How to DIY All Natural Room Spray (You Need Everclear!)
An easy recipe to create your own room spray so you know exactly what you’re spraying in your home to get that fabulous scent!
I just realized that if you’ve been following along lately you’re going to think that our house is really stinky! I promise that we’re making DIY room spray so that we have a great spray for our bathrooms. Really, just that one room.
Well sometimes we have stinky dogs when it’s damp outside, but there’s definitely a need for different types of products to refresh your home.
We showed you how to Cleanse Your Home with Sage Stick
And we showed you all the ingredients for a Spring Simmer Pot
And now we’re going to share with you a homemade room spray.
We love to burn a sage bundle seasonally, but it’s not really for freshening the air, it’s more for freshening our spirits.
The spring simmer pot is an amazing way to make the whole house smell good quick. But a room spray is perfect for spritzing the garbage can or freshening up a bathroom. It’s just a nice thing to keep on hand.
Of course we’re all for using essential oils and natural ingredients so this is the perfect recipe to freshen up our home, or just a room, quickly.
~This post may contain affiliate links. If you click one and make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no additional cost to you. This helps us fund creating great content for you! For more information click here ~
DIY Essential Oil Room Spray
We love a homemade remedy and finding all the ways to use our essential oils. You can mix and match all the scents to find the ones that you love the best. Then you’ll have your own secret to make your home smell amazing. Scroll on for the recipe and a few ideas on scents to mix.
Supplies:
- 1 oz Everclear Alcohol
- .5 oz Essential Oils (that’s about 40-50 drops)
- 3 oz distilled water
- Glass Measuring Cup
- Funnel (we use a mini one)
- Spray Bottle (we use a travel size and glass is the best option)
Directions:
- Measure and pour your Everclear and essential oils into a glass measuring cup
- Cover and let sit for an hour
- Pour mixture into spray bottle
- Add distilled water
- Shake lightly and use as an air and/or fabric freshener
Do you blend your own essential oils? We’ve used them to make bath fizzies, a simmer pot and a salt bath. We’re excited for this mix for our bathrooms, but we love spraying a lavender mix on our bed sheets as well.
Essential Oil Blends to Try
We like to experiment with different blends to see what smells good. Of course it depends on the season because we want lighter more and more floral scents in the spring and summer. In the winter we like a more musky and spicy scent.
The best way to tell what they smell like together is to hold the bottles near each other and take a sniff. If one overpowers another then use less of that one when mixing. It’s a bit like being a mad scientist and trying different mixes.
You can also mix your essential oils first, get the scent you love and then add the alcohol to them.
Be sure to write down your favorites so that you’ll be able to keep them on hand for the future.
Mixtures to Try
Sandalwood Rose:
- Sandalwood – 20 drops
- Rose – 20 drops
Summer Citrus:
- Orange – 20 drops
- Grapefruit – 10 drops
- Lemon – 10 drops
- Lime – 10 drops
Sweet Citrus:
- Lavender – 20 drops
- Orange – 15 drops
- Bergamot – 8 drops
- Vanilla – 8 drops
Good Earth:
- Juniper – 20 drops
- Rosemary – 15 drops
- Jasmine – 10 drops
- Frankincense – 10 drops
Our Favorite DIY All Natural Room Spray
Well we actually have two favorites. One is for spraying the sheets and it’s lavender and bergamot. It’s a nice blend for sleeping.
The other is for the bathroom and it’s:
- Lavender – 15 drops
- Lemon – 15 drops
- Peppermint – 10 drops
Why use Everclear?
Wait you haven’t bought Everclear since college?
We actually felt like we were sneaking out of the liquor store with it when we bought it for this recipe.
There is actually a valid reason that you want to use this high proof grain alcohol as your preservative in your DIY room spray.
The alcohol in a recipe needs to be at a minimum of 60% ethanol to help prevent bacteria growth. Anything below that won’t prevent bacteria.
It also takes a minimum amount of ethanol to dissolve your oils so that they’ll actually mix into your spray. A less potent alcohol will just cause your oils to bead up on top of your mixture.
Remember your basic science? Oil and water don’t mix.
You definitely don’t want to mix up a spray only to find out that you’re actually spreading bacteria around. That completely defeats the purpose of making your own.
Everclear is 95% ethanol (now you know why your head hurt from drinking it) and it will dilute your essential oils.
Your best bet is to use it as 25% of your recipe. Then just subtract the amount of essential oils that you use from your distilled water measurement.
Your basic recipe should be about 25% ethanol, 72% distilled water and 3% essential oils. It’s another reason that we make them in the travel size sprays though. Not much to use up so they’re not sitting around for a long period of time.
A Few Additional Notes:
Creating your own DIY room spray can be a great alternative to buying a store bought brand, but keep in mind that the ones you purchase at the store have been tested. You might not like all the chemicals that they contain but they do serve a purpose.
DIY room spray can cause damage to surfaces like finished wood and even your manicure. Remember that ethanol is a solvent and so are many essential oils so you need to be careful with them.
Glass containers are much better than plastic for storing essential oil mixes of any kind.
If you are interested in more of the science check out this article on Alcohol and Aromatic Blending. It’s got some great information about molecules and mixing.
So, have you made your own room spray before? And do you have experience with essential oils? We’re still in the experimenting phase but we’d love to hear about your favorite scent combinations in the comments below!
Follow us on Pinterest and on Instagram for lot’s more ideas and inspiration!
I read that diffusing essential oils is toxic to cats. So would this room spray be also, or not?
Hi Sherrie:
I don’t have any cats so I didn’t even realize that was a problem! I found a good article that explains why essential oils are bad for cats Using Essential Oils with Cats and I hope it has the information that you’re looking for. Also, thank you for bringing that to our attention!
Lauren and Traci
Unable to purchase Everclear in NH, what else can be used to substitute this product?
It’s important to use an alcohol with a high ethanol content to avoid bacteria. There are other solutions such as perfumers alcohol or Polysorbate 20 but we don’t have any experience with these products so we’re unable to tell you how they perform.
hi! some of my essential oils are still separating.. is there something I’m doing wrong? I even added more everclear and it still happened.
Hi Tata:
Sometimes the oil and water doesn’t blend as well because they’re oil and water. Try using a smaller amount of the essential oils – it only takes a few drops to get the scent! Also be sure that you shake up your mixture each time you use it and that should temporarily blend them, but they may still separate when sitting on a shelf. (storebought mixtures use chemicals to stop this from happening)