Room spray, my new love...

[Sarah S]

I recently picked up some grain alcohol to play around with for alcohol based applications. It's 94% alcohol, so that's what, 190 proof? I get confused about that... It's really strong!

I've never really liked the store bought room sprays, I really detest most commercial fragrances (that's why I got into making my own stuff in the first place, but that's another story), so room spray has never really been on my radar.

Anyway... I had a couple of empty spray bottles, this alcohol, distilled water, and some FOs that are great but not doing it for me in wax or incense, so I thought I'd give the spray a whirl. Oh my gosh!! I love it!! A new world of fragrance has opened up to me! 😄

So my question is this, is there an ideal percentage of alcohol I should be using, and a percentage of FO? I made up two sprays with 40% alcohol and 5% FO, and they seem really really strong. I was thinking candles I guess! Is it more of a personal preference thing? I was thinking I'd go down to 3% and see how it goes. And 40% alcohol seems like a lot, but I wanted it to be self preserving, and I wanted to make sure all the FO was solubilized. I searched the forum, and I saw that @TallTayl does a spray with 20% alcohol, so I could take it down quite a bit, couldn't I? I did a Google search too, but mostly what popped up was a lot of the mommy bloggers and green bloggers, so you can imagine I didn't get much help there.

I'm going to search out some formulas on the raw material manufacture's sites if possible, that helped me a lot with me cosmetic stuff, but I thought I'd see if anyone here had some pearls of wisdom to drop my way! 😉

TIA!!

[TallTayl]

For preservation, at least 20% alcohol.

 

If you want it to emulsify, you'll need a surfactant of some kind.

 

[Sarah S]

Aha! I was hoping to skip the surfactant by using alcohol, but I guess not.

20% is going to be a lot more cost effective than 40%!

Thank you! ❤️❤️

[TallTayl]

If it was just alcohol no problem. When you add the water that’s on the problems come. If you don’t mind shaking and you don’t mind a cloudy solution you can do without the surfactant

[Darbla]

Room sprays scare me.  I worry that that something in them could damage furniture finishes, fabrics, and floor finishes.

[Sarah S]

So far this is a "just for me" thing, so I'm not too worried. There is absolutely nothing in my house that can be ruined any more than it already is! 😳

It's a good thing to take into consideration though. That's one of the things I like about using alcohol, the evaporation is very fast, so surface contact is minimal.

[Darbla]

I used straight alcohol to clean a mirror and some dribbled on the floor.  Even though I wiped it up when I finished the mirror, the spilled alcohol removed some of the finish on my floor.  In another part of the house I spilt some scented stuff from a tealight warmer and had the same result:  a permanent spot on the floor.  And I have a friend who mentioned his wife's hairspray landing on their bathroom floor and damaging it (I stick my head in the shower now if I spray stuff like that).  So I try to be really careful about any liquid landing on anything around my house that isn't intended for liquid to be on it.