What Are Essential Oils: A Beginner’s Guide with Tips for Safe Use
Brush your fingers along a sprig of lavender and its soft, floral scent wafts upwards. Peel an orange and a bright, citrusy aroma fills the air as the peel breaks. Gently rub a peppermint leaf between your fingers and it releases a cool, crisp fragrance.
Plants hold a rich variety of aromas, from bright and zesty to soft, floral, and earthy.
Essential oils bring these familiar scents into a small bottle, often with an intensity that takes just a drop to notice.
Essential oils are concentrated aromatic extracts taken from plants. They come from different parts of a plant, including flowers, leaves, fruit peels, bark, and roots. Each has its own scent, shaped by the plant it comes from and how it is extracted.
If you’re curious about what’s inside those little bottles, let’s start with the basics: where essential oils come from, how they’re made, and what to know before using them.
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What Are Essential Oils?
Quick Answer: Essential oils are concentrated aromatic extracts from plants. Their scent comes from aromatic compounds in the plant material.
Where Do Essential Oils Come From?
The plant part used to obtain an essential oil varies from one plant to another. Some oils come from flowers or leaves, while others come from fruit peel, bark, wood, roots, or resin.
For example, lavender essential oil is obtained from flowers, eucalyptus essential oil from leaves, cinnamon oil from bark, and frankincense oil from resin.
Vetiver oil essential comes from the roots of a tall grass, while ginger oil comes from its underground stem, called a rhizome.
One plant can also provide different oils from different parts. The bitter orange tree gives us neroli from its blossoms, petitgrain from its leaves and twigs, and bitter orange oil from its fruit peel. Each has a distinct aroma.
I’ve listed the popular essential oils below with a note on its aroma and which part of each plant it is obtained from.
How Are Essential Oils Made?
The method depends on the plant.
Steam distillation is the most common: steam passes through the plant material and carries the aromatic compounds with it, then cools back into liquid so the oil can be separated from the water.
Citrus essential oils such as lemon and sweet orange are usually cold-pressed from the peel instead
To see how CO2 extraction and enfleurage fit in, compare the essential oil extraction methods.
How Essential Oils Differ From Other Oils
Essential oils are often mistakenly used to refer to fragrance oils or carrier oils. The fact is, all three oils are distinctly different from each other.
- Essential oils are concentrated aromatic extracts from plants. They evaporate more readily than familiar oils like olive or jojoba oil.
- Fragrance oils are formulated in labs to create a particular scent. They may contain synthetic or natural ingredients, or a combination of both. Essential oils, by contrast are natural and extracted exclusively from plant parts.
- Carrier oils, such as sweet almond or jojoba, are plant-based, mild-scented plant oils. Unlike essential oils, they do not evaporate quickly. They are often used to dilute essential oils for skin. My guide to carrier oils explains how they work.
- Aromatherapy is not a type of oil. It refers to using aromas, often from essential oils, to create a particular scent or atmosphere.
On my site, I focus on using essential oils for aromatherapy to enjoy scent, not to treat health conditions.
Popular Essential Oils and Their Aroma
There are hundreds of essential oils, but a handful show up again and again. Lavender, lemon, and peppermint make an easy first set, and sweet orange makes a good fourth.
- Lavender: Soft, floral, and herbal. Distilled from the flowering tops, it has a gentle sweetness and a green edge, and it blends with almost anything.
- Lemon: Bright and citrusy. Cold-pressed from the peel, it smells like freshly zested fruit, crisp and sunny.
- Peppermint: Crisp, cool, and minty. Distilled from the leaves, it has a clean minty snap you notice the moment you open the bottle.
- Sweet orange: Warm, sweet, and juicy. Also cold-pressed from the peel, it is rounder and softer than lemon, closer to a fruit bowl than a lemon wedge.
- Eucalyptus: Clean, cool, and camphor-like. The leaves are distilled for an oil that adds a crisp, leafy note to cool-weather diffuser blends.
- Cedarwood: Warm, smooth, and grounded. Taken from the wood of cedar trees, it smells a bit like an old cedar chest or fresh pencil shavings and makes a steady base for brighter scents.
- Frankincense: Warm, resinous, and woody-sweet. This one comes from the resin of the Boswellia tree, which has been burned as incense for centuries, and the aroma is deep and balsamic with a faint hint of citrus.
- Rose: Rich, floral, and deeply layered. Made from hand-picked petals, real rose oil is precious and expensive, with sweet, honeyed, and slightly spicy facets.
Want more scents to explore? Browse my list of essential oils and their uses, or see how oils group together into aroma families.
What Makes a Good Quality Essential Oil?
Quality varies a lot, so it helps to know what a good bottle looks like before you buy. A label that names the plant by its botanical name and a company that publishes its testing are good places to start. My buying guide walks you through the 10 things to look for when buying essential oils.
Transparency matters to me when I choose oils, which is why Plant Therapy is my top choice. Plant Therapy states that its essential oils are third-party tested and publishes test reports you can view online. You can read more in my Plant Therapy review.
This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
You don’t need to spend a fortune while you’re starting out. Lavender, lemon, peppermint, and sweet orange are typically affordable and easy to find in good quality, so save the splurge for later, when you know what you love.
Why Some Oils Cost More Than Others
It takes a large amount of plant material to make even a small bottle of essential oil, and some plants give up their oil far more sparingly than others.
Rose otto, one of the most prized oils in the world, needs a very large quantity of hand-picked petals, while peppermint and lemon yield generously, which is a big part of why they cost less.
Where a plant grows matters too. Climate, altitude, and soil all shape the aroma, a little like wine.
How Are Essential Oils Used?
There are many ways to enjoy essential oils, and each one has its own benefits:
In a Diffuser: Adding essential oils into a diffuser is the easiest way to scent a room. Explore the different types of diffusers for esential oils and how to use a diffuser.
Without a Diffuser: There are also plenty of interesting ways to use essential oils without a diffuser. You’ll find ideas for creating essential oil room sprays, aromatherapy candles, scented decor accessories, and more.
In the Bath or Shower: A bath or shower is a lovely way to enjoy a scent you love. Learn how to use essential oils in the bath the right way. For busy days, explore 9 ways to use essential oils in the shower.
On the go: Small and compact, personal inhalers, pre-diluted roll-ons, and portable diffusers are all great ways to enjoy aromatherapy anywhere.
A Simple Starter Set
To start, choose a few essential oils you enjoy, a diffuser for scenting a room, and a pre-diluted roll-on for personal use.
Plant Therapy’s Top 3 Organic Singles Set is a great starter set. It includes three of the most widely used essential oils – lemon, lavender, and peppermint – each with different aromas.
You can explore making your own blends later, using a carrier oil to dilute essential oils for skin.
After you master the basics and want to expand your collection or start making scented bath, body, and home products, you may need a few other aromatherapy accessories.
Essential Oil Safety Basics to Know Before You Begin
Diffusers: Follow the oil label and your diffuser’s instructions for how much to use.
Skin: Essential oils are highly concentrated, so they need to be diluted in a carrier oil before they touch your skin. Patch test a small area first, and stop using a blend if your skin reacts.
Pets and children: If you share your home with pets or children, check with your veterinarian or pediatrician before diffusing or using essential oils around them.
Health: If you are pregnant, have a health concern, or are unsure whether essential oils are right for you, check with your healthcare provider first.
Ingesting: Do not ingest essential oils.
Storage: keep your oils in their original dark glass bottles, tightly closed, away from direct sunlight and heat. Learn how to store essential oils correctly.
Read my detailed essential oil safety guide before you start.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are essential oils safe?
Essential oils are safe when used correctly. They are highly concentrated, so they need to be diluted in a carrier oil before they touch your skin. The Safety Basics above cover skin, diffusers, pets, children, and health, and my essential oil safety guide has the full details.
Do essential oils expire?
They don’t spoil the way food does, but their scent changes over time, and citrus oils tend to change sooner. See whether essential oils expire for how to tell.
Where should I start if I’m completely new?
Start small, with a couple of oils you enjoy and one simple way to use them. Aromatherapy for Beginners: Where to Start has an easy reading order and a first-week plan.
