Easy Homemade Reed Diffusers with Essential Oils

Make your own essential oil reed diffusers for a natural fresh scent in your home! They’re cheaper and safer than the commercial diffusers, and you can customize your own fragrance blends with essential oils.

Author’s Note: This post is now over 10 years old! It has gone through a few iterations and adjustments in that time, and the recipe below is what I think is the best one yet for these homemade reed diffusers. I’ve also left some of the previous recipe options for reference.

Many years ago I was completely obsessed with commercial air fresheners. Spray fresheners, plug-in fresheners, scented candles…you name it. Every room in our home had some sort of air-freshening device that left a strong, fruity, cheery scent in the air. 

Now that I know better, commercial air fresheners have become a thing of the past. And now that we don’t live with the constant strong scents in our home, we’ve become super sensitive to those artificial fragrances when we encounter them at friends/family’s homes!

But I still enjoy having a nice scent around the house, so I wanted to figure out how to get the best of both worlds.

Fireless Aromatherapy Home Bedroom Lavender Dry Flower Set Toilet Toilet Smokeless Essential Oil

One of my favourite air fresheners are those nifty reed diffusers – you know those little jars of scented oils with all the sticks popping out of them? They’re wonderful and always look so pretty in a room, but the artificial fragrances in those scented oils are not so wonderful, and definitely not something I want my family to be inhaling day in and day out.

So today I’m going to show you how easy it is to make your own homemade reed diffusers with essential oils right at home! 

Homemade Essential Oil Reed Diffusers

There are five four items you’ll be working with here and all of them can be sourced pretty inexpensively.

The Jars

I picked up these jars from the thrift store for $1 each. I didn’t know what I’d use them for but I knew I just had to have them, and I’m so glad I got them because they’re perfect for this project!

When choosing your jars, look for small, short jars with a narrow opening at the top. The smaller the opening, the slower your oils will evaporate. My jars had somewhat large openings but luckily, they came with cork tops, so I just drilled about a 1″ hole into the cork and voila! Smaller opening!

Examples of jars you can repurpose for this project include old perfume bottles, small oil bottles, small vases, spice jars and shakers, etc.

The Reeds (Sticks)

The commercial diffusers usually use rattan reeds because they contain small channels that help the oil travel up the stick to scent the room.

Don’t use bamboo skewers as they’re not porous enough, and the oils won’t be able to travel up the sticks as easily.

Make sure your reeds/sticks are about twice as tall as your jars so they can distribute the scent well. 

Solvent

I’ve discovered a secret ingredient from the fragrance world, thanks to my dear friend who is an artisan soap maker, and it has completely changed the game with these homemade reed diffusers!

Augeo Clean Multi is a solvent made from glycerin and is very popular with fragrance artists and soap makers. It has a low evaporation rate, low odour, and is very soluble, making it a perfect base solvent for project.

After testing out this new ingredient for a few months, it’s now our preferred base for these homemade reed diffusers and has replaced the carrier oil and alcohol (mentioned below) previously used in this recipe.

The instructions on the bottle say to use 3 parts Augeo (75%) to 1 part fragrance (25%), but we found that we could dilute the fragrance oils even more to make them last longer and still have a nice scent. But you can adjust to your preferences. (Exact measurements are included in the recipe box below).

Essential Oils (Fragrance)

This is where it gets fun! You can either play it nice and simple with one or two essential oils, or you can get creative and experiment with different oil blends to create all kinds of lovely aromatic concoctions. Here’s a great list of essential oil blends that you can try.

I blended 2 oils for each of my diffusers – cinnamon and lavender in one, and spearmint and rosemary for the other.

You can find essential oils at your local health food store or order them online. My favourite brands are Plant Therapy (pictured above) and NOW. These brands also carry pre-made blends to save yourself the effort of finding the right fragrance combination.

Edit: I’m now exclusively using pre-made blends from Plant Therapy, and currently obsessed with Citrus Burst and Bouquet.

Carrier Oil (Base)

From what I’ve read online, it seems the most common carrier oils to use are safflower oil and sweet almond oil, as they are lighter oils that will travel up the reeds more easily. You DON’T want to use regular vegetable oil as it will be way too thick and won’t work at all.

You’ll use about 1/4 cup of oil for each diffuser, depending on your jar’s size, so try to source inexpensive oil, even if you have to order it online.

Alcohol (Binder)

You’ll also add a small amount of alcohol (1-2 tablespoons) to the oil mixture to help thin the oils and bind them all together so they can travel up the reeds more effectively. You want as high a concentration of alcohol as you can get – at least 90%.

You can use either perfumer’s alcohol, rubbing alcohol (also called surgical spirits). I’ve also read that you might be able to use witch hazel for this, though I haven’t tried it.

I just used 95% rubbing alcohol I picked up from the drug store.

 

 

Some final notes:

• One of these diffusers will work well in a small, enclosed room, like a bathroom. Anything larger, and you won’t really notice the scent. You could try placing several of them in a larger room for more scent.
• You’ll need to flip the reeds every week or so to refresh the scent. Once the reeds are completely saturated, you’ll need to replace them with new reeds.