What sillage means (and how much you want)

Sillage is the scent trail a perfume leaves behind you, the part of a fragrance other people walk through after you have passed. The word is French for the wake behind a boat. Strong sillage scents a room; soft sillage stays within arm's length and only shows up when someone leans in.

Sillage is not projection

The two get mixed up constantly. Projection is how far a perfume radiates off your skin while you stand still. Sillage is what lingers in the space you move through. A fragrance can project loudly for an hour yet leave almost no trail, or sit quietly on skin and still scent a hallway. The full comparison lives in projection vs sillage.

What drives it

Concentration helps, but the notes matter more. Heavy materials carry: amber, oud, vanilla, big white florals, musk. Citrus and light green notes evaporate fast and barely trail at all, which is why most summer colognes stay polite no matter how much you spray. Skin, fabric and weather change it too. Scent clings to wool, and cold air kills a trail that summer heat would carry across a terrace.

How much do you actually want

More is not better. In an office or a restaurant, soft sillage is a feature: the person next to you notices, the rest of the floor does not. Save the room-fillers for evenings out and open air. Two sprays of anything is a safe start; the reactions around you will tell you the rest. How long a scent lasts on your own skin is a different question, covered in perfume longevity.

FAQ

How do I test a perfume's sillage?

Spray twice, wear it for an hour, then walk through a closed room and come back a minute later. What you smell on returning is the sillage. Your nose goes blind to your own perfume quickly, so a friend's verdict beats your own.

Which perfumes have strong sillage?

As families: ambers, gourmands, ouds and big white florals. Concentration adds to it, so an EDP of a heavy scent trails furthest. What the concentrations mean is its own subject; see EDT vs EDP.

Learning the vocabulary? The complete buying guide covers every term like this one.