How Can I Compare the Projection of Two Attars Online When I Want Something Noticeable During a Handshake but Not Across an Entire Room?

How Can I Compare the Projection of Two Attars Online When I Want Something Noticeable During a Handshake but Not Across an Entire Room?

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★ ★ A method you can run on any two bottles, including two I do not makeWorked on SOSA Adaa 3ml ₹379 against SOSA Ameeri 3ml ₹385 - two bases, two different answersSOSA publishes 6-8 hours on skin and no projection figure. Nobody else has measured one either
The short version — five things worth checking
For the reader with two product pages open in two tabs, trying to work out which of them will be the quieter purchase
  • 1 No projection figure exists for any attar, from SOSA or anybody else, because there is no industry-standard test for it. SOSA publishes one performance figure: 6-8 hours on skin.
  • 2 The base line is the comparable part of a listing. Dry materials - musk, vetiver, cedarwood, amberwood - carry less body than vanilla, tonka, leather, oudh and resinous amber.
  • 3 Format is the second signal. An alcohol-free oil applied by dab has no atomiser and no evaporating alcohol to carry material outward; a spray has both. This is Sonal's assessment, not a published spec.
  • 4 The concentration word is a strength input, not a radius output. More concentration means more of whatever character the composition already has; it does not make a heavy composition light.
  • 5 Worked example: Adaa 3ml ₹379 - white musk, vetiver, cedarwood, no oudh - against Ameeri 3ml ₹385 - soft oudh, amber, white musk. Three millilitres each is the only real test.
★ See SOSA Adaa - the drier of the two bases ₹379 Send Sonal the two listings ₹0
★ The worked example: two bases, and the third for scale
SOSA Adaa AttarSOSA Adaa Attar · 3ml ₹379Base: white musk, vetiver and cedarwood. Dry, unsweetened, no oudh in the composition - every material in the base line is a low-body one, which is what the method is looking forView Adaa →SOSA Ameeri AttarSOSA Ameeri Attar · 3ml ₹385Base: soft oudh, amber and white musk. Two of those three carry real body, which is the finding the method produces - warmer, fuller, and a smaller dab for the same effectView Ameeri →SOSA Mastani AttarSOSA Mastani Attar · 3ml ₹389Base: Mysore sandalwood, oudh, Madagascar vanilla and tonka. Included so you can see what a high-body base line looks like when you meet one on somebody else's product pageView Mastani →
✓ Every note named here is quoted off the live SOSA product pages, with nothing added ✓ No distance, radius or rating figure appears on this page, because none has ever been measured ✓ Nothing here predicts what another person will notice, say or think

Founder Diaries · Close Range · Presence Without Projection
By Sonal Sahani · ISIPCA Versailles 18 min read Updated October 2026
You are trying to compare a number that does not exist, which is why this feels impossible rather than merely difficult. No attar sold anywhere publishes a figure for how far it reads, and that is not an oversight by careless brands - there is no standard test for the property, so there is nothing to publish. What listings do publish is a pyramid, a format and sometimes a concentration word, and those three together will let you rank two bottles for body with reasonable confidence. That is the method on this page. I have worked it on two of my own so you can watch it run, and then you can take it to two product pages I had nothing to do with.
Quick answers — read this first
How can I compare how far two attars carry if neither publishes a number? Read three things, in this order. One, the base line of each pyramid - that is what you will be wearing during the hours that matter, and dry materials carry less body than sweet or resinous ones. Two, the format: an alcohol-free oil applied by dab behaves differently from a spray. Three, the concentration word, which tells you how much material is in the liquid and nothing about radius. On Adaa against Ameeri, that method says Adaa is the drier and lower-bodied of the two.

Why does nobody publish a projection figure? Because there is no agreed way to measure it. Longevity can be timed with a clock and that is why SOSA publishes 6-8 hours on skin. How far a fragrance reads at a given moment depends on the room, the air movement, the temperature, your skin, how much you applied and whose nose is doing the detecting, and no standardised test exists that holds those steady. A seller who quotes you a figure is quoting something nobody measured.

What if both listings only show top notes? Then the comparison genuinely cannot be made from the page and you should stop trying. Top notes tell you what the bottle smells like when it is opened in a shop and almost nothing about hour three. At that point the only honest test is the smallest size - three millilitres at ₹379 for Adaa or ₹385 for Ameeri - worn for a fortnight on your own skin. There is no sampler programme here; the 3ml is the trial.
The short answer
Short answer: Rank the base lines, then the formats, then ignore the adjectives. The base is the comparable part of any listing, because it is what remains during the hours when people are close to you: musk, vetiver, cedarwood, amberwood and tea are low-body materials, while Madagascar vanilla, tonka, leather, oudh and resinous amber are high-body ones. The format is a genuine second signal - a dabbed oil has neither an atomiser nor evaporating alcohol to carry material outward, which is my craft judgement rather than a published figure. The concentration word is a strength input and not a radius output. Applied to this range: Adaa is dry musk and light woods with no oudh, and Ameeri puts soft oudh and amber in its base, so Adaa is the lower-bodied of the two.
The pick: the Adaa 3ml at ₹379 if the method's answer matches what you want, and the Ameeri 3ml at ₹385 if what you actually want is warmth and you now know to dose it smaller. If you cannot choose, buying both threes - ₹379 and ₹385 - is a more informative purchase than one 12ml at ₹1,149.
Next step: read the base-notes guide for the underlying skill, the definitions page to keep longevity, projection and sillage separate, and the page on two listings with identical note lists for the harder version of this problem. If you want the vocabulary itself, the notes-to-look-for page is the glossary. Or send me the two listings and I will read them with you.
In this guide
Straight answer
How do I compare how far two attars carry when I can only see their online listings?
Rank their base lines for body, then check the format, then disregard the concentration word and every adjective on the page. On the two I know best, that method puts Adaa below Ameeri for body, which is why Adaa at ₹379 is the usual answer for a close-range brief. First, accept what cannot be done, because it saves you hours. You are looking for a comparable figure, and there is not one. SOSA publishes six to eight hours on skin, which is a duration and can be checked against a clock. Nobody publishes how far an attar reads, because the property depends on the room's size and air movement, the temperature, your own skin, how much you applied, where you applied it and whose nose is measuring - and no standard test holds those constant. So every projection figure you will ever see quoted for an attar was produced by somebody's impression, not by a measurement. That is not cynicism; it is the state of the industry, and knowing it is the first step of the method. Second, read the base lines against each other and nothing else. A published pyramid is a timeline: materials are sorted by how fast they leave warm skin. Thirty to forty minutes in, the top is substantially gone. Your comparison is about the hours after that, so the base line is the only part of the two listings that is actually about your question. Then sort the materials you find there into body. Low body: white musk, vetiver, cedarwood, amberwood, tea. High body: Madagascar vanilla, tonka, leather, oudh, resinous amber, and anything described as a gourmand accord. Count what each base line contains and the ranking usually falls out immediately. Position within the base matters too - soft oudh listed after a musk is a different proposition from oud leading a composition. Third, check the format, and know what kind of claim that is. An alcohol-free oil applied with a dab applicator has no atomiser to break it into drifting droplets, and no evaporating alcohol to carry material outward as it goes. A spray has both. In my experience at the bench that means an oil sits closer for the same quantity of material, and I want to be exact: that is my judgement as a perfumer, not a published specification, and it is a smaller factor than how much you apply. Fourth, understand what the concentration word does and does not tell you. Parfum, extrait, eau de parfum, eau de toilette, attar, perfume oil: these describe how much aromatic material is in the liquid, and in the case of attar and perfume oil also that there is no alcohol in it. Concentration is a strength input. It is not a radius output. A higher concentration of a dry woody composition is a stronger dry woody composition, and it does not become a loud one; a lower concentration of a vanilla-heavy composition is still a vanilla-heavy composition. Readers routinely treat the concentration word as the answer to this question, and it is not even in the top two signals. Fifth, and this is where the method ends honestly. If both listings show only top notes, as a surprising number do, the comparison cannot be made from the page at all, and the only remaining test is your own skin. Three millilitres is what that costs here - ₹379 or ₹385 - and there is no sampler programme here to pretend about. I would rather tell you to spend ₹379 on a real test than hand you a confident ranking built on marketing copy.

Why the figure you are looking for does not exist

It is worth being precise about the difference between the thing that can be measured and the thing that cannot, because the distinction is the backbone of this method. Longevity is a duration. You apply at eight, you check at two, and either there is something there or there is not. It is crude, it varies with skin and climate, but it is a measurement anybody can repeat, which is why a published figure for it exists and why SOSA's is six to eight hours on skin.

How far a fragrance reads is a different kind of quantity. It is a property of a moment and a room rather than of a bottle. The same dab in a sealed cabin with the cooling on, in a stairwell, and on a terrace in a breeze produces three entirely different answers, and that is before you account for the fact that the detector is another person's nose with its own sensitivity and its own adaptation. To publish a figure you would need a standardised room, a standardised dose, a standardised skin and a standardised nose. The industry has none of those, so there is nothing to publish, and anybody publishing anyway is publishing an impression dressed as data.

My own assessment, not a published figure
So here is my own contribution to the question, stated as the kind of thing it is. My judgement, built at the bench and on my own wrist over years, is that body in the base is the single best predictor of how close a composition will stay at a given dose: a base of dry musk and light woods has less material asserting itself at hour three than a base of oudh, amber and leather, and in the SOSA range that ranks Adaa first for closeness, then Ameeri, then Mastani, then Nawaab. I also judge the format to matter, because a dabbed oil has neither an atomiser nor an alcohol vehicle. Both of those are assessments by a perfumer rather than specifications. SOSA publishes 6-8 hours on skin and publishes nothing whatever about projection, sillage or scent radius, and I will not convert a judgement into a number, because a number implies a measurement that nobody has made. Your quantity still outranks everything in this paragraph.

The method, step by step, on any two listings

The comparison, in five steps
Run this with two product pages open. It works on bottles I do not make
The step What you are measuring What the result tells you
Step one: find both base lines and read nothing else yet Whether the listings publish a base at all, which is the precondition for the whole exercise If one or both shows only top notes, stop. The comparison cannot be made from the page and the smallest size is your only honest test
Step two: sort each base line into low body and high body How much material each composition will have asserting itself at hour three Low: musk, vetiver, cedarwood, amberwood, tea. High: Madagascar vanilla, tonka, leather, oudh, resinous amber. Count both lists
Step three: note the order within each base line Whether a high-body material leads the base or sits behind a musk Soft oudh listed third is a thread; oud leading a composition is the composition. Order inside the line is real information
Step four: compare formats, not adjectives Whether you are comparing like with like at all Alcohol-free oil applied by dab against an alcohol spray is a genuine difference and, in my judgement, favours the oil for closeness. Two oils against each other: skip this step
Step five: read the concentration word last, and demote it How much aromatic material is in the liquid, which is a strength input and not a radius output A higher concentration of a dry composition is a stronger dry composition. It does not turn a heavy base light, and it is a weaker signal than either of the first two steps
Notice that four of the five steps are about the base line and its contents. If you only ever do step two, you will be right more often than a reader who memorises every concentration word in the business.

The worked example: Adaa against Ameeri

Run the method on my own two and you can see exactly what it produces. Adaa's published base is white musk, vetiver and cedarwood. Three materials, all three on the low-body list, nothing sweet in the line at all, and no oudh anywhere in the composition. Ameeri's published base is soft oudh, amber and white musk. Three materials, of which one is a musk and two are on the high-body list, with the oudh qualified as soft and sitting at the front of the line rather than leading the whole composition.

Step three matters here, and it is why Ameeri is a legitimate answer for a close-range brief rather than a disqualified one. Soft oudh at the head of a base line, under a heart of Taif rose and Indian sandalwood, is a warmth material with a musk behind it. Compare Nawaab, where white royal oud is the first material named in the whole composition and amber and leather are underneath: the same family of material doing a structurally different job. The method separates those two without anybody needing to smell them, which is precisely what you wanted from a listing.

Step four is a draw: both are alcohol-free oils on a sandalwood and jojoba carrier with a dab applicator, so the format signal cancels and you are comparing composition against composition. Step five is also a draw, because both are attars at the same concentration. So the method's finding is clean - Adaa is the lower-bodied of the two, Ameeri is the warmer and fuller, and the practical consequence is that one dab of Ameeri is a complete dose where one dab of Adaa is a comfortable starting point. Neither of those is a verdict about quality. They are different registers with different dosing implications, which is all a listing can honestly tell you.

The worked comparison, side by side
The three readable signals, applied to two attars at the same concentration and in the same format
The signal Adaa · 3ml ₹379 Ameeri · 3ml ₹385
The base line as published White musk, vetiver, cedarwood Soft oudh, amber, white musk
Low-body materials in the base Three of three - musk, a dry root, a dry wood One of three - the white musk at the end of the line
High-body materials in the base None at all, and no oudh anywhere in the composition Two - soft oudh and amber, both warmth materials with real weight
Order within the base line Musk first, then the dry woods: nothing in the line is leading with weight Soft oudh first, which is why this is the warmer reading - though it is qualified as soft, and the composition is not oud-led
Format Alcohol-free oil, dab applicator, sandalwood and jojoba carrier Identical, so the signal cancels and you are comparing compositions
What the method concludes The lower-bodied of the two. One dab at the inner wrist is a comfortable starting point The warmer and fuller of the two. One dab is a complete dose rather than a starting point
Run those same six rows on Mastani - Mysore sandalwood, oudh, Madagascar vanilla and tonka - and you get four high-body materials in one base line, which is the clearest illustration in the range of what the method is detecting.

Four things in a listing that look like signals and are not

The first trap is the adjective. Light, fresh, subtle, intimate, discreet: none of these words corresponds to anything measurable, and all of them are chosen by whoever wrote the page. A composition described as subtle can have vanilla and tonka in its base, and a composition described as bold can be dry woods and musk. Read the pyramid; the adjective is decoration.

The second trap is the price. There is no relationship between what a bottle costs and how much body it has. Material cost tracks rarity and extraction difficulty, not weight in a room. The third trap is any claim that a fragrance is suitable for office wear or for close quarters, which tells you what market the brand is aiming at rather than what is in the liquid. And the fourth trap is your own nose during the first ten minutes of a test, because what you are smelling then is the top of the composition, which is the part that will be gone before any of your actual conversations. Your nose also adapts to a scent you are wearing within minutes, and the proper tests for working around that belong to another page in this cluster rather than this one.

What I would buy, and the case for buying both threes

Sonal’s recommendation
Adaa, the 3ml at ₹379, if the method's answer is the one you wanted - or both threes, at ₹379 and ₹385, if you would rather know than guess
You came looking for a number to compare. There is not one, and the three signals that do exist will get you closer than any figure a seller could have invented for you.
— Sonal Sahani, founder and perfumer, ISIPCA Versailles-trained
What the method recommends The SOSA Adaa 3ml at ₹379 - three low-body materials in the base and no oudh in the composition
The warmer alternative The Ameeri 3ml at ₹385, now that you know it is a complete dose at one dab rather than a starting point
The informative purchase Both 3mls - ₹379 and ₹385 - which tells you more than one 12ml at ₹1,149 ever could
What to read on any listing The base line, then the order within it, then the format. The concentration word last
What to disregard Every adjective, the price, and any stated figure for how far a fragrance reads
What I cannot tell you I cannot say whether anybody else will notice either of them, or mention it
If you are comparing two bottles from different houses and only one publishes a full pyramid, buy the one that publishes. That sounds like a glib rule and it is not: a brand that lists its base materials is a brand you can hold to something, and a brand that lists three top notes and an adjective has told you nothing you can check. Within this range, if the method leaves you genuinely undecided, buying both 3mls is the better experiment than buying one larger bottle - ₹379 and ₹385 for two fortnights of real wearing, against ₹1,149 for one register you have not lived with. There is no sampler programme here and I will not pretend otherwise; three millilitres is the trial size by design.
Everything above, on one page.
See SOSA Adaa · 3ml ₹379
If both of the listings in front of you publish only top notes - a lovely list of citrus and spice and nothing below it - then this method cannot be run and no amount of reading will fix that. In that case the comparison is not available to you from the page, and the smallest size of each is the only honest test. Buy the three millilitres, wear each for a fortnight, and let your own skin do what the listings refused to.
— the condition that changes this answer
Two tabs open, no figure to compare. Two routes out of this page.
One of them is a ₹379 experiment. The other costs nothing and uses my eyes instead of yours.
See SOSA Adaa · 3ml ₹379
If you have run the method and the low-body base is what you want: white musk, vetiver and cedarwood, no oudh in the composition, and three millilitres is a fortnight of real wearing.
Send Sonal the two listings
If the two pages in front of you are from houses I had nothing to do with. Paste both pyramids and I will rank them for body and tell you what each base line implies at hour three - including when neither is worth buying.
SS
ISIPCA
Versailles
A note from Sonal

I get sent screenshots of other brands' product pages several times a week, usually with the same question attached: which of these two is the quieter one. I like those letters, because the honest answer is a method rather than a verdict, and a method is a thing the reader keeps.

What I have learned from reading a few hundred of them is that the listings which make the comparison impossible are not the dishonest ones - they are the ones that publish only the pretty half of the pyramid. A brand that tells you its base is vanilla and tonka has been more useful to you than one that tells you its top is bergamot and sea salt, even if the first brand's composition is the heavier of the two. Published is better than flattering.

And when somebody asks me for a figure, I tell them that nobody has one, including me. I would rather lose a sale to a brand that invented a number than invent one myself, because the number is the part of this that cannot be checked - and a claim that cannot be checked is the one I am least entitled to make.

Frequently asked questions

Is there any published projection figure for an attar?
No, from any house. There is no industry-standard test for how far a fragrance reads, because the answer depends on the room, the air movement, the temperature, the dose, the application site and the nose doing the detecting. SOSA publishes one performance figure, 6-8 hours on skin, which is a duration and can be checked against a clock.
What part of a listing actually tells me how close an attar will stay?
The base line, read for body. Low-body materials are white musk, vetiver, cedarwood, amberwood and tea; high-body materials are Madagascar vanilla, tonka, leather, oudh and resinous amber. The order within the base line matters too, because a soft oudh behind a musk is a thread and an oud leading a composition is the composition.
Does a higher concentration mean a fragrance will carry further?
It means there is more aromatic material in the liquid, which makes the composition stronger in whatever direction it already goes. It is a strength input rather than a radius output: a higher concentration of a dry woody composition is a stronger dry woody composition, not a loud one. It is also a weaker signal than the base line or the format.
How do Adaa and Ameeri compare on this method?
Adaa's base is white musk, vetiver and cedarwood - three low-body materials, no oudh anywhere in the composition. Ameeri's is soft oudh, amber and white musk, which puts two warmth materials in the line with the oudh at its head. So Adaa is the lower-bodied of the two at 379 rupees, and Ameeri at 385 rupees is a complete dose at one dab rather than a starting point.
What should I do if a listing only publishes top notes?
Treat the comparison as unavailable and do not guess. Top notes tell you what the bottle smells like when opened and almost nothing about the hours when people are close to you. The smallest size is then the only honest test: three millilitres here, worn for a fortnight on your own skin. There is no sampler programme here, by design.
Is an oil attar always closer than a spray?
Not always, and the comparison is between products rather than formats. What Sonal will say, as a perfumer's judgement rather than a specification, is that a dabbed oil has neither an atomiser nor evaporating alcohol to carry material outward, so for the same quantity of material she would expect it to sit closer. How much you apply and where still outranks the format.
The method in one line
Rank the base lines for body, check the format, demote the concentration word, ignore the adjective.
See SOSA Adaa · 3ml ₹379 Describe a feeling to SOSA
Two product pages and no way to compare them?
SOSA — Paste both pyramids and I will rank them with you. I will tell you which base line carries more body at hour three, what the order inside it means, and whether either is worth your money.
Alcohol-free, DPG-free oil attars on a sandalwood and jojoba carrier · 6-8 hours on skin · no projection figure published by anyone, so none quoted here
Ask Sonal which one stays close → SOSA Adaa Attar · ₹379
Continue the read
More from SOSA
Editorial standards & sources
About this guide: Written by Sonal Sahani, ISIPCA Versailles-trained founder and perfumer at SOSA Home & Body. It is written for a reader who wants to be pleasant at conversational distance without filling a room, and the method - read the base of a pyramid, judge the format, then control the dose - applies to any brand. The product recommendations reflect the SOSA attar and perfume oil range only.

What this guide does and does not claim. Three things about a fragrance can be stated honestly, and this guide limits itself to them: what a composition contains, which SOSA publishes on each product page; how an oil behaves on skin compared with an alcohol spray, which is Sonal's own professional assessment and is marked as such wherever it appears; and how much you apply and where, which is entirely yours. The fourth thing - whether another person finds a scent pleasant, memorable or attractive - is theirs, and nothing here predicts it. SOSA makes no claim about compliments, attraction, confidence, mood, sleep, stress or wellbeing, and no medical, dermatological or allergy claim. Anyone with sensitive skin or a fragrance allergy should patch-test and use their own judgement or consult a doctor. Where a workplace is involved, that employer's own fragrance policy decides, not SOSA.

On performance figures. SOSA publishes one and only one performance figure for its attars: they are described as wearing 6-8 hours on skin, longer on warm or oily skin, and always as a skin scent rather than a room scent. SOSA does not publish projection, sillage or scent-radius data for any product, and no such figure appears anywhere in this guide. Any seller quoting a projection number for an attar is quoting something that was never measured. Wear time and perceived strength vary with skin, climate, dose and application site.

Facts verified 19 October 2026 against the live SOSA product pages: every SOSA attar is an alcohol-free, DPG-free oil perfume carried on sandalwood and jojoba oil with a built-in dab applicator, hand-blended in Pune, and sold in 3ml, 6ml and 12ml. SOSA Adaa (3ml ₹379 · 6ml ₹669 · 12ml ₹1,149) is the lightest in the range: Calabrian bergamot, green cardamom and neroli over jasmine sambac, magnolia and ylang ylang, on white musk, vetiver and cedarwood. SOSA Ameeri (₹385 · ₹679 · ₹1,165) is Persian saffron, pink pepper and bergamot over Taif rose and Indian sandalwood, on soft oudh, amber and white musk. SOSA Mastani (₹389 · ₹685 · ₹1,179) is litchi, bergamot and pink pepper over night-blooming jasmine and Damask rose, on Mysore sandalwood, oudh, Madagascar vanilla and tonka. SOSA Nawaab (₹399 · ₹699 · ₹1,199) is the deepest in the range: white royal oud, Mysore sandalwood, Kashmir saffron and aged tobacco leaf on amber, leather and white musk. The three evening attars come together as the SOSA Attar Trio (₹1,055 · ₹1,859 · ₹3,189). Those four are the whole attar range: oud is led in Nawaab and sits in the base of Ameeri and Mastani, Adaa carries none, white musk exists as a base note rather than as a scent of its own, and there is no single-note musk, no clean-linen or laundry accord and no aldehydic-soapy scent in the range. Separately, SOSA makes six perfume oils in 10ml, 50ml and 100ml - Zaffran, Tabac Noir and Samundar at ₹599, ₹1,799 and ₹3,499, and Khayaal, Chashni and Bahaar at ₹599, ₹1,899 and ₹3,599 - each an independent SOSA composition inspired by a widely known fragrance and not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the house named. SOSA does not run a sampler or tester programme; the 3ml attar is the trial size. A portion of every SOSA order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali. Prices and availability are subject to change - see the live product pages.
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