Can Fragrance Change the Impression of the Same Room Photograph?

Can adding a fragrance change the impression of a room when its furniture and lighting stay exactly the same? A 2016 study investigated how smelling floral fragrances while looking at living-room photographs affected people’s evaluations of the spaces.

With fragrance present, the same photographs received higher ratings for qualities such as glamour and gentleness. However, the impressions that changed depended on the combination of room and fragrance. Not every fragrance increased comfort or relaxation.

Can fabric fragrance affect how a living room looks?

Fujii and colleagues studied fabric fragrances used not only on clothing but also on items such as curtains and sofas. Their aim was to examine how these scents influence the visual impression of a living room, using both verbal evaluations and bodily responses.

In the main experiment, they presented living-room photographs rather than changing the interior of an actual room. Participants reported how they would feel if the space in the photograph smelled like the fragrance they were currently experiencing.

Two contrasting living rooms and three floral fragrances

First, 20 people rated 11 living-room photographs using 52 adjectives. The researchers organized words and photographs with similar impressions, then selected one photograph with a natural feel resembling an everyday home and another with a contrasting, luxurious feel.

The main study involved 25 people in their twenties and thirties. The three fragrances were fruity floral, white floral, and sweet floral. When asked to rate their liking on a seven-point scale, all participants rated all three at neutral or above. The comparison therefore did not include fragrances strongly disliked by these participants.

A diffuser dispersed fragrance into the evaluation room; in the unscented condition, the device ran without fragrance. Intensity was adjusted so that the scent was easily detectable. Participants sat 1 m from the photograph and rated how well each of the 52 adjectives applied on a seven-point scale.

An initial unscented practice evaluation was included to account for changes caused simply by seeing the same photograph again. The order of photographs and fragrances was also considered, with at least three hours between evaluations.

Fragrance raised some ratings for the same photograph

For the luxurious living room, all three fragrances increased ratings for qualities including brightness, gentleness, glamour, refinement, cleanliness, and freshness compared with the unscented condition. Ratings of how relaxing the room seemed also increased.

For the natural-looking living room, all three increased impressions such as gentleness, softness, glamour, and luxuriousness. The results suggested that qualities associated with the fragrances were layered onto the photograph’s existing impression.

However, with the natural photograph and fruity floral fragrance, increases in “relaxing” and “comfortable” were not significant. These ratings did increase for the same photograph with sweet floral fragrance. The results therefore differed by attribute rather than showing that adding any scent makes every room uniformly more comfortable.

The three fragrances were compared on a limited selection of attributes

The researchers selected adjectives whose ratings were higher than the unscented condition for all three fragrances, then compared fragrances on those attributes. Within this selection, there were no significant differences between the three fragrances.

This does not establish that the three fragrances work identically on every attribute. The analysis selected and compared attributes that had changed in common. It needs to be read alongside the differences in evaluations for particular combinations of room and fragrance.

In addition, the researchers tested each of the 52 attributes at a 1% significance level, but did not report a correction for the number of tests. Some differences on individual adjectives could therefore reflect chance.

Bodily responses were measured in a four-person pilot experiment

In another experiment, four people viewed the natural living-room photograph for five minutes. Pulse waves, electrical skin responses, and eye movements were recorded with fruity floral fragrance present and without fragrance. The paper itself describes this as a preliminary investigation with a small sample.

When results were expressed as ratios relative to the resting period before viewing, all four participants had lower heart-rate-variability LF/HF ratios and lower galvanic skin responses, or GSR, in the scented condition. By contrast, heartbeat intervals and the HF component increased in two participants and decreased in two, showing no consistent direction.

For gaze, the researchers added up the time spent looking at the same location in the photograph for at least one second. All four participants tended to spend longer fixating in the scented condition. The authors considered the possibility that fragrance increased interest in the space.

These findings describe the direction of values in four people, not statistically established physiological effects. LF/HF is a ratio calculated from heart-rate variability, not a direct measurement of sympathetic nervous activity, and cannot by itself establish relaxation.

Connecting photographic impressions with effects in lived-in spaces

A strength of the study is that it used the same photographs, keeping visual information constant while changing whether fragrance was present. It showed that fragrance can influence the words people choose to describe a room without changing the furniture itself.

However, participants did not enter those living rooms or spend extended periods in them. The fragrances were delivered by equipment in the evaluation room rather than applied to fabrics. Participants were young adults who rated all three fragrances at neutral or above; people who dislike fragrance or those in other age groups might respond differently.

Linking subjective ratings with physiological measures also leaves room for larger studies to test whether the two correspond under the same conditions. In particular, the natural photograph and fruity floral combination used in the physiological experiment did not clearly increase subjective comfort, an important point when considering that correspondence.

Summary

Pairing living-room photographs with floral fragrances increased impressions such as gentleness and glamour compared with an unscented condition. Which ratings changed depended on the photograph and fragrance; comfort and relaxation did not increase uniformly.

In the preliminary physiological experiment with four people, LF/HF and skin responses were lower, while fixation time tended to be longer. The study suggests that combinations of scent and vision can influence how spaces are perceived and offers a starting point for tests in actual living rooms and larger groups.

The paper lists four of its six authors as affiliated with Lion Corporation at the time of the research. No separate funding or conflict-of-interest statement was found in the main text examined.

Reference

Fujii H, et al. Effects of Fabric Fragrance on Impression of Living Room. Journal of the Japan Research Association for Textile End-Uses. 2016;57(3):205–214. doi:10.11419/senshoshi.57.3_205.