How to Make Gardenia Oil

Gardenias have a distinctive bloom with a wonderful sweet, spicy, and floral scent, and gardenia oil has many wonderful uses. Suppose you have several gardenia flowers or want to make the best out of a flowering gardenia bush on your property. In that case, you might be interested in gardenia essential oil. This multipurpose oil smells great and has a few noted benefits when used in aromatherapy. Below, we give you the steps to safely make gardenia essential oil for perfumes, carrier oils, soaps, and other products that need a boost of this flower’s exotic aroma.

What Can I Do With Gardenia Oil?

Gardenia oil has many uses, and you can create several things at home (make sure you use a high-quality option like this one). Popular uses for this oil include adding it into a carrier oil to make a massage or moisturizing body oil, blending a few drops into moisturizers, soaps, or candles, creating perfumes, or utilizing the oil for aromatherapy.

Gardenia oil does have several noted benefits when used in aromatherapy and herbal medicine, and it is thought to fight inflammation and encourage healthy digestion. We recommend consulting with a doctor before adding gardenia essential oil to your treatment plan, and never apply the concentrated essential oil directly to your skin or ingest it, as this may lead to problems.

What Does Gardenia Oil Smell Like?

Gardenias are known for their luxurious floral, sweet, and spicy smell. They are often compared to jasmine flowers, and they have similar creamy coconut undertones. Gardenias may be somewhat zesty and citrusy, depending on the specific gardenia flower species used, and they have peach and fresh green undertones. 

You can combine gardenia with other florals or citrus aromas to create a memorable and exotic fragrance.

Steps to Make Gardenia Oil

The following steps will help you understand how to make gardenia oil at home. To complete this process, you will need tap water, a stock pot, around two pounds of gardenia flowers, a glass dish, a pipette, and a steam basket. For the final oil, you will need a glass oil vial, preferably dark-colored.

1. Fill your stock pot halfway with tap water; an eight-quart stock pot is the right size for this process. Add all of your gardenia flowers to the water.
2. Place your steam basket into your stock pot. The steam basket should hover above the water and not be submerged. If it is submerged, there is too much water in the pot.
3. Place your glass dish in the center of the steam basket. The dish shouldn’t be too large or touch the edges of the steam basket.
4. Put the lid of the stock pot onto the pot, making sure it is upside down. This means that the handle knob of the lid will be hovering over the glass dish in the center of the steam basket.
5. Turn on your stove and use the medium-low setting. Place ice onto the upside-down lid, right into the hollow part, so that it stays there without spilling.
6. Allow your stock pot to simmer for around thirty minutes, dumping the ice water that has melted and replacing it with fresh ice after each water dump. You must do this for the entire thirty minutes as the condensation this method creates inside of the pot allows essential oils from the gardenias to gather and drip from the handle knob of your stock pot lid into the glass dish in the steam basket.
7. After thirty minutes, turn off your stove and let your stock pot reach room temperature. Don’t remove the lid during this time; expect to wait a few hours for room temperature to be reached. The glass dish inside the stock pot should not be too hot to touch.
8. Remove your glass dish from the steam basket and use the oil pipette to transfer the essential oil to your glass vial. It would be best if you had around an ounce of essential oil.

Be careful not to apply your concentrated gardenia essential oil directly to your skin, as it is too strong. Instead, use your essential oil in an aromatherapy diffuser, add it to several ounces of carrier oil to make it applicable to the skin, or mix a few drops into moisturizers, perfumes, candles, or other products that you wish to add the floral gardenia scent.

How Long Does Gardenia Oil Last?

Gardenia oil, like many other essential oils, lasts quite a long time when stored properly. The best way to store your oil is in a dark or amber-colored glass bottle, as this preserves the integrity and aroma of the oil. You should store your gardenia oil in a cool, dark place when not using it, and check the oil regularly for signs of expiration, such as cloudiness and scent changes, before use.

With proper storage, your gardenia oil may last several months up to a year or two.

Adding Gardenia Oil to Your Routine

Gardenia oil has a wonderful smell and many practical uses – making this oil at home is a great way to utilize any gardenia flowers and create a long-lasting oil that can be added to your routine. Whether creating perfumes or aromatherapy oils at home or scenting candles and cosmetic products, gardenia oil is the perfect floral oil to have on hand.