Carrier Oils: How to Choose One for Your Blends

When you dilute an essential oil to 1%, the other 99% of the bottle is carrier oil. That is the part that sits on your skin for hours, the part that goes stale on the shelf, and the part most recipes describe in two words: "any carrier." It deserves a little more thought than that, and the good news is that two simple ideas cover most of what matters.

Amyris Essential Oil bottle

Amyris Essential Oil

Our own Amyris Essential Oil, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.

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The carrier is nearly the whole blend

We recommend diluting our amyris to 0.5% to 2% in a carrier oil for skin use. The Tisserand Institute's published ranges sit in the same neighbourhood: roughly 0.5% to 1.2% for the face and 1% to 3% for body oils, with gentler ranges for reactive skin (Tisserand Institute, dilution). Do that arithmetic and the carrier is 97% to 99.5% of whatever you make. If a blend smells flat after a few months or feels heavy on the skin, the carrier is the first place to look, well before the essential oil.

We do not sell carrier oils, so you will find them at a craft supplier, a pharmacy or a good grocery. What follows is how we would shop for one.

Idea one: how long will it stay fresh?

Plant oils go rancid by oxidation, and how quickly depends largely on how much polyunsaturated fat they hold. A 2026 laboratory study heated four oils with air and timed how long each resisted oxidation. Jojoba lasted longest, then olive, then sunflower, then rosehip, and the order tracked each oil's polyunsaturated fat content (Fagoaga et al., Antioxidants, 2026). It was a heat test, so it ranks oils rather than predicting months on a shelf, but the ranking is the useful part.

In plain terms: a delicate, high-linoleic oil such as rosehip or sunflower is lovely in a small bottle you will finish quickly, and a poor base for a blend you want to keep for a year. If you are making something to sit in a drawer, such as a roller bottle or a beard oil, reach for the steadier end of the list.

Idea two: jojoba is not like the others

Most carriers are triglyceride oils, the same family as cooking oils. Jojoba is a liquid wax, made mostly of wax esters. That chemistry is why it is so steady: in a 2022 study, jojoba showed less change after weeks of heat than olive oil or squalene did (BPB Reports, 2022). The same paper found crude jojoba oils from different producers varied from one another, so a good bottle still comes from a seller who can say where it was made and when.

For amyris, jojoba is our first suggestion for anything you plan to keep. Amyris is a quiet, creamy-woody base note, and a nearly odourless, long-lasting carrier lets it do its work without anything else muddying the scent.

Matching the carrier to the job

Smell and feel before you commit

If you can, put a few drops of the carrier on the back of your hand and rub them in. You'll notice how quickly it sinks in, whether it leaves a slick film, and whether it smells of anything at all. That is only to judge the feel; patch testing a finished blend on the inner forearm still comes first.

Then choose a bottle size you will actually finish. A small bottle you use up is better than a big one that sits half-full on the shelf, and it is a lot kinder to the oil you blend into it.

Keep it simple at first

You do not need a shelf of carriers. One steady, mild oil that you like the feel of will carry nearly every blend you make, and learning it well is more useful than owning five you half know. Once you have a favourite, you'll notice how much easier it is to judge a blend, because the only thing that changes from batch to batch is the essential oil.

When you do want to try a second carrier, change only that, and keep the rest of the recipe exactly the same. It is the same one-change-at-a-time habit that works for scent, and it tells you plainly what the new oil does to the feel.

A small habit that pays off

Write the purchase date on the bottle, keep it cool and out of the light, and trust your nose. Fresh carriers smell faint and neutral or gently nutty. If yours has turned sharp, like old crayons or paint, it is time for a new one. That test is our practical reading of the oxidation research rather than a published standard, but it is a reliable way to avoid wasting good essential oil in a tired base.

Amyris Essential Oil bottle

Amyris Essential Oil

Amyris Essential Oil from our own shop, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.

From $23.99

Shop Now →

Sources & Further Reading