I used to reserve cologne for times when I left the house. Having paid $40 for a bottle, I was reluctant to use it often—I wanted it to last as long as possible and wring as much practical value out of it as I could. But in retrospect, this was misguided thinking.
First of all, a typical bottle of cologne is either 1.7oz or 3.4oz, with the occasional deviants at 1.0oz, 2.5oz, 4.2oz, and even rarer ones in between. One ounce of cologne can provide anywhere from 250 to 400 sprays depending on the type of sprayhead on the bottle. At that rate, a bottle could last several years before running out. No need to be stingy! And if you have multiple bottles, each will last even longer.
So for the past few months, I’ve started wearing cologne at home—and I love it. Here are several reasons why you should start wearing cologne around the house if you don’t already.
1. It Smells Good!
No one is obligated to defend why they wear cologne, whether at home or anywhere else, as long as they aren’t causing distress to others with it. The fact is, cologne smells good and there’s joy to be had in experiencing pleasant smells. The act of enjoyment is itself the reward for wearing cologne—so why not enjoy cologne in the comfort of our homes?
I wear cologne for myself first. If other people like what I’m wearing, that’s cool and I’ll take whatever compliments come my way. But if I didn’t enjoy the wide range of scents available across colognes, I wouldn’t wear it. And given how infrequently I go out, I might as well enjoy them at home when I can.
2. Boost Your Self-Confidence
Three things you should know about me: I’m an introvert, I lack self-confidence, and I work from home. These things tend to feed into each other and bring me down, both mentally and emotionally, so I’m always on the lookout for psychological tricks that’ll boost me up and help me be the best version of myself at all times.
Cologne is one of those psychological tricks, and it really works. Maybe it’s the joy that comes from a great scent (circle back to Reason #1) that lifts up my mood, but I feel like the perceived maturity level of a fragrance can also inspire deeper self-confidence. I’ve noticed that I tend to be more productive and more engaged when I wear cologne at home. Could it be the placebo effect? Absolutely. But even if it is, the results are real. So why not?
3. Explore Scents More Thoroughly
I’m always wary of wearing new colognes in public, especially if I’m heading out to an intimate occasion like a dinner party or couch hangout. What if it smells terrible? Or the longevity sucks? Or causes a serious skin reaction? It’s always good to test new colognes in private, and there’s no place more private than home.
But more so than that, it’s important to explore fragrances rather than just test them. You never get the full experience of a particular cologne or perfume on first use. More often than not, your opinion of a fragrance changes over time with subsequent uses—and to explore it fully, you need to smell it over and over again. Home is a great place for that.
And not just to smell repeatedly, but to smell more intentionally. When you’re out with friends or doing business, it’s hard to take in the fragrance and really think about it as it continues to evolve during wear. At home, you’re away from distractions and it’s a lot easier to chart the full journey from top notes to base notes.
4. Develop Your Nose
Allow me to use a beer analogy: The first time you drink beer, it tastes like bitter trash no matter how good the beer might be considered among beer connoisseurs. Some flavors in beer, especially hops, take time to acquire. You need to develop your beer palate, and you do this by drinking lots of different kinds of beers over a prolonged period of time.
Similarly, colognes and perfumes are as complex for the nose as beer is for the tongue. The more scents you smell, the more you’ll learn to pick out and appreciate individual notes and accords, and how they all work together to produce a full fragrance. On the flipside, many colognes are hard to appreciate until you have a developed nose. And there’s no faster way to develop your nose than by wearing cologne at home!
One Reason Not to Wear Cologne at Home…
There’s one problem with wearing cologne all the time: olfactory fatigue. When your nose is constantly exposed to a certain scent, your brain starts to ignore that scent and you lose the ability to detect it. This can change the way certain fragrances smell, or worse, cause your sense of smell to become dull and weak.
Fragheads often wonder why their colognes and perfumes don’t last very long. A lot of the time, the problem is rooted in olfactory fatigue—they’ve lost sensitivity in their noses and can’t detect fragrances anymore except in high concentrations, even though the people around them can still notice the cologne they’re wearing.
The good news is that olfactory fatigue is temporary. If you stop suffocating your nose in fragrances, you’ll eventually regain sensitivity; it could take anywhere from a few days to a few months. When you feel like you’re losing your sense of smell, it might be a good to stop wearing colognes at home until things go back to normal.
