Ingredient Transparency

At Humble Abode, we create clean home fragrances because we believe that everyone should be able to enhance their home with pleasant scents without sacrificing their health and safety. This page is intended to provide detailed information about our products and their ingredients, so you can study up and purchase our Home Fragrances with full confidence that these will truly enhance your space, without any drawbacks.

 

First thing's first: where do we get our ingredients from?

We purchase all of our ingredients--fragrance oils, bases, fragrance carriers, and solubilizers--from Makesy, a high-end supplier for makers and businesses. We love Makesy--everything from their safety standards to fragrance oils, they are super professional and super personable. All of their products are part of their Made Better program, which both ensures certain standards (e.g. none of their products are ever tested on animals) and also promises to continue to work toward raising the bar on safety and transparency for both themselves and for the industry as a whole. In general, all of Makesy's products are guaranteed to be:

• cruelty-free
• ethically-sourced
• paraben-free
• mutagen-free

With that, let's dive into the specifics...

 

So, what's in our proprietary products?

We currently make 3 proprietary products: room sprays, oil diffusers, and molded candles.

Our room sprays are made of the following ingredients: Polysorbate 80, Luxury Perfumer's Alcohol, Fragrance, Distilled Water, and Geogard 221.

Our oil diffusers are made with All Natural Reed Diffuser Base and Fragrance. Please note, however, that we are in the process of switching to a different base called Coco Purefuse Reed Diffuser Base, which has a better scent throw (i.e. it carries the fragrance farther).

Our molded candles are made with 100% beeswax and cotton wicks.

Below is a breakdown of what the heck these ingredients mean and what they have--or don't have--in them. Since "fragrance" varies by the product, that is broken out in its own section, farther down the page.

• Polysorbate 80: This ingredient is an emulsifier and solubilizer, which means that it brings together oil-based ingredients with water-based ingredients that on their own don't like to mix. This ingredient is necessary to create a uniform, non-cloudy mixture that does not need to be shaken prior to spraying the product each time, ensuring an even fragrance distribution and high-end experience. Polysorbate is a synthetic ingredient made from naturally-derived sorbitol. It also increases the longevity and efficacy of fragrance and cosmetic products. This particular Polysorbate was specially formulated by Makesy to be made without parabens nor phthalates. This product is also toxin-free, carcinogen-free, mutagen-free, and vegan. 
• Luxury Perfumer's Alcohol: This vegan ingredient is made of 100% natural, organic, non-GMO grape alcohol that has been sustainably sourced. Alcohol is a key ingredient in perfumes and sprays because it binds essential oils to the water in a mixture and, when sprayed, carries it into the air, evaporating quickly while leaving just the fragrance to linger and be enjoyed. This ingredient is also paraben-free and phthalate-free.
• Distilled Water: This is water that has been purified by boiling and re-condensing it into a new container. This process removes more than 99.9% of impurities including bacteria and pesticides. Water is a key ingredient to carry fragrance out into the air, and using distilled water ensures that the finished product won't become cloudy or ridden with bacteria over time. Distilled water can be made at home from tap water or purchased from any grocery store, thus making it the only ingredient we don't source from Makesy.
• Geogard 221: This ingredient is a preservative used to keep mixtures from changing color or becoming cloudy and is also used to keep water in a solution from developing bacteria over time. Geogard is comprised of three ingredients (water, benzyl Alcohol, dehydroacetic acid) and is vegan, toxin-free, carcinogen-free, mutagen-free, phthalate-free, and paraben-free. Just 1% of our room spray formula is made up of Geogard, and we use it as an insurance policy against bacteria growth since we also use both distilled water and luxury perfumer's alcohol, both of which ward off bacteria. 
• All Natural Reed Diffuser Base: This base mixes with fragrance oils to carry the fragrance up the reeds and disperse it slowly and consistently into the air. This is the only all-natural diffuser base on the market and is formulated to be both eco-friendly and sustainable. It is so clean, garnering the many badges of: paraben-free, phthalate-free, mutagen-free, carcinogen-free, toxin-free, cruelty-free, and even biodegradable, and gluten-free. We LOVE how clean this base is, but we have had concerns over its throw (i.e. how strong and how far the fragrance is dispersed), so we have decided to move to the Coco Purefuse Reed Diffuser Base going forward, which still meets our "clean" standards and offers a much richer scent throw.
• Coco Purefuse Reed Diffuser Base: This diffuser base was formulated to provide an optimal fragrance throw, and we are really impressed by its performance and clean ingredients. Infused with renewable coconut oil, this base mixes with fragrance to help mobilize the fragrance compounds up into the reeds and out into the air. It is paraben-free, phthalate-free, mutagen-free, allergen-free, and vegan; it does contain trace amounts of naturally-occurring toxins and carcinogens are not considered hazardous to health and fall below Prop 65 limits.

On Fragrance Oils...

Each scent in our lineup--Sunroom, Garden, and Bungalow--is comprised of two Makesy fragrance oils that we have blended together to create a truly unique scent. Transparency is of the upmost importance to us, so despite the risk of copycats, we have chosen to disclose the name of each fragrance oil below and have linked to its Makesy product page.

Because fragrance falls under trade secrets, businesses are not legally required to disclose each ingredient in their fragrance to the consumer. Therefore, we are only able to share as much as Makesy has shared with us. And, while Makesy has chosen to keep some ingredients of their fragrance oils hidden, they do disclose the essential oils in each fragrance oil as well as the important claims that we're really reading the ingredient list to check for anyway: they to NOT use any parabens, phthalates, nor mutagens in any fragrance oil.

Moreover, none of Makesy's products require Prop 65 labelling, which is required labeling by the state of California when an ingredient in a product has levels of toxins greater than 1% wt or carcinogens greater than 0.1% wt. This is important to note because while some fragrance oils contain trace amounts of naturally-occuring toxins or carcinogens, none of these levels--even in their concentrated, unmixed forms--are high enough to require this sensitive labeling.

Makesy fragrance oils are made of a combination of both natural and synthetic ingredients. But before you shake your head at synthetic, please understand that synthetic doesn't always mean "bad" or "toxic." Because Makesy is so committed to the quality of their ingredients, they do not cut corners with their synthetic ingredients, but sometimes it is simply more ethical, sustainable, and/or accessible to manually create an ingredient than to obtain it from nature. Musk, for example, is an ingredient originally secreted from the glands of animals like deer, cats, and lynxes, to name a few. It is no longer considered ethical to obtain this ingredient from animals (for good reason!), so Makesy opts to make it synthetically.