If you have a couple of bottles of essential oils at home, which you know how to use for a few specific things. You are interested in aroma oils in general and want to take your knowledge to the next level, then this is the blog entry for you!

On this page, I will help you level up to the next step in your aroma journey: blending!

I remember those days–poking around on the internet, looking for essential oil blend recipes and being overwhelmed by the tons of recipes out there! It is easy to feel quite lost very quickly.

No stress!

Below, check out a list of blends that you can easily do yourself with between two to five essential oils. Easy-peasy!

Why do I speak about a maximum of five oils, when some recipes discuss making use of seven to ten oils? Read on!

• When you use more than five oils, the interactions become too complex and the recipe loses focus on what it is intended to do.
• With less than five oils, you help keep your blend more budget-friendly.

In short, too many oils in a blend will kill the blend!

Let's be Essential!

The selection of blends listed below can be diffused or used in a spray (see the article about gentle diffusers to get a recipe and information on how to do an aromatic spray [here].

P.S. In this list, there is only one blend that should only be used for massage: the Sport-Essential.

1. Starter kit

2. Calming blend

3. Essential oils to bring you energy

4. Freshness with aromatic oils

5. A touch of cleanness

6. Oils for good nights

7. After sport mixture

8. Important steps for blending

9. About diffusion

10. About sprays

11. About massage and photosensitivity

• Very Essential People
• Disclaimer
• Pictures

The goal of this selection of aromatic mixtures is to help you get a head start on blending. 

The great beauty of essential oils is that mixing two oils together can produce a synergy which can magnify your desired result.

So, an important thing to keep in mind with blending is that 1+1 will not always give you 2.

Although the internet contains a great variety of recipes with huge amounts of different oils, often the price tags of those individual oils cost an arm and a leg.

The selection utilised below, by contrast, is not extravagant. Many of the base oils in the recipes below are fairly common, and may already be in your collection!

You can purchase the ones that you are missing (or make use of tasting kits as a neat way to discover oils that blend well together). 

Often, when you purchase oils in kits, they come in a lovely box (as a gift packaging) and often are furnished with an empty bottle. What’s the deal with the empty bottle? If you have one of these genie’s lamps, use it to make a larger quantity of your blend (rather than opening your bottles multiple times, contributing to evaporation and deterioration).

• Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia),
• Lemon (Citrus limon),
• Cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum).

We generally recommend these three essential oils for those who want to start blending, as there are so many different ways to blend and use them, e.g.:

• alone
• two by two
• all together.

They are the best to start with blending.

Lavender and Lemon are well known oils and they have to be in a starter kit for sure!

But what about Cardamom? It could be Peppermint, or Eucalyptus...

• Cardamom brings spicy notes to your blend (can also be used alone).
• Plus amazing properties due to its high percentage of 1.8 cineol.
• Promess, you will love them!

Interested by these three oils, Après-You proposes a kit called Start-Essential with them.

To calm an overheated life with essential oils, blend the following:

• Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)
• Chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile)

Après-You recommends to do a blend with these two oils with 10 drops of Lavender and three drops of Chamomille. Chamomille's scent can be very strong.

You can have a ready-to-use bottle with these two oils and sniff them when needed. 

NB: If Chamomile oil is outside your budget, you could try replacing it with Sweet orange (Citrus sinensis).

A study has been conducted in a dentist waiting room. The patients were much calmer when the blend of Lavender and Orange was diffused compared to no diffusion.  [here]

Interesting!

Need a boost in your day?

Why not test aroma diffusion of citrus oils.

• Why not test aroma diffusion of citrus oils.
• Sweet orange (Citrus sinensis), 
• Lemon (Citrus limon), 
• Grapefruit (Citrus paradisi).

No surprise to get citrus to bring peps to your home.

• You can easily play with dosages and add one more than another.
• It is certainly a nice blend for a brumisation diffusion (also known as ultrasonic diffusion, see the article about this "smokers" here).

NB Sweet orange is calming and in this blend it balances the excitation brought by the other citrus.

Bring freshness to your home with a few drops of essential oils.

• Peppermint (minta x pipperita), 
• Lemon (Citrus limon),
• Rosemary (Rosmarinus Officinalis). (choose the cineol one because it is easier to use than the other rosemaries).

Need to get freshness in a room?

Peppermint, Lemon and Rosemary help you to get a touch of vigour.

The kit Fresh-Essential regroups these three oils together.

Combine three oils together to get cleaner air.

• Tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia), 
• Lemon (Citrus limon),
• Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus radiata). (choose the radiata one, because I found the globulus is too heady).

The combination of Eucalyptus, Tea tree, and Lemon is perfect to help to purify air in your kitchen or in a bedroom. It also brings freshness to your room.

Before going to bed or in the middle of the night when you get trouble sleeping.

These three oils will be your best friends to help you fall asleep without addiction.

• Petitgrain bigarade (Citrus × aurantium ssp. amara)
• Green tangerine (Citrus reticulata Blanco)
• Sweet marjoram (Origanum majorana)

• Petitgrain is a nerve balance. It helps to be calmer or brings you up when needed.
• Green tangerine is interesting for its nice and sweet sedative effects.
• Sweet marjoram is known as a calming oil.

Lavender and/or Chamomile could be good a complement but the kit is made to bring you a bit off the traditional roads.

There is a kit availble called Night-Essential for whom who wants to get these three oils together.

Why not do your own aromatic massage oil instead of buying creams and balms.

• It is simple, easy and fast. You just need three oils:
• Lemon eucalyptus (Eucalyptus citriodora)
• Wintergreen (Gaultheria fragrantissima)
• Spike Lavender (Lavandula latifolia)

Use only this blend mix with carrier oil like Arnica up to 20% max.

• Lemon eucalyptus oil helps to ease your joints,
• Wintergreen is well-known and used as a powerful analgesic and anti-inflammatory oil,
• Spike lavender has good properties to calm tender muscles.

If you want to know how many drops of the synergy of essential oils you need, please check the dilution calculator here.

Once you have mixed your chosen oils together in a bottle, the first (and very important!!!) step is to add a label to the bottle with the ingredients and the date.

This is important for safety protocols. Some oils have particular use requirements, and you need to know what is in a particular bottle.

Moreover, once you start blending, you will continue to experiment, and it will be useful to be able to go back to previous blends to compare notes. You won’t regret taking the time to write it down!

With the exception of the “After Sport Blend” (which is only for massage), you can use all of these synergies in diffusion.

Just pour several drops of the blend directly on your diffuser, add water (or not depending on the kind of diffuser), and let it run!

Remember! You also can add aromatic blends to alcohol and spray it around your house, bedroom or living room. Remember to be careful not to spray in your eyes!

N.B. After Sport Blend should only be used in massage.

If you want to use the blends described above on your skin, there are two things you must know.

1. Dilution: mix your essential oils with a carrier oil. Most of the time the dilution rate should be around 10 % max. If you want help with the maths, Après-You’s free calculator is available [here]. If you join Après-You’s Very Essential People, you also have access to a second reverse calculator (which will start from the percentage to give you the number of drops), there is a second available calculator [here].
2. Photosensitivity: Citrus essences can burn your skin when exposed to the sun’s UV rays. To avoid burns and/or dark spots on your skin, dilute and do not expose your skin to the direct light of the sun for one day after application. 

Be safe, be essential!

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Après-You does not pretend and/or wants to replace any medical judgement or prescription. All the information within this post is intended to be informative! Please, always use essential oils carefully and with respect. In case of doubt, always ask a medical professional first. 

If you have any questions or remarks about the pictures and credits, feel free to send an email to info@apres-you.com.