Top Favorite Smells for Britons

Smell associations admittedly have to do with environmental and generational factors: what we like and consider pleasant today is what shaped us in our childhood. And that has to do with both the culture we grew up in as well as the time period in which our childhood was spent. Thus for instance people in the baby boom generation and beyond have played with Play-Doh plasteline and find it a comforting reference (hence Demeter's PlayDoh fragrance!) while people growing up in farms in the 1920s and 1930s cite fertiliser and big balls of hay as the quintessential memory triggers.



In new research focusing on Britons in the here and now several interesting facts emerged. Of course the research was commissioned by Vileda, a company of home-cleaning products, so take what you read with that in mind. Lindsey Taylor, from Vileda commented: 'Comfort smells associated with the home, such as Sunday roasts and fresh linen, make us happy and by keeping your home clean and fresh you will make sure that they are not drowned out by bad smells like kitchen bins and piles of washing up in the sink."

Aside from that, not coincidentally again the nostalgic smells of childhood (when it's a happy one, of course) bring the most contentment to people: freshly-washed linen, home baking, cut grass on the lawn and the domestic scent of Sunday roast. "Bacon was an unsurprising high-scorer, while more unexpected popular scents in the Vileda Cleaning Report included hairspray, leather, coal, petrol and chalk dust.[...] Participants named aftershave, beer and fresh paint as the smells that reminded them of their fathers, while perfume, Sunday roasts and freshly washed sheets triggered memories of mothers.[...] Among the scents which associated with the older generation of grandmothers were soap, lavender and musky perfumes.Wood smoke, pipe smoke and strong aftershaves brought back memories of grandfathers in times gone by and do not appear in the list of favourite modern-day smells.

The list of Britain's Top Favorite Smells runs thus: 
1.Cut grass
2.Aftershave
3.Freshly cleaned house
4.Baking
5.Sunday roast
6.Fresh flowers
7.Fresh linen
8.Hairspray
9.Bacon
10.Leather

Read more on the Daily Mail

pic via motifake.com