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by Reginald Butler, Jr.
Quick answer: There is real research on scent and buying behavior, and it says one thing clearly: a single simple scent outperforms a complex blend. In a 2013 field experiment published in the Journal of Retailing, shoppers exposed to a simple orange scent spent about 20% more than those exposed to an orange-basil-green-tea blend, which produced no measurable effect at all. That study was run in a retail store, not a house for sale, and no one has ever replicated it in a for-sale home. So simmer one thing, keep it subtle, and understand that roughly two-thirds of asthmatic visitors report problems with fragranced products — which is a bigger risk than the upside.
What the study actually found
The research people are usually reaching for is Herrmann, Zidansek, Sprott and Spangenberg, “The Power of Simplicity: Processing Fluency and the Effects of Olfactory Cues on Retail Sales,” in the Journal of Retailing in 2013. The researchers ran an 18-weekday field experiment in a home décor store in St. Gallen, Switzerland, with more than 400 shoppers, alternating a simple orange scent against a complex orange-basil-green-tea blend. The simple scent increased spending by roughly 20%. The complex blend did nothing. The proposed mechanism is processing fluency: a scent the brain identifies without effort frees up cognitive resources, and people in that state evaluate their surroundings more favorably.
An earlier study, Spangenberg, Crowley and Henderson in the Journal of Marketing in 1996, found ambient scent improved how shoppers evaluated a store, though effects on actual sales were not statistically significant.
So is there a “science-backed scent formula” for homes?
No, and I want to be direct about that because I see the claim everywhere. You have probably read that lemon, green tea, cedar, pine, vanilla, and basil are the six scents proven to sell homes, often attributed to a study. There is no such study. That list traces back to Professor Spangenberg being quoted in the Wall Street Journal and later on Houzz, extrapolating from his retail research to a housing context. It was an expert’s informed opinion, repeated until it hardened into a statistic.
What survives scrutiny is narrower and more useful: keep it simple, single-note, and faint. The related claim that scent makes buyers linger longer is also weaker than advertised — the 1996 research found scent changed how long shoppers thought they had been in the store, not how long they actually stayed.
The argument for using almost no scent at all
This is the part most articles skip. Anne Steinemann’s 2018 study in Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,137 Americans. Among people with asthma, 64.3% reported adverse health effects from fragranced products — 43.3% respiratory problems, 28.2% migraines, and 27.9% actual asthma attacks. Forty-one percent of respondents reported problems specifically from air fresheners. Asthmatics were 5.76 times more likely than others to report an adverse effect.
Run the math on an open house with thirty visitors. You are not choosing between a nice smell and a neutral one. You are choosing between a marginal, unreplicated preference effect and a real chance that someone walks out with a headache.
That is why I tell sellers the goal is not to add a smell. It is to remove the bad ones. Deep clean, take out the trash, wash the linens, air the place out, and if you want warmth in the kitchen, use one simple simmering pot on low with the windows cracked — not a plug-in in every room.
Safety, before you put anything on the stove
The National Fire Protection Association identifies cooking as the leading cause of home structure fires, with unattended equipment the leading contributing factor, involved in roughly 37% to 47% of them. A pot simmering dry while you answer questions in the basement is exactly that scenario. Set a timer or use a slow cooker.
If the sellers have pets, be careful. Cinnamon, citrus oils, and pine oils are toxic to cats and dogs, and cats are especially vulnerable because they lack the liver enzyme that metabolizes these compounds and ingest airborne droplets off their fur while grooming. Simmering whole spices in water is far lower-risk than diffusing essential oils, but ventilate, confine the pets, or skip it entirely in a house with cats.
A simple simmer pot
Use a small saucepan. One orange, sliced. Two cinnamon sticks. Four cups of water. That is the whole recipe, and the simplicity is the point — it is the version the research actually supports. Bring to a bare simmer, drop to the lowest setting, add water every thirty to forty minutes, set a timer, and turn it off when the open house ends.
The other thing that warms up a house: a Sunday pot roast
If you are hosting an afternoon open house and want the house to feel lived in, a roast in a slow cooker does more than any candle. It is contained, it does not need watching, and it smells like somebody’s home rather than somebody’s store.
Season a three-pound chuck roast generously with salt and pepper and sear it hard on all sides in a hot pan with a tablespoon of oil, about four minutes a side. Move it to a slow cooker. In the same pan, soften a chopped onion for three minutes, then add three cloves of minced garlic and a tablespoon of tomato paste and cook one more minute. Pour in a cup of beef broth, scrape up everything stuck to the bottom, and pour that over the roast. Add two cups more broth, a pound of quartered baby potatoes, four carrots cut into two-inch pieces, two sprigs of thyme, one of rosemary, and a bay leaf. Cover and cook on low for eight hours, until it shreds with a fork. Pull the herb stems and bay leaf, taste for salt, and serve.
Start it at six in the morning for a one o’clock open house.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does scent really help sell a house? There is no study on for-sale homes. The retail research supports the idea that a simple ambient scent can improve how a space is evaluated, and that a complex one does nothing. Treat it as a small edge, not a strategy.
What is the single most important scent rule? Remove odors before adding any. Pets, smoke, garbage, and damp are the ones that kill deals. No simmer pot covers them.
Are plug-in air fresheners a good substitute? I would avoid them. Forty-one percent of respondents in the 2018 Steinemann study reported adverse effects specifically from air fresheners, and multiple units in one house is exactly the complex-scent scenario the 2013 research found ineffective.
What if the buyer is scent-sensitive? Then you have lost more than you gained. That is the core reason to keep it minimal, ventilate, and lean on cleanliness instead of fragrance.
Getting ready to list and want a walkthrough of what buyers will actually notice in the first ten seconds?
No pressure — just an honest conversation.
