Decorate with Candles

By Kristin Lindsey

Candles not only fragrance your home, they are also useful tools to enhance your home’s décor. Choosing candle shapes and colors associated with each season can really add to the comfort of a room, and the accompanying scents don’t hurt either. For fall, think shades of orange, rust, deep red and cream.

“Fragrance will redecorate your home,” says Harry Slatkin, who as president of Home Design for Limited Brands oversees product lines for Bath & Body Works home collections. Slatkin says he thinks of home fragrance as a movie that should take you through different scenes from beginning to end.

With home fragrance, each room can take on its own scent to help reflect your desired mood. For the living room or den, Slatkin suggest more complex scents like cinnamon and clove, apple or pumpkin. In the kitchen, he recommends spiced cider or nutmeg scents. The bedroom, a place where you want to relax and let your troubles disappear, is the ideal spot for fragrances such as lilac blossom or lavender chamomile.

When choosing fragrances, don’t be afraid to combine scents, “Create your own atmosphere,” Slatkin says. “You know when it’s wrong when your nose doesn’t like it. You can always blow it out.”

Slatkin also encourages people to layer scents within the home, much like you would with personal fragrance. “Start with a plug-in and diffuser, the background music to home fragrance,” he explains. “Add a candle, start to power up the scent.” You can also spritz a room spray to really enhance the scent for a party or gathering.