Ingredients for Making Perfume – Essential Raw Materials

A curated selection of ingredients and raw materials for making perfume, designed for anyone building a first perfumery palette and learning to formulate with materials that perform different functions.

You do not need to start with hundreds of ingredients. It is more useful to know a limited number of raw materials well, compare them in dilution and understand how they change the structure, volume, persistence and character of a formula.

Which raw materials should you study first?

ISO E SUPER® and TIMBERSILK™ help illustrate the construction of an amber-woody structure and the concept of volume. GALAXOLIDE® PURE and ETHYLENE BRASSYLATE allow you to compare two different musky directions. BENZYL SALICYLATE is useful for linking and supporting floral accords. COUMARIN and VANILLIN introduce two pillars of the sweet, powdery and gourmand area. CALONE is an excellent example of a high-character material and helps demonstrate how dosage can completely change an accord.

How to study them

For learning purposes, evaluate each material on its own, both neat when technically appropriate and in dilution, then introduce it into simple accords of two, three or four ingredients. The goal is not to accumulate raw materials, but to recognise the function each one performs in a composition.

This selection contains individual ingredients. If you prefer to purchase an already organised palette, the shop also offers kits designed for studying perfumery.

If you started by searching for oils for making perfume, see our guide Perfumery Oils: Which Ingredients Do You Really Need?