How To Get Rid Of Essential Oil Smell In A Home (My Testing Results)

I did an experiment to see what products removed essential oil residue from painted drywall, factory pre-finished wood floors (UV-cured water-based polyurethane), and raw wood.

This protocol will apply to all-natural essential oils as well as products that contain essential oils like Benefect and other cleaners, diffusers, etc.

I used a number of mixes, first Lemon, Cinnamon Leaf, Rosemary, Clove Bud, and Eucalyptus for the first round of my test. It’s certainly a potent mix.

And in the last round, I used a Ylang-Ylang-based essential oil because I really hate this smell, I can pick it up in smaller amounts making my testing more accurate and more sensitive.

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Steps to Remediate Essential Oil Fragrance

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This below is the results of the first experiment that I did.

A part two worked much better on plug-in odor (which is partly natural). That is in Substack.

Step 1 Prep

If the area is large, and especially if this is on the walls, you will be doing a lot of washing of the walls so we need to protect the area from water.

Caulk around the trim, baseboards, and outlets with non-toxic caulking. Cover the outlets with tape and protect the floor with taped-down plastic.

Step 2 Degrease

Use TSP to wash down the walls. It works particularly well to remove fragrance.

It also is a de-glosser of your paint and flooring finishes so it will mar the surface of the paint/finish.

I used it in high concentrations on painted drywall, 1 part TSP to 3 parts water.

I went over the area twice and then rinsed it off with water.

Be prepared to paint after using high concentrations of TSP as it can mar and discolor the paint and could also affect most floor finishes which you can’t repair easily.

(I couldn’t actually tell that the eggshell paint had any damage from what I did, however).

Alternative: If you can’t risk damaging the paint you can use a lower concentration of TSP or use a non-toxic industrial strength degreaser instead like Simple Green Crystal.

Step 3 Release Odor on Raw Wood

Spraying the area with alcohol (like rubbing alcohol or 95-100% ethanol like Everclear) helps release the essential oil odor.

This worked particularly well when the essential oil was on raw wood.

It did not help when the oil was on drywall.

Step 5 Break Down the Fragrance

Enzymes

Earthworm Enzymes worked somewhat to break down the essential oils and their odors on the prefinished hardwood sample as well as the painted drywall sample.

I did not find anything that worked better than this in this first round (but later found a better solution here).

It eliminated the remaining odor just about completely on the hardwood, mostly on the painted drywall, and significantly on the raw wood. It didn’t work as well on raw wood.

Spray down the surface and leave it on for 1-3 days. You can respray it during that timeframe if you like.

Please note that oil-based hardwood finishes will be degraded by these and similar brands of enzymes.

I also tried concentrated lipase enzymes mixed into a paste (meant to break down fats), left on the wallboard and flooring sample for a few days, I misted it a few times to keep it wet.

This may have helped a little, but I think the Earthworm product on its own is enough.

Step 6 Optional: Paint/Seal

There are two options here.

The first is to paint with ECOS Air Purifying Paint which contains zeolite to absorb odors. This can certainly help quite a bit to noticeably reduce the fragrant odor.

The part is to block the odor.

For this, we would use AFM Transitional Primer or BIN Shellac Primer (or even pure shellac for the extremely sensitive) which are a better block of odors than a regular primer. Followed by AFM Safecoat Paint.

Note: this step should only be done when you have cleaned up the odor as much as possible and it’s almost good enough for your standards. Once you paint you can’t go back to other strategies.

Alternative Strategies

1. PCO – my experiment using PCO worked really well (almost perfectly) to remove plug-in odor which was partly based on natural compounds so this might work on pure essential oils as well.

Products That Didn’t Work For Me

EnviroKlenze Everyday Odor Eliminator was applied at full strength and left on for a few days then reapplied and left it on for a few more days. This definitely helped somewhat, though they no longer make this product and it didn’t work as well as enzymes.

Oxidation with liquid products – We can use various products to oxidize the fragrance residue – chlorine dioxide, sodium carbonate peroxide, HOCL, or hydrogen peroxide. I used Closys Mouthwash (unflavored) which contains chlorine dioxide on the painted drywall – it was not a significant help. I also tried hydrogen peroxide which did not work.

Hydrogen Peroxide – The 12% formula caused the paint to bubble up. However, 3% hydrogen peroxide did not have much of an effect at all on the essential oils and it can often create a weird oxidation odor when mixed with essential oils. I would not recommend this.

Ammonia – I tried ammonia to wipe down the drywall sample that was fragranced with essential oils (essential oils had been on the drywall for weeks and I also applied fresh essential oil to get both dried and fresh samples on the drywall).

I diluted it 10 parts to one which was still very, very strong. Even though I’m not chemically sensitive anymore I have a higher sense of smell than most people and this was incredibly strong to mix even at the 10:1 dilution.

No one sensitive should mix this, use even the diluted formula themselves, or be in the home when this is being used to wash the walls.

Perhaps I could have tried an even more diluted formula like 20:1, but I did not try that.

However, it did not work to remove the essential oil smell at all.

Oil Cleanser – I tried using an unscented oil cleanser (meant for the face) as I thought it might help break down the oils. It did not work at all.

Glycerin – Even though thymol/Benefect dissolves into glycerin soap (source, source), this didn’t work in my experiments.

Vinegar – Other sensitive folks have also reported that vinegar doesn’t work to break down essential oils. I used a generous amount of vinegar followed by a little bit of dish soap.

Application to Other Surfaces

Some of these steps can be used on clothing and other textiles like carpets, rugs, and drapes. If you can wash it by hand you can start with dish soap to degrease then spray on the enzymes.

TSP can also be used on most clothing. For more detailed protocols to remove fragrance from clothing see this post.

If it can’t be washed by hand, you can have your carpets or upholstery cleaned with a non-toxic soap, then use enzymes.

Corinne Segura is an InterNACHI-certified Healthy Homes Inspector with certifications in Building Biology, Healthier Materials and Sustainable Buildings, and more. She has 10 years of experience helping others create healthy homes. You can book a consult here.

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