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The Spruce / Brian Kopinski
As alternative therapies gain steam, essential oils have wafted into the spotlight. Volatile, potent compounds extracted from plants by distillation or expression, essential oils are immensely versatile. These aromatic chemicals have plentiful applications, from scenting homes and aromatherapy to self-care rituals and therapeutic applications.
To learn more about these powerful compounds, we turned to Jade Shutes, founder and director of education for The School for Aromatic Studies, who says, “Essential oils have a wide range of therapeutic benefits. Essential oils can support emotional well-being, reduce inflammation in the skin, enhance immunity, support wound healing, respiratory and digestive health, and much more.” Essential oils can be inhaled, applied topically after dilution, or popped into a humidifier or oil diffuser to infuse your home with fragrance.
With more essential oil brands to choose from than ever before, we did the research for you. We took a look at a wide variety of different essential oil companies, comparing different brands based on their product selections, quality of ingredients, third-party certifications, and pricing.
Plant Therapy
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Plant Therapy
Plant Therapy's wide selection is worth a sniff. These essential oils are sourced from reputed suppliers and are third-party tested and supported by GC/MS reports, so you can be assured of their quality. Plant Therapy products are also Leaping Bunny certified cruelty free. Some—but not all—of the essential oils are USDA organic certified. Ultimately, the oil selection is unbeatable in value and quality.
Planet Therapy’s offerings cover the entire caboodle, including tailor-made kid-safe and Pup & Pony Safe selections. Apart from essential oil sets and samplers, you can buy body care, household, and even essential oils in bulk, along with other doodads at this one-stop site. Plant Therapy sells direct-to-consumer, keeping prices competitive, and many oils are available for less than $10. If you’re not satisfied, you can return the oils, even after 90 days.
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Vitruvi
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Vitruvi
Siblings Sara Panton and Sean Panton sought an alternative to traditional home scents chock-full of toxins, so they bottled and labeled Vitruvi’s first few essential oil collections by hand. This effort blossomed into a design-forward brand that creates not only essential oils but also humidifiers, home air fresheners, and diffusers, including the highly stylish Vitruvi Porcelain Essential Oil Diffuser.
The brand’s essential oils are made with plant-based ingredients and are free of fillers, diluting oils, and synthetic fragrances. They’re sourced from over 20 countries, including France and Madagascar. We love the elegant, minimal packaging for the vegan, cruelty-free essential oils. The bottles are UV-protected, printed using plant-based ink, and bundled in biodegradable packaging that can be recycled and reused.
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Rocky Mountain Oils
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Rocky Mountain Oils
Rocky Mountain Oils retails pure, authentic, and unadulterated GC/MS tested and independently verified essential oils directly to customers in amber glass bottles. The brand’s broad collection includes singles, blends, kits, organic oils, kid-safe oils, roll-ons, and other options—meaning there’s something for every kind of essential oil enthusiast.
Committed to sustainability, Rocky Mountain Oil is in the process of switching to sustainable packaging and has even initiated a bottle recycling program. Regular customers can benefit from the Rocky Mountain Oil rewards program, which earns you points on purchases and referrals.
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Pura D’or
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Popular hair, skin, and body care brand Pura D’or is also home to an aromatherapy lineup. Working with professional certified aromatherapist Mikki Anderson, the limited selection of essential oils is ethically sourced from family-run farms and small distilleries. The products are USDA certified organic, Leaping Bunny cruelty-free, and vegan. However, the brand hasn’t made quality test results available as other brands have.
While Pura D’or offers a few basic essential oils in 4-ounce bottles, such as tea tree, lemon, lavender, cedarwood, ylang ylang, and more, it’s the brand’s nifty and affordable essential oil kits that we really like. You can choose either the box sets featuring 10 or 16 10-milliliter bottles of essential oils for dabbling in aromatherapy or boosting your vitality.
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Aura Cacia
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Aura Cacia
If you’ve popped into your local Target or Whole Foods, chances are you’ve seen Aura Cacia’s essential oils on the shelves. Aura Cacia has been a part of a member owned co-op since it was founded in 1982, putting its employees, growers, and the community at the forefront of its operations. Aura Cacia’s sustainably sourced oils are verified for purity with GC/MS testing, and they’re free of synthetic colors, fragrances, and preservatives.
The brand’s product selection boasts an impressive variety of single and blended oils, USDA certified organic and premium oils, all starting at reasonable prices. You can also shop a collection of diffusers, mists, and bath and skin products for adults and kids.
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Edens Garden
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Grace Martin’s Edens Garden got its start in 2009. Partnering with global farmers and distilleries, in little over a decade the brand has built an impressive portfolio of over 250 single oil and synergistic blends for you to choose from, for therapeutic use as well as aromatherapy.
The essential oils are ethically and sustainably sourced, GC/MS batch tested for quality, and don’t contain synthetics, fragrances, fillers, or chemicals. Apart from the broad array of medicinal and feel-good blends and products, Edens Garden gives you an option to pick and choose to create your own sets.
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Saje Natural Wellness
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Saje Natural Wellness
Saje’s holistic and worry-free wellness ethos is behind its purposeful collection of essential oils, and home (including cleaning kits), skin, and hair care products. Saje's its essential oils are free from parabens, SLS, artificial colorants, synthetic fragrances, and fillers—all of which is supported by a GC/MS analysis.
Committed to sustainable business practices, a majority of Saje’s kits are made from recycled water bottles. Saje's oils and oil blends do run more expensive than most other essential oil brands, but the rave customer reviews and many different perks of these "clean" products make them worth the price, if you want to shop a brand committed to wellness and sustainability.
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Now Foods
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Now Foods
A household name for self-care products and dietary supplements, Now Foods was founded by Elwood Richard in the 1960s with the intention of creating affordable, high-quality nutritional products. Today, the brand’s vast catalog includes pure essential oils (though there are some exceptions, like the synthetic jasmine, which is labeled such), blends, and USDA organic-certified essential oils.
The brand’s in-house state-of-the-art laboratory and experts verify the findings of external quality tests. You can trust that the oils are non-GMO, cruelty-free, and vegan, and are sold through many retailers, including Amazon. You can download the brand’s Purity Specification Guide to ferret out more information. Buying in bulk on discounted prices from essential oil vendors helps keep the oils affordable. You can also pick up no-frills diffusers, kits, and roll-ons.
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Aromatherapy Associates
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Aromatherapy Associates
Since they first started practicing aromatherapy in the 1970s, Geraldine Howard and Sue Beechey fell in love with essential oils. Wishing to help others explore the sensorial world of essential oils, they opened the first Aromatherapy Associates store in 1985, specializing in handcrafted intentional and purposeful blends created by a master blender from the company’s London-based laboratory.
Aromatherapy Associates’ blends are made from sustainably sourced ingredients from the environment, such as lavender from the Alps. The oils are free from synthetic fragrances, artificial colors, sulfates, parabens, and mineral oil, and they aren’t tested on animals. Aromatherapy Associates is a certified B Corp, meaning there’s a special emphasis on the people and planet before profits.
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Garden of Life
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Garden of Life
When it comes to responsible business practices, nutritional supplement company Garden of Life ticks the right boxes. With a wide range of wellness products, the company carries relevant certifications such as B Corp and Carbon Neutrality. Though Garden of Life offers a small selection of essential oils, these products are USDA organic-certified, non-GMO, and vegan.
A great place to start is the brand’s essential oil starter kit, which features the most popular picks like lavender, peppermint, lemon, and tea tree essential oils. You can use these oils for a range of purposes, be it for meditation, a body massage, or for DIY home products.
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doTerra
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doTERRA
DoTERRA is a multi-level marketing essential oil company and one of the bigger players in the marketplace, selling pure, responsibly sourced essential oils, albeit for a higher price. To assess the quality of its oils, doTERRA has instituted an internal standard of quality, the Certified Pure Tested Grade protocol, along with third-party testing.
The company’s repertoire of essential oils is vast, with hard-to-find scents, such as the rose oil, where 10,000 rose blossoms are plucked to create 5 milliliters of precious oil priced at a pocket-emptying $366.67 (though there is a wholesale discount). Apart from the oils alone, doTERRA offers a whole smorgasbord of offerings, including skin and hair care products, supplements, diffusers, and other accessories.
Just note you'll need a membership in order to buy doTERRA's products.
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Mountain Rose Herbs
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Mountain Rose Herbs
Mountain Rose Herbs had humble beginnings as a herb retail shop and mail order company, but it now operates from a sprawling 12-acre campus in Eugene, Oregon. Here, you’ll find essential oils backed by a slew of certifications. Mountain Rose Herbs carries credentials as a fair-trade organization with organic and non-GMO products, all of which are produced at a zero-waste facility. (Just note that not all of the brand’s essential oils are certified organic.)
The depth of the brand’s catalog spans not only essential oils but also teas, herbs, and spices, bath and body products, and much more. We love the simplicity of the kits, such as the Lovers Essential Kit with five organic oils, including ylang ylang and Australian sandalwood. If you’re in the mood to splurge, shop for the rare-to-find pure oils, such as Jasmine Absolute and Vanilla Absolute, which cost well over $1,000 for four ounces.
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Revive Essential Oils
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Revive Essential Oils
A well-priced, quality alternative to pricier brands, Revive keeps costs low by selling directly to customers through its website. The oils are wildcrafted, and Revive states that all are free from pesticides, additives, adulterants, fillers, synthetics, and dilutions, with a supportive GC/MS verification. You’ll find a solid selection of oil options, including kits and various bottle sizes.
Revive Essential Oils created its own versions of popular blends as well as signature blends for you to pick from. An easy option is to pick up the starter kit, which includes 10 full-size bottles and an ultrasonic diffuser. Revive also offers a generous 100-day return policy, and you can return even opened bottles of essential oil for a full refund.
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What to Look For in an Essential Oil Brand
You need to consider several factors while shopping for quality essential oils, especially in the absence of industry standards, says Jade Shutes, founder and director of education for The School for Aromatic Studies. While researching brands, you'll want to look for:
- The common and scientific name of the botanical on the label
- Whether the method of production is specified on that label
- Where in the plant the oil has been extracted from (flowers, leaves, stems, roots, or fruits)
- The color of the bottle (amber, blue, or green are the best options)
- The brand’s commitment to sustainability
- The company's reputation of the company
There are other criteria you can consider, too, like the oils and oil blends offered along with the formats in which they're sold (like oils only or oils in roll-on formats).
Ingredients
A great place to start your search for quality essential oils is the list of ingredients on any given bottle. You can look at the ingredients used by specific brands or take a closer look at what’s inside an individual bottle. This is key, as it’ll allow you to determine what, exactly, the oil is made with. Pure essential oils, which tend to be the most expensive, have nothing beyond the oil itself. However, many oils can come with unexpected surprises, like fillers, water, and additives. For the safest options, look for short ingredient lists and brands that offer full transparency around what’s inside every bottle of oil.
Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry Testing
“Batch specific Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) testing is essential to show that there is no adulteration and to highlight the purity of the tested essential oil,” says Marge Clark, owner of Nature's Gift Aromatherapy and author of “Essential Oils and Aromatics.” Rigorous and independent third-party GC/MS testing helps analyze the chemicals that constitute an essential oil; it also helps you understand what, exactly, goes into various oils and blends. Thus, look for the test reports so you can make an informed decision before purchasing.
Certifications
Certifications offer additional insight into essential oil brands and their products. For example, an organic certification such as USDA organic indicates that an essential oil is made almost entirely from organic ingredients and free from fertilizers and pesticides. Other third-party certifications to consider include PETA’s Vegan & Cruelty Free certification and Leaping Bunny Cruelty Free certification. Another common certification is Non-GMO, which means the essential oil was produced without genetic engineering and its ingredients are not derived from GMOs.
Scent
Scent is no minor detail—it can make or break an essential oil! You want to seek out oils that give off pleasant fragrances and choose products that smell nice to your nose. But it’s not always as simple as choosing a singular scent that you already know and love. Essential oils can be blended together, either in a single bottle or inside a diffuser for a more customized mix. To get an idea of which scents complement each other, starter kits and prepackaged blends are a great place to start and seek out some inspiration.
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Are essential oils helpful?
Essential oils can yield several potential benefits beyond simply boosting your mood. Some essential oils are said to have antibacterial effects, while others can potentially reduce pain, such as headaches and joint pain. They may soothe even minor burns, including sunburns, and tackle niggling skin concerns. “They also have a wide variety of emotional effects, ranging from easing insomnia and soothing anxiety and depression," says Clark.
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How do you use essential oils?
Essential oils can be used in myriad ways. Add a few drops to diffusers, dabble in DIY laundry detergents and home cleansers, or massage it onto your skin. Essential oils do need to be diluted to prevent possible adverse skin reactions and toxicity. Shutes recommends diluting them with a carrier oil, unscented cream or lotion, or aloe vera gel. “For adults, a 2.5 percent dilution is good. This means adding a total of 15 to 20 drops of essential oil into one fluid ounce of carrier liquid or cream. For children under the age of 5 and over the age of 3, use a 0.5 to 1 percent dilution.”
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How do I choose an essential oil brand?
Depending on your needs, you can shortlist brands by considering their quality and reputation, the variety of oils available, the frequency and quantity of your usage, the sizes available, whether they are kid- or pet-friendly, and if they’re food grade. Clark goes a step further and recommends looking for companies with membership of professional associations, such as the Alliance of International Aromatherapists or the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy.
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How do you know if essential oils are good quality?
“Place a drop of essential oil on a clean white sheet of blotting or watercolor paper. The essential oil should evaporate completely within a 24-48-hour period, leaving no stain (unless the essential oil is colored, as is the case with some citrus oils and German chamomile) or reminiscent aroma,” says Shutes, adding that this basic test works well on highly volatile oils such as citrus oils, but not with viscous essential oils like vetiver and sandalwood.
You can also add a drop of essential oil to water. “If the water becomes discolored or turns milky, then it has been diluted with water and an emulsifier has been used to keep the essential oil and water together,” she says.
Finally, Shutes recommends using your sense of smell. “Our sense of smell is often underrated as a tool in determining the quality of an essential oil, but it is perhaps the most powerful tool we have.” With practice, you can strengthen it. “For instance, first smell an excellent-quality essential oil, then immediately smell a questionable or low-quality essential oil. There should be a distinct difference in the quality and effect of the aroma,” she explains.
The Checkout Counter
Before you check out, consider these products you may also need to start using essential oils.
- Asakuki Rock Essential Oil Diffuser: After testing dozens of essential oil diffusers, this one is our editors' favorite. With an impressively large water tank and high output, it'll have your home smelling wonderful with efficiency and ease.
- Homeweeks Aromatherapy Essential Oil Diffuser: As our favorite budget-friendly diffuser, this product is small but powerful. It diffuses your favorite oils silently, with two different mist modes so you can set your preferred level of fragrance.
- Levoit Dual 150 Ultrasonic Cool Mist Humidifier: Instead of opting for a dedicated essential oil diffuser, you can use this budget-friendly humidifier to disperse fragrance at home. After testing over 50 humidifiers, it's one of our favorite mist-style models.
Why Trust The Spruce?
Neeti Mehra writes about sustainability for The Spruce. As a researcher and consultant, she has edited three magazines during her career covering a broad range of topics. She is committed to sustainable, slow, and mindful living. She personally uses essential oils as a mood booster and particularly enjoys tea tree, rosemary, lavender, and lemongrass, using them in baths, a diffuser, or applied on her skin after diluting them.
For this article, she researched and shortlisted reputed essential oil brands based on their offerings, transparency, reviews and other key criteria.
Our Experts:
- Jade Shutes, founder and director of education for The School for Aromatic Studies
- Marge Clark, owner of Nature's Gift Aromatherapy and the author of "Essential Oils and Aromatics."
- Heather Adams, senior editor at The Spruce
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