How LAURENE Began & Our Fragrance Lab Experiments
I have zero patience for a cleaning spray that leaves your kitchen smelling like a hospital.
And that’s why I started making my own surface cleanser after cleaning my kitchen one day and thinking: why does cleaning have to come with that smell? The counters are clean, but now the whole room smells like something I should wear gloves around.
I started messing around with scents and fragrances
Lemon was the obvious place to start.
Everyone loves the smell of lemon, and I liked it too, but on its own, the smell would vanish almost immediately. So I tried it with different combinations. Some were too sweet, many smelt like air freshener, while others were just strange, as my husband and kids always remind me!
Eventually, I hit the sweet spot with lemon, pine and rosemary. And then I spent a very long time (4 years!) trying to get them to behave themselves.
But being a perfectionist, I tried many different fragrances before realising that lemon, pine, and rosemary were the ones for me, and my signature Verdant Citrus scent was born.
My fragrance lab
I’m blessed that I had a fragrance lab at my beck and call comprising the most demanding and critical testers on the planet – my kids.
Because they were very young, they had no filter, and no need to make mummy feel good. So if a batch didn’t pass the smell test with them, it was back to the drawing board no matter how much I liked it.
The perfectionist in me struck again, and I continued testing for four years in my kitchen and around the house before realising version 2, done during year 1, was the one we all liked the most.
So what does Verdant Citrus actually smell like?
You get a whiff of all three scents at one go, and I realised that my scent lab testers (my kids and hubby) would each smell different things. Some said they loved how lemon dominated the room, while the others said pine or rosemary came through first.
I guess it really depends on how your nose is tuned. Fragrance, like good wine, art, and food, is a personal preference. But I was glad that my verdant citrus scent really did smell a little like a green tree-lined pine forest surrounded by a rosemary garden and lemon trees.
Yes, it smells wonderful, but does the LAURENE Surface Clean actually clean?
This was another reason why the testing period took four years, as I formulated different plant-derived cleansers that cut through everyday grease and grime on surfaces like counters and tables.
And because I was making it for my own home first, I tested it on the things that actually needed cleaning in my house. This meant it had to be safe enough for my own kids’ toys and the counter where I prep their food, since that’s what it was tested on first.
Why do our 2 products smell the same?
We launched two products, a surface cleanser and a room mist. And I deliberately used the same fragrance instead of creating a second one.
Why?
Simple reason actually. Not all surfaces need cleaning or are made of materials where a spray-on and wipe-off cleanser would work. But my scent lab testers and I love the verdant citrus smell so much we were spraying it all over our house.
And the verdant citrus room mist came to life.
And yes, it's still made here
Every bottle is still hand-blended here in Singapore, in small batches, the same way I made the very first version in my kitchen.
I haven’t handed it off to a factory just because more people are buying it now. If that changes one day, it’ll be because I found a way to do it without changing what’s actually in the bottle.
One last thing
My kids weren’t easy to convince. If Verdant Citrus survived them, it’ll survive your house too. Try it, clean your home, make the space like a pine forest surrounded by a rosemary garden and lemon trees, and enjoy!
