How Can Scented Candles Influence Our Memories And Emotions?

18 April 17
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Our sense of smell really is an amazing thing. Even though we think we use our eyes and ears to identify what goes on around us, we all use our sense of smell a lot more often than we think! The smell of petrol when you’re filling your car, or a freshly laundered pillow, or the cut grass outside your office. Some of these smells can even evoke powerful memories and emotional reactions.

Why Do We Associate Smells With Memories?

smells evoke memories

There’s a bit of biology involved here – but we’re not scientists here at Melt, so we won’t go too deeply into it! Basically, scents are processed through your olfactory bulb, which starts inside your nose and runs along the bottom of your brain. As it does so, it comes into contact with the bits of your brain that process emotions and memory.

Interestingly, your senses of touch and hearing don’t pass through this area, which is probably the main reason why scents are so powerful at triggering emotions and memories! (Just the sort of thing, by the way, that our luxury scented candles are positively excellent for.)

There have been a whole bunch of scientific studies done on this area, but we won’t run you through them in detail; just tell you the results. They found that:

  • Memories from scents and smells tend to be stronger and more emotional
  • These memories tend to be from earlier in life, as opposed to adult memories
  • They’re often thought of less often than memories arising from sight, sound and touch

Interesting, right? That’s why the smell of things like pine wood or the cake your mum used to cook you can both evoke much stronger responses in your head than if you’d just seen them.

The Awesome Power Of Your Sense Of Smell

short and fat cashmere candle

As well as certain smells bringing on individual memories, there are certain scents that science says we all love. It’s part of why aromatherapy works so well – because we naturally associate these smells with pleasant things. For example, the scents of orange and lavender reduce anxiety and improve mood. And who doesn’t love the sweet sweet smell of chocolate? (Not anyone who buys our Angel candle, that’s for sure!)

It’s just one more of the many reasons that luxury scented candles make such valuable additions to your home. Depending on your preferred scent, you can influence your own mood and emotions, or even change the feel of an entire room!

Here’s something fascinating – you can even train your nose to become more sensitive! Become scent conscious by taking a moment to enjoy the smell of your tea before tucking in, or pick out the scents of rain, cut grass and the heavenly scents from passing restaurants.

Or – and we can’t stress this enough – you can achieve the same beautiful effect with one of our luxury scented candles! Now that the sun is shining, we’re leaning towards our more natural scents like our Eden fragrance and our Hyacinth collection… but it’s all up to you!

You can browse our full range of luxury scented candles here, or find out more about scents have influenced us through history by reading about the art of aromatherapy.

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