Help Centre

As simple as it sounds, reading and following our instructions will get the most fragrance longevity inside your car.

Some people don’t read the instructions we have on our products, following these simple instructions is a huge step in the right direction. We understand that not everyone will want to follow our instructions and want to do things “their way” (assuming that 2-3 sprays inside the whole car is “should be enough”). Trust us when we say - our instructions are there for a good reason. Our Potions need to penetrate as much carpet surface area as possible for them to work their magic.

Follow the simple instructions on the back of the label. You must vacuum your carpets and remove any rubbish and smelly items before spraying our potions to ensure you can get the most out of them. If you’re spraying our Potions (or any other product) directly on to dirty floor mats then don’t expect the fragrance to last as long.

Once finished ensure you close your doors and windows immediately after spraying and keep them closed for at least 30mins (so they can work their magic). Next time you go to clean and vacuum your carpets (well after the fragrance has faded away), you will notice our fragrances will start to come back to life as you vacuum your carpets next time.

You should be cleaning and maintaining the interior of your car once every 2 weeks (for daily driven cars) as it is simply good measure and good hygiene practice (which we touch on below on another question).

Most people know rule of thumb is to wash their car at least once every 2 weeks, though many people neglect to clean their interior as it seems “daunting”, “boring” or “not needed until its really bad”.

Neglecting interior cleaning allows for more “build-up” of general bacteria and other grime to occur, which can develop into its own unique smell. We have seen many times that arm rests, door cards and drivers seats look “clean” but absolutely stink.

We believe interior should be “quick detailed” at least once a week. The quick detail is a simple thing of wiping down your interior and high touch areas with a simple product like our Interior Detailer. Doing this itself once a week will keep your interior looking its best, protect surfaces against UV damage, maintain an anti-static finish (less dust sticking), clean and help remove most bacteria’s (as we use hospital grade disinfectants), and it will make it much easier to clean your interior next time round. Interior detailing can be done in about 10mins (if done weekly).

Interiors should be “more cleaned” once every two weeks (when you wash your car), this includes the above + giving your carpets and floors mats a good vacuum and spray of our deodorising air fresheners.

Depending on usage, some interiors may need a “deep cleaned” once a month to once every 3 months, this includes using products like leather cleanse, fabric cleanse, plastic cleanse and then following up with relevant protectants/products afterwards.

We aren’t joking about this, if you’re interior is in not so great condition, we strongly suggest you give it a good and deep clean, not for our sake but for your own health. Yes our Potions will eliminate bad odours and freshen up your interior, however it won’t be for long before our fragrance odour fighting properties fade out and that ugly smell returns back.

Some examples of things that can be often overlooked include:

- Dried up mud and sand embedded in the carpet

- Fast food rubbish and food scraps laying under their seats

- Cigarette ash all over the interior and under the seats with cigarette butts in the cup holder

- Used work clothing in the boot/back seat

- Open gym bags with boxing gear in the back seat

- Phlegm on windshields and speedo clusters (yep we’ve seen this)

- Old stale coffee cups and empty soda cans

- Spilled and dried up various liquids on carpets and floor mats

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a bit a mess inside your car once in a while but to keep the mess there for an unreasonable amount of time is a self-explanatory reason as to why some people may experience shorter fragrance lifespan. If you find your interior is looking and smelling rather grubby, we say time to give it a deep clean!

Car manufactures use different materials to build their cars, many European built cars have their own smells to them, some even have their own famous unique smells to them and some newer cars even have their own inbuilt air fresheners inside the glovebox.

These types of “car smells” (VOC’s) come from various parts of the car and vary from car maker to car maker, these smells come from the type of leathers, vinyls, plastics, carpets, fabrics, rubbers and glues used to make your interior, sometimes even glass can have its own smell to it. There’s nothing wrong with these materials, it’s simply the nature of the materials.

Some of these smells (VOC’s) may last a few months (with brand new cars), others can actually get stronger over time due to simple facts such as leather wearing down and aging, door rubbers oxidizing and breaking down, cavity waxes breaking down and general leeching of VOC's from various carpets and fabrics, glues & seam sealers.

We have even seen some plastic dash boards have a smell to them when they get hot under the sun, even wiring looms have their own plastic smell to them (almost burnt like). You need to keep in mind that all these materials are always leeching VOC’s. Once again there’s nothing wrong with these things, it’s simply the nature of materials and there is absolutely nothing you can do to get rid of their smells (VOC’s).

Sometimes this in itself could be an underlying smell you may be trying to get rid of without knowing about it (until now). When you think about it logically, no air freshener can get rid of all those smells as those materials will always be there and they will always be leeching out VOC’s.

We have found that with most Asian built car makers tend have minimal to no leather inside, the ones that have leather are generally synthetic, they use different materials inside (compared to the European built cars). We find that many of these cars don’t have as strong factory smell to them. We have seen that fragrances tend to last much longer in these types of cars.

Many of our customers have reported back to us over the years an average between 8-21 days fragrance longevity with these types of cars, keeping in mind that each day the fragrance strength does drop off and with no other contributing factors. In some instances, we have seen with weekend driven cars that have their interiors kept in good shape tend to see up to 2 months of fragrance longevity from our products on a single application. Even our own personal weekend cars are lucky to get sprayed once a month as we can still smell them when we clean the interior.

On the flip side to that, we have customers tell us "this fragrance lasted about 5 days in this European car and the same fragrance lasted 10 days this European car and vice versa.

What we are explaining to you that each car is different in its own way and each car has its own smell to it from factory. Whilst yes our potions do work some magic and can be massive life savers for some people (such as customers who got mould in carpets and want to try and save it, whilst other customers who have had a passenger vomit inside their cars), theirs always limitations and outside factors that play a role in overall fragrance longevity.

We like to under promise and over deliver when we can. This one’s a long one, get comfy, pull out the popcorn as this may irritate some people as we do shine light onto a very sensitive topic, we've ripped off the band-aid, stated the facts and this will help you choose products more wisely.

Before you throw any liquid spray air freshener under the bus, we ask you to compare apples to apples and not compare apples to oranges. Besides other various contributing factors that can affect fragrance longevity which are covered in other tabs/topics on this page, you need to take into account what you are comparing.

TLDR: Sorry, but there’s no '5 second answer' to this, if you have the “good is cheap, cheap is good” mentality, this read will open your eyes and should get you into good habits and using the right products. Yes its 10 minutes’ worth of reading but its well worth it.

We find that sometimes some people’s expectations are extremely high and demanding of air fresheners. We usually see 2 types of customers:

Customer A: Knows exactly what a water based liquid air freshener is capable of, what to expect from them and knows when they see a quality product.

Customer B: Doesn’t know any better and assumes that an air freshener will fix all their problems indefinitely without needing to lift a finger (such as the need to vacuum their carpets before applying a spray air freshener) to get the most longevity from them. < Drastic comparison, yes, but trust us we see this each and every single day. In the world of fragrance for cars, we are the first to get crucified without reason as we learnt the loudest voice in the room gets the centre of attention.

We acknowledge and appreciate both customers A and B. However over the years we have learnt so much from customer B, this customer has helped us improve our products and has allowed us to help better educate customer B by providing useful information, tips, tricks and knowledge (remember knowledge is power!)

The first thing we have to explain to customer B is that, besides making the car “smell good”, our potions also eliminate bacterial and biological odours. However sometimes customer B does not know that sometimes they are trying to mask up a problem odour such as mould, food scraps, grime and some cars just have their own natural smells to them. This effort of trying to mask up problem odours of these natures and/or simply choosing to be conservative by not spraying enough product because they think we are trying to get them to use more product purposely (believe us we are not), usually causes customer B to throw an air freshener/company under the bus because the air freshener didn’t do what they wanted it to do (ie spray once and my problem odours will go away forever) < kind of like how some customers assume that a ceramic coating stops and prevents scratches, stone-chips and dents as if it some magic force field.

Anyone who truly understands what a ceramic coating does, knows that every car manufactures clear coat is different (some are soft and thin, others are hard and thick) and because of this, the ceramic coating may not work as effectively on some car clear coats that are soft and thin. If you want to get into the science of it, its actually very simple, a softer clear coat will expand and contract (hot/cold) much more than a harder clear coat would, the process of expanding and contracting naturally breaks down a ceramic coating over time (remember most coatings are 1micon thick at best case and are as hard as glass when cured), we aren’t even taking maintenance (washing) and exposure to the elements (contaminants) into this equation, this is just a simple temperature cycle that cars 99.99% of cars go through.

Moving on from all the above, when our fragrances have run their course and have completely faded away from carpets and floor mats, our odour eating ingredients and microbial controlling ingredients continue to work for around another 2-3 weeks (sometimes much longer), with our potions you get the below wrapped up into 1 bottle:

1. Large selection of fragrance options (34 fragrances)
2. Complex fragrance profiles (layers upon layers of different smells, some sweet, fruity, classical and others exotic)
3. Fragrance longevity (apples to apples, which we talk about below)
4. Help stop microbial growth of mould in carpets
5. Eliminate bacterial odours from carpets and fabrics including cigarette smoke smell
6. Eliminate the smell of biological odours in carpets and fabrics such as urine, blood and vomit
7. Excellent value for money when considering the above 6 points

With that said, many odours can actually come in from your shoes bringing in dirt, water, sand, mud and all sorts of other contaminants into your carpets as you go in/out of your car alongside bringing in hot foods, drinks, used work/gym clothing and shoes, other odours can build up over time (such as having poor interior cleaning routines and not replacing cabin filters when required, all of which we touch on other topics).

The simplest way to get a better understanding about our products is to simply think of them as a quick and easy, 'best bang for your buck' product that offers temporary passive anti-bacterial, anti-microbial, odour eliminating priorities to your carpets and fabric floor mats for a reasonable duration of time with a twist of fun, class and style with our fragrances. Think of how ceramic coatings works, it offers a medium-term of passive UV protection to your paint and makes water bead off from paintwork (thus making the washing and drying more efficient).

You don’t need to have a wax or ceramic coating applied onto your paint (if you did need these, the car manufacturers would be liable for this). Washing and drying your paintwork regularly and correctly, clay barring once to twice a year is usually enough to keep paint in good shape, however many people opt to install/apply a wax or ceramic coating because they want it.

The fundamental principle of a wax or ceramic coating is to offer passive UV protection to your paintwork. They both offer it, however they are light years apart from each other (chemistry wise) and should not compared to one another as the pros and cons of each will heavily outweigh the one another respectfully.

The same needs to be said for air fresheners, you don’t need an air freshener, as if you clean and vacuum your interior regularly, you won’t have bad odours that need to be eliminated, your car should smell clean, however an air freshener is a luxury that many people simply want, you have the option of solid air fresheners or liquid air fresheners, both freshen the air inside your car, but both offer very different things which we explain below.

Sometimes people have the expectation that 2-3 sprays of our Potions = a lifetime of fragrance longevity (this is not true at all).

You need to compare apples to apples...

We get that you might be saying to yourself 'but I can get a hanging air freshener for $1' or 'I can buy a tuna can air freshener for $10-$15+ that will last a few weeks' however the whole 'cheap is good and good is cheap mentality' is wrong and needs to be thrown out the window as a poor man pays twice.

It doesn’t make any sense to even try and compare a cheap spray wax to a good quality ceramic coating. Most people know and understand that ceramic coatings have plenty of benefits over a wax. A spray wax will increase gloss, is not prone to water spotting, is easy to apply and offers short term UV protection. A ceramic coating on the other hand will increase gloss too but not as much as a wax will, coatings are much more prone to water spotting and are very difficult, costly and time consuming to apply (compared to a spray wax), though the ceramic coating offers protection for years (not months like a wax does), both have their pros and cons to one another. Trying to compare the 2 products is an apples to oranges comparison.

The same principle and logic needs to be applied when comparing a solid air freshener (cardboard / tuna can cup) to a liquid spray air freshener (not just ours, but from other companies too), both have pros and cons to one another but one outweighs the other significantly.

The facts are that some (not all) solid air fresheners (hanging air fresheners, clip in vent air fresheners and tuna can cup style air fresheners) may offer a longer lasting fragrance inside your car when trying to compare them to our water based deodorising air fresheners, however this is where the apples to oranges comparison comes into play, solid air fresheners:

- Do absolutely nothing to eliminate any sort of odours
- Usually cause more problems than they solve
- Have mediocre smelling fragrance profiles at best case
- Easily grow mould sports as they "self-shrink" (decompose and rot)
- Do absolutely nothing for bacterial and microbial control on carpets and floor mats (where many odours originate from)
- Hugely cheapen the look of your interior by always being in your face, or in a cup holder rattling around

You see what we just did there? We just highlighted many of the negatives that solid air fresheners offer, if you remember the first 7 points we mentioned earlier in this topic, you would have just quickly learnt that our products PROS outweigh all of the CONS offered by a solid air freshener 6 to 1. This is why we say you need to compare apples to apples.

Hanging air fresheners: We have seen countless times that these air fresheners cause irreparable damage if they are used incorrectly (melting plastics, paints and leathers) when being hanged off indicator stalks, gear surrounds or tied into the vents. 

Most of these companies making these hanging air fresheners even have warnings on the packaging stating not to let their air fresheners touch anything (though as usual, some people want to do things ‘their way’ or because ‘it looks cool’). When used as directed, some of these companies even instruct to use the plastic bag the air freshener is supplied in and to cut a small hole in the bag and each day to ‘pull the cardboard further out to out to expose more of the cardboard’.

When used as instructed (hanging off the rear view mirror) they are always ‘in your face’ dangling around screaming ‘look at me, look at me, I am too cheap’, worst of all, we find they do not smell pleasant at all, don’t last and don’t eliminate any odours. The cherry on top is if you get a nasty enough of a highway patrol officer, you can actually be fined and defected for obstruction of view when hung off your rear view mirror.

Vent clip in air fresheners: We have seen these fail countless times and leak their oils all over air vents and the dashboard and cause irreparable damage to those surfaces (especially during summer). We have also seen that sometimes when people remove the clips that hold onto the vents, they end up snapping off or cracking the vents which not a fun thing to replace, especially with older cars where these parts are hard and expensive to come by.

Tuna can style air fresheners: We dislike these air fresheners the most as the chemistry involved is very basic and flawed. They are usually made from felt or gel (goo), both of which we found when left exposed to oxygen long enough, they decompose (rot), grow mould spores inside and both styles tend to attract insects and spiders.

With these styles of air freshens, not only do they really cheapen the look of your interior, take up precious real-estate space inside your car, their fragrance profiles most of the time smell cheap and nasty due to the nature of their ‘chemistry’. We have seen many times that that insects and spiders are actually attracted to these style of air fresheners. < We have seen add dealt with this countless times, in addition to this, they do absolutely nothing when it comes to odour elimination.

Besides taking up a cup holder, rattling around, they also scream ‘look at me, look at me, I am too cheap’.

Chemistry of felt based: Tuna can air fresheners simply have a piece of felt soaked with natural fragrance oils (which insects and spiders love). As the oil dries up in the felt, the felt starts to develop mould spores over time, if they tip over and are left tipped over, many leak and cause all sorts of hassles such as damaged plastics, leathers and/or ruined fabric.

Chemistry of Gel (goo): Gel based air fresheners are even worse than felt based air fresheners, these air fresheners should be avoided at all costs in our professional opinion. We have broken down the science and chemistry behind these products and found they most of them are made up of primarily of food grade ingredients (such a gelatine or agar agar) and other cheap natural ingredients, some market themselves as ‘plant based’ (cough cough, code word for food based) and are simply mixed with natural fragrance oils and colour.

These gel air fresher’s ‘self-shrink’ when exposed to oxygen, the flaw with this concept is that the ‘self-shrinking’ is actually decomposition (rot) of the gel (goo). As the decomposition progresses, the fragrance starts to smell ‘funny’ or ‘weird’ or ‘not pleasant’, those ‘smells’ you are breathing in, is a by-product of the ‘self-shrink feature’ these gel air fresheners ‘offer’. In addition to this, some might have a strong kick when you first open them, however within a couple days at best case that kick is gone and is usually very faint.

We found that all of these air gel (goo) air fresheners tend to attract insects and spiders much more than oil based air fresheners do (because that rotting is food for insects and spiders), 9/10 times we have seen that these air fresheners grow mould spores as they decompose (which is terrible to be breathing in). Due to the limited ingredients of using such ingredients to create a gel (goo) based air fresheners, the chemistry required is very basic and extremely limited (can be made at home and there are thousands of recipes online). Some even market a feature of ‘adjusting the strength by twisting to lid more open / close’ < in our eyes, this is nothing but a marketing gimmick at best and really scraping the bottom of the barrel!

With our Potions, insects and spiders actually hate the chemistry of our products (something that is very important to us). Don’t ask us how we’ve done it, as it’s one of our trade secrets. None of the solid air fresheners offer any form of odour elimination, bacterial or microbial control for carpets and fabrics and most of them offer terrible fragrance profiles.

In addition, all the above physical styled air fresheners require a physical item left inside your car (ie remove that tuna can and you have no more fragrance), with our products, you spray onto the carpets and then leave the bottle at home. The bottle does NOT need to remain inside the car to smell amazing, eliminate odours, control mould and bacteria, our products don’t take up your interior real-estate and cheapen the look of your car. < Now that’s class!

Pressurized Aerosol Air Fresheners: You are paying an exorbitant amount of money for a product that only has on average less than 1% of its chemical composition being used for actual 'freshening up' and the other 99% is solvents and gas. < If you don’t believe us, lookup the SDS’s of these products yourself. We find that many of these aerosol air fresheners don’t last anywhere near as long when compared to water based liquid air fresheners. < Again an apples to oranges comparison which is incorrect.

Oil based liquid spray air fresheners: (an almost apples to apples comparison)

Concentrated oil based ready to use spray air fresheners low volume high price (usually 20 - 60mls and priced above $9.95)

It’s a liquid in a non-pressurized spray bottle, sure you are right, but its oil based product, NOT a water based product.

We know that there are some small companies out their offering ‘bespoke’ liquid spray air fresheners in a very heavily concentrated oil form and marketed as ready to use. We have broken down the science and chemistry behind these products and let us say, we are far from impressed with these products (not least because of the exorbitant costs).

Pure and natural oils don't just evaporate from carpets like magic, they build up, stay put and when the fragrance does fade off, the oil left behind attracts dirt, grime, muck and all sorts of nasties you wouldn't want building up on your floor mats.

We have seen with many of these super concentrated air fresheners that they offer more negatives than positives such as oily and mouldy carpets (after long term usage) and the attraction of spiders and insects. Many (if not all) of these products don’t have any odour eliminating ingredients (they rely upon high percentages of natural fragrance oils to mask up odours), nor do they have any effective anti-microbial and anti-bacterial properties.

Put simply, the chemical composition of these products with high levels of natural fragrance oils just doesn’t work with anti-microbial and anti-bacterial ingredients. When attempting to combine the two (which we have) the fragrance becomes unstable and practically useless. In addition when doing ISO certified lab testing of mould and bacteria, these products always come back with very high counts of mould and bacteria (as once again the anti-bacterial chemistry doesn't work in these sorts of formulations). 

We have had countless customers come to us after using these highly concentrated air fresheners long term and asked us if our products can save their carpets and floor mats.

Water based, liquid spray air fresheners (non-aerosol) - The apples to apples comparison!!!

This is where our products fit, this is where the apples to apples comparisons should be made,

Water based air fresheners: The chemistry, fragrance strength and features behind water based air fresheners varies from company to company. There are thousands of these companies all over the world offering these water based air fresheners, however finding a good one is like trying to find a needle in a hay stack. < With us, you are getting the best of the best so you can stop searching.

Many water based air fresheners on the market do not last, smell horrendous and do not offer any form of bacterial, microbial and/or odour control. We see many people using these products and are always never happy with them but choose to continue using them because ‘it’s cheap’.

It’s like comparing different brands of ceramic coatings, you have cheap ceramic coatings that cost $10 and you have expensive ceramic coatings that cost $100+, many people understand that the $10 coating won’t last anywhere near as claimed.

With our products, if you remembered the first 7 points we mentioned above and then compare them to any of our competitor’s water based air fresheners, you will quickly learn that we are offering our customers the best value for money!

It’s no secret that Platinum Potions is very well known in the car detailing world as the #1 go to air freshener not only just here in Australia, but all over the world now. It is something that has taken us years to achieve. Many of our large competitors have only just woken up to a very small percentage of our chemistry (we have been using this chemistry since 2017), other companies simply refuse to use the ingredients we use as the costs and chemistry knowledge limits them.

Year over year, Platinum Potions has been raising the bar and setting new industry leading standards in this field. When it comes to the chemistry behind our Potions, we can happily state that we have been able to advanced our knowledge and refined the chemical composition of our products to a level today that we believe is at the very ‘top of the game’.

The level of our chemistry, quality of ingredients used, our products features and benefits at the price we offer it at is what has astonished our competition.

Our Potions (and many other liquid spray air fresheners) are not designed to be used in vehicles that have rubber, plastic, leather or vinyl floor mats as these materials are always leeching VOC’s, these types of floor mats will always have their unique smells to them (rubbery/plastic) and our Potions will not be able to get rid of their smell.

If you still insist to spray under the seats instead, do keep note that our fragrance longevity will be severely reduced simply due to the fact there is not enough carpet “real-estate” for our Potions to penetrate and that these types of floor mats will always be leeching out their own VOC’s due to nature of their materials.

It’s a bad habit and we all know it, some people still do enjoy smoking a cigarette in their car and hey, it’s a free country, it’s your car and we don’t judge.

Depending on how much you smoke inside your car will affect the fragrance longevity of any air freshener (as anyone can expect). However our Potions actually shine the most in smokers cars as our Potions constantly eliminate that “smoke smell” for a solid 2 weeks (even though the fragrance may have faded right off), whilst yes fragrance may be knocked out within a week in some smokers car, the odour eliminating properties of our Potions work very well and continue to work well after the fragrance has faded off.

Certain chemicals are harsh and have their own “smell” to them, wet vacuuming and pressure washing your floor mats after using these harsh chemicals sometimes isn’t enough to get that chemical smell out of your floor mats. The three most common ones we find are:

- All-purpose cleaners (Containing Solvents and Acids)

- Carpet stain remover/cleaners (Containing Peroxides, Solvents and Acids)

- Home brews of vinegar and baking soda (big no-no)

If the “chemical smell” is still their after using these types of cleaners (even after they feel dry), any air freshener (including pure perfume) will be severely impacted in terms of fragrance longevity. We have seen this time and time again and as soon as people use a non-fragrant carpet cleaner (such as Fabric Cleanse) and stop using these sorts of chemicals on carpets in the future, fragrance longevity comes back to life.

If you need to deep clean your floor mats we strongly suggest you use a fabric cleaner that is un-fragranced (such as our Fabric Cleanse). If you spray any air freshener on top of harsh chemicals that have their own chemical smell to them, then do expect fragrance longevity to fade off much quicker. The reason for this is that many APC’s and some carpet cleaners use acids, solvents and peroxides, sometimes you’ll even see your windows inside fog right up after using these.

If you need to perform a wet vac to your floor mats, yes our Potions will minimise mould growth when drying out, however we strongly recommend you ensure your floor mats are fully dried out after cleaning. We find 2 days out in the sun on a hot summers day does the trick (longer during winter) and most importantly use a dedicated carpet cleaner that doesn’t contain solvents, acids or peroxides such as our Fabric Cleanse.

If you can smell anything remotely wet, damp, moisture like or wet musky, this usually means water is inside your car and you need to find out exactly where it’s coming from as mould can easily grow if you don’t intervene.

Firstly if you have performed a “wet vac” to your interior, we strongly recommend you open your doors and windows to let your car air out and continue to dry vac as much water out as you can. Then follow-up with our Potions (our potions help fight mould too).

If you have not performed a wet vac, check to see if your carpets or roof linings are wet, if they are wet or feel damp, you need to find out where the water has come from (usually a window or sunroof left open in the rain or a rubber seal/grommet that’s cracked, missing or not installed properly). Once you locate the source of leakage, fix it and fix it quickly! As a side note, we have seen fishing hooks that pierced through a boot rubber seal that allowed water to flood the entire boot-well. A tiny pin-hole is more than enough to cause serious issues.

Then pending on how wet your carpet is, you could possibly get away with dry vacuuming your carpets, in worse off cases where your carpet is soaking wet, we then recommend you take it to a professional so they completely strip out, clean and dry your interior asap before you run into bigger problems.

In some very rare cases you may be unable to smell our fragrances after a short period of time, you may be experiencing sensory adaption (nose-blindness). In simple it just means your sense of smell is temporarily limited/blocked or has gotten so used to a particular fragrance right to the point where you can’t smell it anymore. This is much more common with people who have a weak sense of smell.

To confirm if you are in fact experiencing this, get someone else to smell your car and see if they can smell it. If they can indeed smell our fragrance and you can’t, we can only suggest to wait it out for a few days and see if you can smell it again after that, otherwise you can try change it up and apply a completely different fragrance as sometimes that change can "kick-start" your sense of smell again.

Dirty, worn or ripped carpets and floor mats can massively effect fragrance longevity, we suggest as always you give your carpets and floor mats a good vacuum before spraying any air fresheners onto them and if they are really dirty, we suggest deep cleaning them with Fabric Cleanse and let them dry out properly. If your main carpet (underneath the floor mats) is in a bad condition or has its own "smell" to it, you will need to address and see what the cause is (sometimes we have seen so much dried up mud, sand and/or spillage has embedded deep into carpets and floor mats that vacuuming alone isn’t enough to clean them).

If your floor mats are wearing thin, ripped and have holes in them, we say it’s time to replace them with a new set as your current/old set have served their purpose well.

Many cars out on the roads have had the unlucky event of ending up at a smash repairer. Some body shops won’t replace or forget to replace rubber seals and grommets. We have seen in some instances that the seals/grommets haven’t been installed correctly.

In some cases you may experience smells from the engine bay or outside coming into your car (not good for your health) which can reduce fragrance longevity. We suggest you simply check all rubber/silicone seals and grommets around your doors and door hinges, boot/truck area and the firewall in the engine bay. You don’t need anything except your eyes to check these things.

Most people who are experiencing this issue quickly find that a grommet is missing or one that hasn’t been put back into place properly. Once the grommet/seal is back in place properly/replaced, that fixes their problems with outside odours coming into their car.

Cabin filters, YES cabin filters can actually throw your sense of smell off, we wrote a blog about this here back in 2017 and it still gets massive hits online from around the world. In short, many people don’t replace their cabin filters when recommended or when required, we recommend changing them within 15,000kms/1yr or when contaminated enough (don't forget these things also filter out pollutants from the outside air coming into your car).

This can be a huge thing with fragrances, we have seen countless cabin filters loaded up with dead insects, leafs and other nasty foreign objects (enough that the entire filter and housing is clogged up). We have seen countless cabin filters riddled with mould too when left too long (that’s not good to breathe in).

These filters get clogged up or contaminated rather quickly, THOUGH the smells that come out of them, come out gradually, so gradually most people wont notice it until either someone else who hasn’t been in your car tells you OR when it becomes apparent to yourself (when those dead insects start to decompose enough and stink). This is because your brain becomes used to a certain smell that is introduced gradually and when it’s a gradual smell increasing in strength, it tends not to register in your brain (hence nose-blindness explained in another tabs).

Checking and replacing (not cleaning) a cabin filter with most cars should take you no more than 5 minutes (if they’re not clogged up). You'll notice when you remove a contaminated cabin filter that when you smell it closely, they usually reek and then you might notice your car has a similar smell to your cabin filter. If and when you have a contaminated cabin filter, those smells will be circulating throughout your car, changing cabin air filter can sometimes make a world of a difference.