Mixing essential oils for health or aroma can often be more effective than using any single oil alone. But even though essential oil combinations often enhance each other to create greater results they can also work against each other when badly chosen oils are blended together.
But don’t let this put you off having a go at mixing essential oils, here at SavvyHomemade we have lots of beauty recipes and how to’s that will help guide you through the basics of blending and mixing essential oils.
A Few Recipes That Will Help With Blending Essential Oils
When it comes to mixing oils you will find that there are hundreds of combinations to try so it would not be cost-effective for most people to have every essential oil available.
When looking through our facial at-home products you may find you don’t always have the essential oils called for in the recipe.
This does not mean that you can’t create a nice homemade wrinkle cream with oils you might already have. The fragrant or therapeutic result may vary slightly to the original recipe, but you can usually get it close enough.
Fragrant Essential Oil Substitutes
When you substitute an essential oil in an aromatic blend, and your aim is just for its aroma, always substitute the oil for one from the same family such as citrus, floral, spicy or earthy.
For example, if you need to substitute sweet orange essential oil, mandarin will give a similar aroma. If you need a substitute for rose essential oil, although it’s not exact rose geranium will give you a pretty good result.
Here are a few examples of aromatic essential oil substitutes
- Lemon – Grapefruit
- Tangerine – Orange
- Peppermint – Spearmint
- Benzoin – Vanilla
- Cinnamon – Clove
Therapeutic Essential Oil Substitute
Therapeutic essential oil can be substituted in a similar way to the aromatic ones but instead of substituting for similar scented oils you will need to substitute it for one with similar therapeutic values.
Keep in mind when mixing essential oils even if it’s for just their therapeutic values you will still want to produce a blend that has a pleasant scent as you will not want to work with an unpleasant aroma.
When substituting oils always pay close attention to the required therapeutic action of the original essential oil, making sure that when you substitute it for one with the same action that you take care not to introduce any unwanted safety hazards.
Have you tried mixing or blending oils? What results did you get.. good or bad?
