What's Actually in Your Incense?

Natural ingredients, synthetic fragrances and why the difference matters.

Have you ever walked past an incense display and smelled it before you've even reached the shop?

Some incense is so heavily fragranced that you could probably locate it blindfolded.

Now, there's nothing wrong with enjoying a strong fragrance. But it does raise an interesting question: what are we actually smelling?

Not all incense is made the same way

Incense has been made for thousands of years using aromatic woods, resins, herbs, flowers and spices. These ingredients have their own scents, textures and characteristics.

Sandalwood smells like sandalwood. Frankincense has its own unmistakable resinous character. Cedar brings something quite different again.

Traditional incense making involves combining these materials, often grinding them into powders and using a binder to hold everything together.

Modern commercial incense can be quite different.

Some products use a relatively neutral combustible base with added fragrance oils or essential oils. Those fragrances may be synthetic, naturally derived, or a combination of both.

And here's where things get interesting.

A rose isn't always a rose

An incense stick labelled Rose doesn't necessarily contain a single rose petal.

It might be scented with a fragrance compound designed to reproduce the smell of roses. The result can be beautiful, powerful, sweet or rather overwhelming, depending on the formulation.

The same applies to sandalwood, jasmine, lavender and countless other familiar scents.

This doesn't automatically make the product bad. It simply means that the name of a fragrance isn't necessarily a list of its ingredients.

For anyone who prefers incense made from actual botanical materials, that distinction matters.

But incense gives me a headache!

I've heard people say they can't stand incense because it gives them a headache, makes them sneeze or leaves them feeling a little overwhelmed.

And I can understand why. Some commercial incense is so heavily perfumed that the fragrance seems to fill an entire room before anyone has even struck a match.

There are a few different ways incense can be scented. Some makers use essential oils extracted from plants. Others use fragrance oils, which may contain synthetic aroma compounds, natural ingredients or a mixture of both.

Then there's incense made primarily from the aromatic materials themselves — powdered woods, resins, herbs, flowers and spices.

For someone sensitive to particular fragrance compounds, those added perfumes could be part of the problem. But it's not quite as simple as blaming everything on synthetic ingredients. Essential oils contain potent aromatic compounds too, and the smoke from burning any incense can irritate sensitive people.

So perhaps someone who says they're allergic to incense isn't necessarily reacting to all incense. They may be reacting to a particular fragrance, ingredient or the smoke itself.

That doesn't mean natural incense will suit everyone, but it does mean there's more to incense than the heavily perfumed sticks many of us have encountered.

And perhaps that's worth knowing before deciding that all incense is off the menu.

Natural incense has a different character

When you're working with powdered woods, resins and botanicals, you're working with ingredients that don't always behave exactly as expected.

One batch of aromatic material may smell slightly different from another. A resin can change the way a blend burns. An ingredient that smells wonderful in the jar might behave quite differently once lit.

And sometimes a combination that sounds magnificent on paper turns out to be decidedly less magnificent in practice.

Ask me how I know.

But that's also what makes natural incense so interesting.

The aroma comes from the materials themselves, and the finished fragrance can be layered, earthy, woody, floral, spicy or resinous without necessarily smelling like a conventional perfume.

It isn't always loud. Sometimes it's the quieter scents that turn out to be the most appealing.

Does natural mean safer?

This is where I think a little common sense is important.

Natural doesn't automatically mean harmless. Poisonous plants are natural too, after all.

Burning incense produces smoke and airborne particles, regardless of whether the ingredients are botanical or synthetic. Good ventilation, sensible use and keeping incense away from children and pets all matter.

Nor does the presence of a synthetic fragrance automatically tell us everything about a product's safety.

For me, the choice to make natural incense is about the ingredients, the craftsmanship and the aromas they create — not making grand claims about what incense can do for your health.

So what goes into Wild Hollow Living incense?

My starting point is the raw aromatic materials themselves.

Powdered woods, resins, botanicals, spices and natural binders are combined into small batches, shaped by hand, dried and burn-tested.

There are no shortcuts involving a quick dip into a bottle of perfume.

Which sounds wonderfully straightforward until you've spent an afternoon trying to persuade an uncooperative mixture to stay on a bamboo stick.

Making incense this way takes patience, experimentation and a fair amount of trial and error. But I like knowing what goes into each blend and being able to develop something with its own character.

And I rather like that no two handmade pieces are perfectly identical.

A little curiosity goes a long way

Next time you're buying incense, have a look at how it's described.

Does the maker tell you what it's made from? Are the aromatic ingredients identified, or is the packaging simply promising a particular fragrance?

Neither answer tells the whole story, but it's a useful place to start.

Because incense can be much more than a stick that smells nice.

It can be a fascinating combination of plants, resins, craftsmanship and a little bit of persistence.

And that's the part I find irresistible.

From the Hollow — Wild Hollow Living