What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of an essential oil mist? Probably a room-scenting spray. Did you know that those same essential oils can also be incorporated into a refreshing face and body mist for you? Not only will it refresh and give you a lovely scent, but essential oils have a host of benefits for the skin. Furthermore it can have positive effects on the mood too, diminishing a bad mood or fatigue, allaying anxiety or depression, and helping with focus and concentration.
Just think of the times when it would be ideal to have a refreshing spritz to hand:
- To combat humid or hot weather
- After exercise/sport
- While gardening, at the beach/park, or spending any prolonged time outside.
- During rush hour on public transport
- After entering a hot stuffy car which has been locked up for a while.
- When skin is dull, dehydrated, itchy, or irritated
- When your skin is suffering the drying effects of A/C
- During menopause and hormonal changes
- When you’re getting hot and bothered queuing at the supermarket
- If you wake up in the night feeling hot
- As a toner during your skincare routine
- At work when you need a mental refresh
- Whenever you need a mood boost
Need some help choosing the essential oils? Here’s a list of the most popular essential oils so that you can prepare a mist that’s perfect for you, based not only on aroma but more importantly on its benefits to your emotional and skin needs.
Note that since this mist is essentially for summer-use, citrus oils have not been included since they can make the skin photosensitive.
ESSENTIAL OILS
FLORALS
Gardenia Essential Oil
Aroma: Floral, rich, sweet and warm, intoxicating.
Aromatherapy: Reduces stress and anxiety and induces relaxation. Improves your mood and decreases feelings of helplessness.
Skin benefits: Offers superb hydration, improves skin elasticity, and speeds up cell production. Repairs dry damaged or irritated skin and reduces inflammation.
Geranium Essential Oil
Aroma: Rosy floral.
Aromatherapy: Uplifts the heart and soul, inspires and energises, offers a sense of positivity, restoring confidence and helping with mental focus. Eases depression, anxiety, anger, confusion, mood swings, irritability, sadness and helps to overcome overwhelming emotions. Helps to balance the hormones and eliminates symptoms of the menopause and PMS.
Skin benefits: Balances the pH level, and oil and moisture levels of the skin and regulates sebum production. Calms eczema, dermatitis, psoriasis, excessive oil and acne. Reduces skin ageing, increases collagen production, enhances elasticity, revives the skin tone, and maintains softness and smoothness. Helps to distribute melanin evenly, and balances out dark spots and pigmentation.
Iris Essential Oil
Aroma: Sweet, green, earthy, and floral – violet-like.
Aromatherapy: Uplifts the mood, relieves stress, anxiety, anger, anguish, annoyance and mental fatigue, and instals a sense of calm and wellness.
Skin benefits: Treats blemishes, soothes acne, eczema, sunburn and general inflammation and promotes healing. Regulates the skin’s hydration levels and adds a protective film. Softens and plumps the skin. Eliminates tired and dull looking skin to brighten the complexion.
Jasmine Essential Oil
Aroma: Sensuous, warm, exotic, intense and sweet.
Aromatherapy: Soothes nervous tension and anxiety, remedies apathy, indifference and listlessness, and elevates feelings of happiness and contentment. Alleviates hot flashes and irritability in menopause and relieves premenstrual emotional symptoms.
Skin benefits: Promotes healthy-looking, glowing skin.
Lavender Essential Oil
Aroma: Sweet, camphor, woody and herbal.
Aromatherapy Benefits: Induces calmness. Calms anxiety, nervousness and restlessness. Alleviates hot flashes in menopause and relieves premenstrual emotional symptoms.
Skin benefits: Treats blemishes, eases acne, eczema and general inflammation and promotes healing.
Lily of the Valley Essential Oil
Aroma: Fresh, sweet, floral.
Aromatherapy: Alleviates depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and feelings of self-doubt. Induces balance, calm, and optimism, and provides a sense of security, and creates a feeling of happiness.
Skin benefits: Perfectly nourishes and hydrates the skin and promotes skin regeneration to remedy eczema and dry or cracked skin. Improves skin elasticity. Evens the skin tone and diminishes pigmentation spots and existing scar tissue.
Lotus Essential Oil
Aroma: Light and fresh floral, with a sweet and powdery quality.
Aromatherapy: Cools the nervous system and brings calm, peace of mind and clarity. Rids the body of anger and alleviates bad and negative energies. Improves concentration.
Skin benefits: Rejuvenates dry, tired or lacklustre skin. Balances sebum production and purifies the pores, reducing acne and blemishes, and minimising the appearance of pore size. Eliminates dry, rough or flaky skin, and soothes redness and inflammation.
Mimosa Essential Oil
Aroma: Intensely sweet and floral.
Aromatherapy: Reduces depression, stress, anxiety, irritability, mood swings and excessive anger, and eliminates fatigue. Promotes calm and relaxation whilst uplifting and stabilising a harmonious mood. Encourages mental peace in the event of emotional problems.
Repels mosquitoes.
Skin benefits: Regenerates, rejuvenates and restores the skin. Stimulates cell regeneration and boosts collagen to rejuvenate ageing and damaged skin. Restores dry skin, soothes and calms inflammation for damaged or sensitive skin, including eczema, dermatitis and rashes.
Regulates the sebaceous glands to reduce oily skin. Eliminates dirt and toxins for a clear complexion and deters acne and breakouts.
Patchouli Essential Oil
Aroma: Strong, sweet.
Aromatherapy: Balances the emotions and clears the mind. Eases stress, anxiety and fatigue by regulating serotonin, and induces feelings of calm and comfort. Increases focus and concentration.
Skin benefits: Eases skin conditions such as acne, eczema, rashes, plus general inflammation, minor skin imperfections, and cracked or chapped skin.
Rose Essential Oil
Aroma: Deep, sweetly floral and slightly spicy.
Aromatherapy Benefits: Stimulates the brain to release endorphins, also known as “feel-good” hormones, and decreases the level of the stress hormone cortisol in the blood. Boosts the mood. Calms and soothes, boosts self-esteem, balances the emotions. Relieves stress, nerves and mental fatigue. Helps to balance the hormones, and alleviates symptoms of PMS and menopause.
Skin benefits: Strengthens and stimulates skin cells, promotes collagen production and skin regeneration in the case of damaged or ageing skin. Helps with conditions such as eczema, rosacea, psoriasis, acne, rashes and infections and rehydrates dry skin. Reduces signs of ageing. Balances sebum protection. Helps to remove dark circles under the eyes.
Violet Essential Oil
Aroma: Delicate typical floral.
Aromatherapy: Enhances mental health. Promotes calmness, tranquillity and relaxation, and eliminates stress, nerves and mental fatigue.
Skin benefits: A moisturiser and emollient. Soothes conditions such as eczema, dermatitis, rosacea and psoriasis, and general dryness, itchiness, redness and inflammation. Combats acne and reduces enlarged pores.
Ylang Ylang Essential Oil
Aroma: Sweet, rich, spicy.
Aromatherapy: Relieves anxiety, depression, tension, stress, increased nervousness and shock. Promotes a positive mood and increases feelings of cheerfulness and optimism. Eases symptoms of PMS, perimenopause and postmenopause. Repels flying insects.
Skin benefits: Balances oil production to prevent excessive dryness or oiliness. Soothes and remedies inflammatory and bacterial skin conditions including acne, dermatitis and eczema. Stimulates cell regeneration, smooths and tones the skin, improves the skin’s firmness and elasticity.
AROMATICS/HERBS/SPICES
Chamomile Essential Oil
Aroma: Warm, herbaceous.
Aromatherapy: Uplifts the mood to treat and soothe anxiety disorders and depression.
Skin benefits: Calms skin inflammation, irritation and redness. Relieves general inflammation and skin disorders such as acne, eczema, dermatitis and rosacea. Accelerates cell and tissue regeneration, and improves the skin’s barrier.
Cinnamon Essential Oil
Aroma: Spicy, sweet.
Aromatherapy: Uplifts the mood, evokes a sense of calmness and wellbeing, and diminishes feelings of depression, sadness, irritability, exhaustion and faintness. Improves cognitive function, increasing concentration, attention span and information retention and reducing risk of memory loss.
Skin benefits: Balances the skin and reduces inflammation and itching, alleviating conditions such as dryness, rashes, acne, eczema, psoriasis and bites and stings. Improves the appearance of age spots, fine lines and wrinkles, and scars. Acts as an insect repellent, including for mosquitoes and flies.
Eucalyptus Essential Oil
Aroma: Minty, camphorous – sharp and highly pungent.
Aromatherapy: Balances the nervous system. Calms the mind and reduces anxiety, stress, mental fatigue and mood disorders. Improves focus and concentration. Decreases symptoms of hay fever. Repels mosquitoes and other biting insects.
Skin benefits: Soothes skin irritation and inflammation. Relieves contact dermatitis, eczema, insect bites, hives, poison ivy, shaving rash, and prickly heat, and eases the symptoms of psoriasis. Has a cooling effect for the relief of sunburn. Intensely hydrates and increases the skin’s moisture-retaining capabilities. Reinforces the skin’s barrier protection. Deters mosquitoes, flies and ticks.
Lemongrass Essential Oil
Aroma: Earthy lemony.
Aromatherapy: Uplifts a negative mood to prevent depression, and relieve stress, anxiety, irritability, nervousness and lethargy. Strengthens the mind and boosts confidence and self-esteem. Relieves nausea, headaches and migraine. Repels mosquitoes, flies, and other bugs.
Skin benefits: Cleanses the pores, removes impurities, tightens and tones the skin, strengthens the skin tissue, reduces acne and redness, and helps to achieve a glowing, even complexion.
Peppermint Essential Oil
Aroma: Cool and refreshing.
Aromatherapy: Eliminates stress, anxiety, fatigue, tiredness, irritability and bad mood. It relaxes the nervous system, whilst simultaneously invigorating, energising and lifting the mood. Stimulates the brain, dispels mental fatigue, enhances clear thinking, and increases cognitive functioning, improving focus, concentration and motivation and enhancing memory retention and boosting mental accuracy. Alleviates headaches and migraines and suppresses feeling of nausea. Repels cockroaches, bed bugs, ants, mosquitoes and spiders.
Skin benefits: Has an instant cooling effect. Soothes and calms inflammatory skin conditions including allergic reactions, eczema, bites, and sunburn, reduces swelling and and relieves itching. Cleanses the skin, unclogs pores and minimises their appearance, and relieves acne. Tightens and firms the skin.
Tea Tree Essential Oil
Aroma: Fresh camphoraceous.
Aromatherapy: Allays anxiety, reduces stress and relieves insomnia
Skin benefits: Helps to combat and heal skin conditions, and soothes skin irritation and inflammation. Relieves contact acne, dermatitis, eczema, psoriasis, insect bites, shaving rash, and prickly heat. Deeply cleanses, tones, and purifies the pores, and helps to regulate sebum to balance an oily or dry skin. Restores the complexion, and reduces the occurrence of dark spots.
Vanilla Essential Oil
Aroma: Sweet, warm and comforting.
Aromatherapy: Induces tranquillity whilst uplifting the mood. Diminishes hyperactivity and restlessness. Relieves stress and anxiety, and reduces startle reflexes. Helps to regulate menstruation and relieves symptoms of PMS. Alleviates the feeling of nausea. Repels mosquitoes.
Skin benefits: Cleanses the skin, reduces redness and itching. Soothes inflamed or damaged skin such as minor blemishes, acne, eczema, burns, sunburn, and general inflammation. Brightens dull and tired skin.
RESINS
Amber Essential Oil
Aroma: Resinous, warm and smoky.
Aromatherapy: Promotes harmony and balance. Calms the mind, diminishes anxiety and lowers stress levels. Improves cognition and concentration.
Skin benefits: Clears clogged pores, alleviates acne breakouts and reduces scarring. Accelerates skin regeneration and boosts elasticity. Rejuvenates dry and dull looking skin.
Frankincense Essential Oil
Aroma: Spicy woody.
Aromatherapy: Restores emotional balance, relaxes the mind, soothes tension and diminishes stress and despair.
Skin benefits: Balances sebum, stimulates cell renewal, improves elasticity, and plumps the skin. Reduces acne, eczema and general inflammation, and dispels dry, flaky skin. Diminishes hyperpigmentation.
Myrrh Essential Oil
Aroma: Earthy, woody, and faintly sweet.
Aromatherapy: Stabilises emotions to lift a negative mood, alleviate tenseness, and promote relaxation and general wellbeing.
Skin benefits: Soothes the skin, reduces redness, itching and inflammation, and eases acne, eczema, rashes and general inflammation. Stimulates the sebaceous glands to produce oil to address dryness. Cleans, moisturises and tightens the skin and alleviates sagging.
Oud Essential Oil
Aroma: Warm, woody, smoky.
Aromatherapy: Heals the mind, promotes inner peace and harmony, strengthens the thought process, enhances concentration, generates positive energy and increases awareness, and allays conditions such as anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive behaviour.
Skin benefits: Intensely hydrates and locks in moisture, diminishing dry flaky skin, and reimposing the protective skin barrier. Restores brightness to dull, lifeless skin. Stimulates the regeneration of new skin cells and maintains elasticity. Balances sebum protection. Alleviates and protects against acne, and bacterial and fungal skin infections. Reduces skin conditions causing inflammation, redness, irritation, itchiness, puffiness or swelling. Promotes a smooth, even complexion.
HOW TO MAKE
Take a spray bottle and mix together 6-7 drops of essential oil to every 30ml of distilled water. Beat the heat by storing in the refrigerator for extra cooling effects and spritz the face and body as needed for instant refreshment as you soothe, nourish and brighten the skin. Shake before use.
For extra skin boosting properties you can replace the water with green tea infused water (steep the teabag for at least hour and allow to cool completely before adding the essential oils). Or replace up to ⅔ of the water with witch hazel for acne-prone skin.
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This summer beat the heat, energy slumps and mood changes with your very own taylor-made refreshing therapeutic mist. No nasty chemicals, just 100% natural care, to let you feel good and look good.
