not so good for your breath at first, but according to a study, it’s good for your body odour – although this only applies when you consume 12 grams of garlic cloves or more – so, you’ll have to decide for yourself if that’s worth it...

Alcohol and spicy foods stimulate perspiration, which can be a problem if you’ve been washing yourself incorrectly. Fresh sweat doesn’t smell at first, but as soon as the unwanted microorganisms on your skin come into play and decompose it, it can smell really bad.

9. Drink lots of water

Speaking of sweat: body vapours smell stronger when highly concentrated – but you can counteract this by drinking enough fluids. You should also drink plenty of water for another reason: only well-moisturised skin can hold perfume well. Dry skin, on the other hand, allows your perfume to evaporate much more quickly.