How we write about essential oils

Essential oils attract a great deal of confident writing. Shop leaflets, social media posts and some popular books promise that a few drops will sort out sleep, skin, hormones or a cold. Our aroma guides try to do something plainer: say what an oil is, how people use it, what the evidence does and does not show, and how to keep everyone in the house safe while using it. This page sets out the rules we hold ourselves to, so you can judge the guides against them.

Safety comes first

Every guide that suggests putting oil on skin gives the dilution as a number: a percentage, and the drops for a stated amount of carrier oil. We work on the usual estimate of about 20 drops to 1 ml, and we say so, because droppers and oils vary. We never suggest swallowing essential oils, adding them to drinks or food, or using them inside the body in any other way.

Where an oil carries a particular risk, the warning sits right next to the advice rather than in small print at the bottom. That covers phototoxic citrus oils, oils usually avoided in pregnancy or epilepsy, and oils that are unsafe around cats or small children.

Honest about the evidence

We do not write that an oil cures, treats or prevents any illness. When research exists, we describe it as it is: small trials, reviews with mixed results, findings from lab dishes that may not apply to people. When there is no research worth the name, we say that too. Much of what people enjoy about aromatherapy is scent and ritual. We think that is a perfectly good reason to use it, as long as nobody mistakes it for treatment.

Nothing to sell

We do not sell oils, diffusers, courses or certificates. There are no affiliate links in the aroma corner, no sponsored posts and no favourite brands. When a guide mentions equipment, such as a water diffuser or a glass dropper bottle, it describes the type, not a product. That leaves us free to say an expensive oil is not worth the money, or that a cheap one has simply gone off.

How we choose sources

We lean on three kinds of source. The first is public health bodies: the US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the NHS, and Japan's health ministry along with the information services it supports. The second is specialist safety references, above all Robert Tisserand and Rodney Young's book Essential Oil Safety, which careful practitioners widely treat as the standard text on dilution limits and risky oils. The third is systematic reviews, such as those published by Cochrane, which pool the results of many trials.

Older aromatherapy books are lovely for history and for describing scent. Some of their safety advice, though, such as dabbing certain oils on neat or taking drops by mouth, has since been dropped by safety writers, so we check before repeating anything. Our reading list explains how to weigh a source yourself.

Who writes the guides

Ruth Ellery leads the aroma pages. She has blended oils at home for two decades and likes nothing better than an exact drop count. Other writers on the team read each guide before it goes up, with special attention to anything about medicines, pregnancy and children. None of us writes as a doctor or a therapist, and we do not give personal advice or treatment.

Mistakes and updates

If you spot an error, a dilution that looks wrong, or advice that has been overtaken by newer safety guidance, please tell us through the contact page. We check every report against our sources. When a correction changes the substance of a guide (a number, a warning, a statement about evidence) we fix it promptly and change the updated date on the page. Small wording changes are made quietly.

What these guides cannot do

The aroma guides are general information for healthy adults using oils at home. They cannot take account of your skin, your health history or the medicines you take, and they are no substitute for a doctor, midwife or pharmacist. Please ask one of them first if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, caring for a baby, living with epilepsy, asthma or a long-term skin condition, or taking regular medicines. If an oil ever causes a spreading rash or trouble breathing, or someone swallows it by mistake, get medical help straight away rather than looking for the answer here.