Make Your own Room Spray with Ravensara essential oil

Making your own Room Spray allows you to create customised room sprays with your favourite aromatherapy scents.

You can avoid the propellants found in commercial room cleansers and use aromatherapy oils that benefit your own and family wellbeing. By reusing packaging and refilling you can help reduce your burden on the environment.

In this example room spray we use Ravensara. Ravensara has long been associated with it's antiviral and antibacterial properties and research by Manchester university found that Ravensara destroyed MRSA and E. Coli bacteria in 2 minutes (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4116053.stm). Ravensara gives positive energy in the room when sprayed and so we think it is a particularly apt Room Spray in the world we live right now.

For many of our customers making room spray, the two most common questions we receive are "how should I preserve my room spray" and "how should i make my essential oils solubilise in water". We deal with both of these questions in this example, by using Sodium benzoate & Potassium sorbate as a preservative and Polysorbate 20 as a solubiliser. In future videos we will show you how to also use alcohol and / or peg 40 hydrogenated castor oil.

It is really important to solubilise your essential oils in your room spray, as otherwise the oil and water will separate in the bottle and whilst, you can write on the bottle "shake before use", with the oil and water separate there is always the possibility of essential oil coming into direct contact with the packaging and causing items such as the pump to stop working.

Equally preservation of your blend is important. Without preservation the water can form bacteria and fungus, these are definitely two things you do not want to be spraying around your home.

Please watch the video above for a guided walk through how to make your own room spray. In this example we made 100ml of Room Spray. As we are making 100ml, it is easy to turn the recipe into percentages.

1. Pour 86ml of warm / hot water (above 40c) into a mixing jug
2. Stir in 10ml of Polysorbate 20
3. Add 3ml of Ravensara essential Oil
4. Test the pH of your formulation using pH testing strips
5. Adjust the pH by using a small amount of Citric acid, add a little... test and then add a little more if need be.
6. When you are happy that the pH is under 5.5 (preferably between 4.5 and 5 for maximum efficacy) add 1ml preservative (Sodium benzoate and Potassium sorbate) and stir in the preservative.
7. Bottle your room spray in a suitable bottle.
8. If your room spray is cloudy, refrigerate for 24 hours or more to clear.

With this level of preservative and provided that your preservative is properly mixed, your room spray should be safe for use for 12 months.

Add an additional 1ml of Eucalyptus Globulus essential oil to bring the scent of Spa to your blend.

Aqua (Water, for best results use deionised)

Polysorbate 20

Ravensara Essential Oil

Citric Acid

Sodium benzoate & Potassium sorbate

Mixing Jug

A couple of spoons

Scales

pH Testing strips