While there's no denying that Lampe Berger's line of fragrance oil lamps are stylish and functional, refilling your pretty, air-purifying accent piece can be killer on the wallet. The iconic French brand produces their own line of perfume refills featuring a number of luxury scents. But it's a quick and easy process to produce your own, customized scent at home. Whether you prefer it to smell like coffee, lavender, roses or cinnamon buns, you can freshen up your home your way – for a fraction of the price!
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Getting Started
Creating your own Lampe Berger oil at home takes only a handful of ingredients – the most important of which will be a bottle of 90 percent isopropyl alcohol, which can be found at most pharmacies. Be sure to examine the percentage. Regular rubbing alcohol, while made of the same base chemical, isn't well-suited for this task. You'll need about 16 fluid ounces to refill your lamp once. If you want to experiment with scents or make multiple oil refills at once, get a larger bottle of alcohol. You may also want to purchase a set of amber bottles to store your lamp oil if you intend to store it for a long period of time. Naturally, you'll also need one or more scented oils to give your lamp refill the scent you desire. You may also want to order a replacement wick for your lamp.
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Choosing Oils
You can use any essential or fragrance oil you would like when creating your own custom lamp oil. Easily found in stores or online, there's a wide variety of scents to choose from. But if you intend to use your lamp for any sort of aromatherapy, keep in mind that you'll need one or more essential oils – extracted from the different parts of plants – rather than a fragrance oil, which are generally synthetic.
Scent Crafting
Once you've chosen your oil, and you've obtained your bottle of isopropyl alcohol, actually crafting the lamp oil is easy. All you'll need to do is mix the alcohol with a few drops of your scented oil. If you purchased a larger bottle of alcohol, measure out roughly 16 fluid ounces of it and pour it into a container. Then, add no more than 10 drops of your essential or fragrance oils to the alcohol. If you'd like to create a scent blend, such as lavender mint or coffee vanilla, add a few drops of each oil – so long as the combined total is no more than 10 drops, otherwise the proportions will be wrong. Then, you need only seal your container and shake to mix. With that, your oil is ready for your lamp!
Making More
When you're ready to make more lamp oil, you need only repeat this process, buying more scented oils or isopropyl alcohol as needed. If you purchased a large amount of alcohol and amber bottles, you can prepare a large amount of lamp oil in advance by measuring out 16 ounces of alcohol into each bottle and adding the scented oil as desired. At this point, the bottles are ready for storage or for giving away as homemade gifts. If you found a particularly scent combination you enjoy, you can also turn a notebook into a recipe book. Keep track of how many drops of each scented oil you used, and you'll be able to quickly reference and recreate your favorite scents.