Why Perfume Colors Change Over Time

If you've had a bottle of Sol Salgado from THOMAS DE MONACO PARFUMS for a while, you may have noticed that the color has become darker and deeper. Don't be alarmed—this doesn't indicate any issue, nor will it significantly affect the scent.

A fragrance is not a single material with clearly defined properties, but rather a mixture of individual chemicals, obtained either through industrial synthesis or from natural sources (such as essential oils and absolutes). Many of the ingredients are colored, so the compounded fragrance will have a specific appearance that may vary.

Additionally, the color of perfumes can change over their lifetime. The yellow to red hue caused by citrus oils (such as Bergamot, Grapefruit, Lemon, Mandarin, and Orange) may get brighter when exposed to daylight. On the other hand, the fragrance color may also darken as ingredients react with each other—a typical example being the formation of so-called Schiff’s bases from aldehydes and amines.

Darkening can also occur when metal ions (e.g., Iron), which may be present in the matrix of the product to be perfumed, react with fragrance ingredients to form colored metal complexes. Vanillin and Maltol (including their ethyl congeners) are widely used fragrance materials that are prone to darkening reactions due to their phenolic or phenolic-like nature.

Sol Salgado contains a high concentration of solid fragrance substances (more than 10% Ethyl Vanillin, Heliotropine, and Vanillin), so the color of the perfume may change over time. However, this change in color doesn't mean that the perfume has gone bad. On the contrary, many believe that this process enhances the scent.

Is there a way to prevent perfumes from changing color? It is possible by adding additional chemicals and colors. However, we believe it is crucial to keep our products as organic and natural as possible, so we never add extra colors.