How to Make Your Room Smell Good? Easy Steps to Make a Room Smell Good

These days, microclimates in homes and offices are becoming more and more important as the number of busy schedules rises. People spend countless hours at work and want to feel good and what’s more important — perform well. This research shows how employees all over the country would benefit fr om a fresher, cleaner office air, and how much worse their health can be if air quality stays the same. 

Environmentalists and human resources experts talk about stuffiness, temperature, and humidity. How about the actual scent a room has? Apparently, a wide range of people, fr om allergy sufferers to scent dependent individuals, can be influenced by musty room smells, strong trails of perfumes, etc.

Wh ere do unpleasant odors come from, are they dangerous and can they be eliminated?

Let’s First Find out What Scent is 

What happens when a person smells a rose? A process breakdown looks like this: rose petals secrete oil, the molecules spread around freely. When inhaled, they enter the person’s nose. And there, olfactory receptors catch these molecules and transmit information about them to the brain. The brain recognizes these molecules and gives a signal to the human brain. The odor is a brain reaction to an external stimulus, the response of our body to a change in the composition of the air.

An important thing to note: people perceive odors in various ways, depending on how neurons identify odor source molecules. Someone loses consciousness from a sharp cologne, others deal calmly with building paint vapors. If you dislike dealing with strange scents that you feel should not be there, keep reading. We’re going to dig deeper into the subject and find out how to manage what’s going on in your room scent-wise.

Are Smells Hazardous?

The question is kind of tricky. Depending on the source of the smell, the molecules of odorous substances that we inhale can very much harm our health. For example, the smell of paint. Even the eco-friendly acrylic paints for walls and ceilings contain harmful substances, ammonia in particular. This is the so-called “fresh renovation smell” that some of us are so fond of. But it is not the smell that is harmful, but the vapors you inhale. If there is enough ammonia in the paint, then for several following days you will be haunted by coughing fits and sore eyes. As they say: if it smells bad, it probably is! 

Other options are also possible: sometimes a stink is just a stink. The smell of rotting fish from the bin may seem like chemical weapons to someone, but there is no harm in it. 

In other cases, harmful substances can be odorless. For example, sarin does not smell at all. It gets even more interesting with hydrogen sulfide, which emits the smell of rotten chicken eggs. With a deadly concentration of hydrogen sulfide, the smell disappears, because our olfactory receptors lose their sensitivity. It turns out that the nasty smell of rotten meat is not a sign of danger, but rather a sign of relative safety and a signal that it is worth taking some protective measures. 

The bottom line is if the source of the unpleasant odor is not harmful in itself, then it will be enough to simply mask this smell. But if the stench comes from a dangerous object, then using an air freshener is not enough.

Smells That Should not be There

Some sources of unpleasant odors in your home or office are inside, others are outside. Let's go over all of them. 

Kitchen. The most obvious reason is the trash bin with kitchen waste. Other smells come from food, especially when it’s fried. The odor gets absorbed into the curtains and upholstered furniture. It can also come from the refrigerator, oven or microwave.

Bathroom. If the bathroom is damp, then the smell of mold will follow. Sewer pipes and hoods also fall under suspicion.

Living room, bedroom, children's room. Pets are often the culprits of the smell in this case. It is unpleasant that odorous substances sink into carpets and parquet floors. On top of that, they are hard to remove.

A more serious problem is furniture finishing materials vapors. PVC and particleboard emit harmful fumes of phenol, formaldehyde, and other volatile organic compounds into the air, many of which can be dangerous (styrene for instance).

Tobacco smoke also causes a lot of trouble — it has grown to be a common household hazard for many. The matter is not only in the smell but also in the dangerous substances that cigarettes contain.

The smell of mold, indicating dampness, can only be eliminated along with the dampness itself: by establishing a thermal and ventilation balance. All other sources of odors inside the apartment are easily eliminated by the routine cleanup.

Outdoor smoke. Smells of smoke and fumes can come from a construction site, from factories that have their production processes associated with combustion.

Traffic fumes. The smell of car exhaust is often noticeable, even by those who do not live by a highway. A garbage truck or a huge trash container that stands in front of your house for a long time, or a car that a neighbor warms up under your windows, are enough. However, not all hazardous exhaust components have an odor. For example, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides, which are extremely harmful do not smell at all in high concentrations. Automobile exhaust contains many other components that contain odorous molecules. In general, exhaust fumes is the case when an unpleasant smell and danger go hand in hand.

Tobacco. Again. The neighbors smoking on the balcony are a painful story for many. If you are lucky, then the wind will carry cigarette smoke to the other side. Usually, luck does not happen.

Industrial gases:

• sulfur dioxide

• nitric oxide

• carbon monoxide

• ammonia

• hydrogen sulfide

• formaldehyde

• benzopyrene.

And this is not a full list of substances that are common in megapolis air. Everything mentioned above can be toxic to humans: regular excess concentrations of these substances affect respiratory organs and the cardiovascular system. Benzopyrene is also known for its carcinogenic and mutagenic properties.

Harmful gases are emitted by factories (especially petrochemical and waste incinerators), thermal power plants and boiler houses, as well as transport. Increased concentrations of exhaust, and industrial gas lead to chronic diseases.

Summarizing, internal sources of odors (kitchen waste, mold, pets, furniture, decoration materials, etc.) are dangerous to a certain point. External sources of unpleasant odors (smoke, exhaust and industrial gases) are very harmful. In this case, our goal is not to learn “how to get rid of odor in room”, but to protect our home or office from its source.

How to Make my Room Smell Good?

Dealing with domestic odor sources

The most effective action would include eliminating the source of the odor. But what if the source is your brand-new lovely closet, your favorite cat peeing around or your smoker-boyfriend? The only way out is to deal with the consequences and purify the air. 

But how?

Cleaning, ventilation, aromatic candles, and air freshener sprays help for a little while, but do not solve the problem radically. In our case, technological progress leads the way. The best option is to install an air purifier. It will drive all room air through filters that trap and destroy harmful substances, including odorous molecules.

Cleaning outdoor scents indoors

Our goal is to prevent harmful gases from entering the house. Closing windows and doors, as you know, is not an option. One thing you’ve got left is controlling the quality of the air that is entering the room. In other words, filter it using fresh air ventilation.

There are three kinds of filters to look out for: 

• F7. It traps large particles of dust and pollen;

• HEPA H11, aka EPA E11. Copes with small harmful PM2.5 particles;

• adsorption-catalytic, AK filter. It absorbs gases of all kinds, odorous or not.

Here are the steps you want to complete if you choose to fight the scent sources in your home or office:

1. Odor Identification. It is quite easy to determine wh ere the scent is coming from in your own house.

2. Basic Cleaning. A simple floor wash up. A minimum of three a week will make a difference.

3. Basic Dusting. We all know what does dust smell like, so cleaning it off of most surfaces at home not only will make you feel better, but also will help you breathe much easier.

4. Natural Ventilation. Opening windows may seem so old school, but people still do it because it works!

5. Taking care of household “violators”. Arrange a wash-up for all your pets on a regular basis. Find time to talk to your household smokers and discuss smoking area options.

6. Do all your laundry. Feel the difference. You’ll be amazed at how much body odor and dust a single bed sheet gathers up.

7. Clean all of your upholstery. Yes, time-consuming, we know. But wait till you reap the results: a home that has never felt cleaner.

8. Use an air purifier and an odor absorber. These two will seal the deal of your room smelling super fresh.

Adding aromatic fresh scents to your room upon completing the above steps may not even be necessary. You’ll be very surprised how much fresher and easier to breathe in your room feels after each step. 

Odor-fighting Conclusions

1. Smell is a sensation, not a substance.

2. Smells are not dangerous, but their sources are very much so.

3. An air purifier will help indoor odors, while a ventilation device helps eliminate odors coming from outside.