You can either use essential oils for therapeutic effects or just Perfume oils for scenting a room. Although, rattan reeds are the best for wicking up the oil, you still need to mix your oil with the "Reed Diffuser Base". The reed diffuser base is specially formulated to aide your oil in wicking up the reeds. The "Reed Diffuser Reed" does not have any alcohol.

To prepare your oil for the reed diffuser, typical formulations is :

• Essential Oils : Mix about 80% Reed Diffuser Base, with about 20% Essential Oil
• Perfume Oils : Mix about 2.5 oz Reed Diffuser Base, with about 1.5 oz Perfume Oil

Reed Diffuser Base

The more reed diffuser base you add the more mellow the scent of the essential oil becomes to the point that it serves it's therapeutic effect without creating a headache. You can start this experiment with mixing up small amounts of the essential oil with the reed diffuser base, and each time write down the percentage mixed until you reach the desired mixture to make a larger amount. Remember, every time you change the essential oil, you have to search for a new mixing formula, which means you would need a different percentage of the new essential oil and the diffuser base mixture.

The base mixes well with fragrance oils and enhances the capillary action, encouraging the diffuser oil to travel up the reed diffuser sticks where the scent can be effectively dispersed into the environment. A formulation with too much Essential or Perfume oil will not effectively migrate up the reeds, and will hinder effective scent dispersion.

Why Not Alcohol?
Alcohol is less dense and evaporates quickly at a much lower temperature than water. When you mix alcohol with your oil, it evaporates at the room temperature, and with it, your oil evaporates at a quick and undesirable rate from the oil surface before even going through the reeds. That's why a cologne's scent does not last on the body too long, because the alcohol in the cologne evaporates with the body temperature which causes the scented oil in the cologne to dissipate. But perfume oils do not have alcohol so they last all day on the body.