Perfume buying can be the trickiest of all shopping sprees. Either picking up one fragrance becomes difficult or they do not smell the same at home, as they did in the store. With so much confusion out there, here are 12 common mistakes that you might be doing without realising them.

Testing perfumes

• Once you are out shopping for perfumes, remember to skip wearing yours. Your perfume might clash with the smell at the store you might not be able to decide.
• Always use blotters to smell perfumes. Spray at least 15cms away from the blotter and allow it to wait for 30 seconds before taking the scent. This allows the alcohol from the perfume to evaporate and reveal the real smell.
• Avoid getting those blotters too close to your nose. You can either hold at a little distance from or wave in front of your nose. Touching the blotter to your nose might have some molecules deposit on your nose. This could be annoying for the whole day as well as clash with other perfumes you are going to try.
• If you are trying too many perfumes, remember to use coffee beans to sniff in between them. Coffee beans absorb and neutralize the odour molecules that might remain on your nose after smelling too many perfumes.
• Keep the blotter with you to smell the after notes. What you immediately smell are the top notes. Sniff the blotter after a while to get the heart and base notes of the perfume.
• Do not be too judgemental about a certain kind of smell. While you might not like a pure form of any smell just as rose or jasmine, you might like a hint of it as a note in another perfume.

Applying perfumes

• Applying perfumes on your skin is much better way of testing them than on blotters. Perfumes are made for skin. The way one perfume reacts with your skin might change the whole dimension of the smell.
• Try to apply perfume on the pulse points of your skin such as behind your ears or on the wrist. The skin being thinnest in these areas has blood flowing to the closest, making your skin warmer. This would help to diffuse the perfume.
• Always wait for some time before smelling it from your skin, preferably 3 minutes. Do not rub wrists rigorously. This might break the perfume molecules and change how the perfume smells.

Storing perfumes

• Always store perfumes in dark and cool place. Avoid keeping them in bathrooms. Steamy bathrooms can create temperature difference and spoil the scent. Keep the perfumes at a constant low temperature.
• Keeping the perfumes in a cabinet or on your bedroom shelf is an ideal place rather than keeping on the window. Light will break the perfume molecules.
• If it is a special or an expensive perfume that you need sustain for long, store it in fridge. This way the perfume remains in cool and dark place. This will slow its breakdown process and sustain its scent for long.
• If your perfume bottle is almost empty sans a few drops of your favourite perfume, pour it in a tester spray. This way the accumulating air in the empty bottle will not destroy the scent.

With these simple tricks, you can have you hands on your favourite perfume and keep it for long too.