It is easy to recognize when someone else is wearing too much perfume or cologne. They walk by you and an obnoxious wafting of overpowering fragrance turns you from the potentially pleasant aroma. Yet the people wafting by you have no idea that they are hindering your nasal experience with the bath they apparently took in their fragrance prior to leaving their house.
It can be annoying at the very least to have to sit near someone in the work environment that has been doused excessively in their favorite scent. For asthmatics or people with allergies, it is more than a mere annoyance. It is a healthy distraction that prohibits them from being comfortable in the workplace.
Since it’s so easy to recognize when someone else is wearing way too much perfume, it should be just as easy to recognize when you yourself are the perfume bathed culprit. Not true. When a person douses themselves with perfume they are unaware that they do not have the same sensitive sense of smell that most people do. This can occur for a variety of reasons.
Some people simply do not have a very strong sense of smell. They can’t determine aroma unless it is very strong. If you notice that other people seem to smell things that you can’t, it is likely that your sense of smell is less than stellar.
Years of cigarette smoking can impact someone’s sense of smell. An attempt to cover up cigarette smoke also tends to lead to overdosing on aromatic fragrances. It doesn’t work. You simply smell like smoke and too much fragrance. Sweet-smelling hand lotions are more effective at covering smoke smells.
The basic rule of application to avoid overdosing is really very simple. Spray the scent upwards in the air directly in front of you and then walk through it. Spraying it directly on your skin or your clothes can easily lead to an accidental overspray. Just because it doesn’t smell very strong to you after an application doesn’t mean that other people won’t smell it. Perfume is designed to waft in their air after you, not necessarily linger about your presence like an overwhelming cloud.
It’s not easy to tell whether you are wearing the appropriate amount of fragrance. One simple way to find out is to simply ask someone you trust to tell you the truth. Ask a couple of people considering that nasal sensitivity varies. If they find your perfume overpowering, they will tell you. If they can’t smell it at all, then you know. It is easier to make adjustments based on the opinions of others.
