The best air freshener for your living room is a scented oil diffuser that will produce any fragrance of your choice. However, depending on your needs, you may want to go with other options that fit the specific goals you want to achieve for your indoor air, or for decorating your home differently.
If you just need an instant blast of fresh aroma before a guest shows up at your house, then a spray bottle of scented oil is your best bet. But if what you really need is odor removal due to stinky pets or other sources of bad smells, then an air purifier is your best bet.
I’ll explain several air freshener options below so that you can get your living room smelling great before company comes over, or just smelling normal all day while you’re at home.
Option #1: Electric Scented Oil Diffusers
An electric diffuser is a small appliance that you fill up with scented essential oil of any fragrance that you desire. When you turn it on, it starts turning the scented oil into water vapor that fills the room with the chosen aroma.
Some electric diffusers work by heating up the liquid until it evaporates, but others have other methods to turn the liquid into a spray. Some also require that you add water to the oil container, while others don’t require any water.
The benefit of using an electric diffuser versus other options listed below is that the electric oil diffusers typically come with a few settings that allow you to control whether you want high or low fragrance strength. This means that you can turn up the fragrance to impress guests coming over, or turn it down so that it’s not overpowering when you’r home alone.
The electric diffusers also come with a variety of lighting options which can add a bit of color to your home. The one I’ve listed below has 7 different color options for you to choose from, meaning that the device sort of doubles as a “mood lighting” appliance as well.
Take a look at my favorite electric oil diffusers here:
- Brightly-lit Design With 7 Color Options – Click here to view.
- Vase-like Design With Minor Lighting – Click here to view.
- Himalayan Salt Lamp Design With 7 Color Options – Click here to view.
And if you get an oil diffuser, you’ll also need scented oil to go along with it. I recommend this starter pack for new diffuser users:
- 6-scent Essential Oil Value Pack – Comes with 6 different scents at a very affordable price – Click here to view.
Option #2: Natural Potpourri Bags For A Coffee Table Decoration
It seems like almost everyone is using a potpourri bag here or there to decorate their homes. And for good reason: they smell great, and they look fantastic.
A potpourri bag is a decorative bag of scented tree trimmings. They typically have a mild strength scent, which makes them useful for decorating a dining room table or a living room coffee table where people will be sitting nearby and able to smell it.
And the best part of potpourri is that it also makes a lovely decoration just about anywhere in your home. I’ve seen people set them on tables, shelf, book cases, etc.
There are all sorts of different potpourri scent collections out there. The scent is largely determined by what kind of plant carvings are included in the bag, along with any extra scented material that is included just to strengthen the aroma.
I’ve gathered some of the most popular potpourri bags here. Take a look:
- Potpourri #1 – Available in Orange, Rose, and Blue Ocean scents – Click here to view.
- Potpourri #2 – Available in Fresh Linen, and Pumpkin Spice scents – Click here to view.
- Potpourri #3 – Available in Cinnamon Cider scent – Click here to view.
- Potpourri #4 – Available in Lavender, Ocean, Sparkling Citrus, and Vanilla & Amber scents – Click here to view.
Option #3: Adorable Scented Candle Wax Warmers
A scented candle wax warmer is a small, decorative appliance that sits on any hard surface and plugs into the wall.
The device contains a hot light bulb that sits under a small metal bowl. When you put scented candle wax into the bowl, the heat melts it and the aroma is released.
Generally it is recommended that you get scented candle wax cubes, also called wax melts, that are made for these devices. However, you can also crush up old scented candles that have burned down their wicks and use their wax in these devices as well.
Another trick for using these is that you can use scented oil instead of scented wax. Since scented oils will evaporate and spread their aroma when heated up, you can just pour a small amount of scented oil into the bowl on top of these wax warmers before someone shows up to your house.
In just a few minutes, the scented oil will heat up and your fragrance will begin to spread. You can also water down the fragrance oil if it’s too strong, or add more if it’s too weak.
Overall, these cute little guys make adorable decorations that can fit on any coffee table or lamp table. Since scented wax warmers are relatively rare compared to other types of air fresheners, they will also make a unique gift that your recipient is sure to have probably never heard of before.
- Febreze Scented Candle Wax Melts – For use in any scented candle wax warmer appliance – Comes with 4 different scents – Click here to view.
- 6-scent Essential Oil Value Pack – Comes with 6 different scents – Can be used in a candle wax warmer with a bit of water instead of scented wax – Click here to view.
- Candle Wax Warmer Appliances – Available in a whopping 44 different adorable designs – Click here to view them all.
- Bonus: Candle Wax Warmer Plugins – Candle wax warmers can also come as a plugin appliance, just like regular plugin air fresheners – Available in 33 different designs – Click here to view them all.
Option #4: Air Purifiers For Long-lasting Odor Removal
Although an air aquifer doesn’t add new fragrance to your home, sometimes trying to cover up bad odors with new fragrances is a bad approach because they just end up mixing together and still smelling bad.
And when it comes to removing bad odors from a large room such as a living room, an air purifier is one of the best solutions for achieving that goal.
Because it uses a fan to suck as much air through its filter as possible, an air purifier is able to effectively remove bad odors from a very large room. Each air purifier will tell you how many square feet of a room it will generally be able to purify.
I recommend the following air purifier for large rooms such as living rooms:
- Winix Air Purifier – Removes odors from a large room up to 360 square feet in size – Comes with an activated carbon filter for extra odor removal power – Click here to view.
Option #5: Scented Spray Bottles For Instant Aroma
Sometimes you don’t want to mess with the hassle of new appliances or fancy decorations. You just want your home to smell great because company is arriving in 5 minutes and you haven’t had time to clean.
In emergencies like that, the best solution is to just spray a scented spray bottle as much as you need in every room of the house where guests are going to be staying. And the great thing about a good old fashioned spray bottle is that you can control exactly how much fragrance strength you need, simply by spraying more of it.
In other cases, if you have a super gross odor you want to get rid of immediately, using a new fragrance in a spray bottle may not be the best case. Instead, you may want to try an odor-removal spray to get your house back to smelling like normal.
I have you covered for both options. My first spray bottle recommendation is for a natural scented oil spray that comes in a 3-scent value pack. This package is very popular and super convenient for making your house smell clean even when you didn’t have time to actually clean.
The second option is an odor-removal-only spray called ozone spray. Ozone spray should be used about 20 minutes before company arrives in order to have the best results. Its natural scent will fade quickly and leave clean-smelling air behind.
- For Adding New Scents: Flower Power Spray Bottles 3-scent Value Pack – An essential oil spray bottle collection that comes with 3 natural scents – Perfect for adding instant fragrance 5 minutes before guests arrive – Click here to view.
- For Odor-Removal Only: Ozium Natural Gas Spray – A spray bottle of natural ozone gas that destroys odor particles and leaves a scent of “fresh rain” that fades quickly – Use about 20 minutes before guests arrive – Click here to view.