Fakhar Lattafa Women Room Spray 450ml

Fakhar Lattafa Women Room Spray 450ml is made for a room rather than for skin, and at 450ml it is a bottle you keep on a shelf and use without counting.

The scent is the same shape as a fine fragrance, which is unusual in a home spray. Apple and bergamot give the first seconds a crisp, juicy brightness and ginger adds a dry heat behind them, so the opening has a bite that most room sprays lack. Then it turns herbal and clean: lavender brings its soapy calm, sage a dusty savoury note, juniper berry a cool resinous snap, and geranium a green, slightly sharp edge that keeps the mixture from smelling like an air freshener. What stays in the room afterwards comes from the base. Tonka bean is soft and faintly bitter, like the inside of a biscuit tin, amberwood adds a warm dry hum, cedarwood a clean sharpness and vetiver an earthy, rooty finish.

Used across a hallway or a living room, the top notes burn off within a few minutes and the tonka bean and cedarwood layer is what lingers, which is the right way round for a room spray. A couple of pulls into the air of an average sized room is enough, and it does not need to be aimed at soft furnishings to work.

The volume is the point here. This is a household bottle, bought to be used daily on linen, in a bathroom or before guests arrive, rather than a small decorative one that gets rationed. It also makes an easy gift for someone who already wears fragrance and notices what a room smells like, since it is recognisably perfumery rather than a scented candle in spray form.

The maker, Lattafa Perfumes, keeps its operation in Sharjah and puts its UAE manufacturing on the label. The man who started it had come from Pakistan and picked up the trade in a Dubai shop belonging to his uncle, and the firm he went on to build sells attars and perfume oils as well as sprays for the home.