SOSA · The Founder Diaries · Hyderabad Homes
First clear the air.
Then scent it
The smell of dinner in the living room at ten at night is not a fragrance problem. Adding fragrance to it makes a third smell, and nobody wants the third smell.
After cooking there is an order of work: extract, clear, air, and only then fragrance. Skip a step and the perfume ends up wearing the tadka.
One of the SOSA guides for Hyderabad homes. For the rest of the apartment, read home fragrance for a premium apartment in Hyderabad.
The answer in 30 seconds
After cooking, in order
- Extract while you cook. The chimney on before the pan is hot, and for a while after.
- Clear the source. Pans, the hob, the bin. Smell lingers where food does.
- Air the room. A few minutes of through-draught does more than an hour of perfume.
- Then fragrance, in the living room. Away from the kitchen and the table.वायु Vaayu
Why fragrance cannot do the first three jobs
Cooking leaves oil and steam in the air, and they settle on surfaces and hang where the air is still. A diffuser adds fragrance to that air. It takes nothing away. The result is familiar to anyone who has tried it: a room that smells of dinner and of white tea at the same time.
So I ask people to treat the kitchen as a ventilation problem and the living room as a fragrance one, and to keep the two apart in time. While you cook, and for a while afterwards, the extractor and an open window do the work. The diffuser can simply be off. When the air is clear, usually well after the meal, a short low run in the living room brings the home back to itself.
Where the kitchen is open to the living and dining space, placement matters more. Keep the source at the far end of the living area from the hob, and away from the dining table, where fragrance competes with food. In a home with a closed kitchen, shut the door while you cook and most of the problem never reaches the living room.
Vaayu's run windows make the gap easy: one in the early evening before you cook, and a late one after. I would not run fragrance through the meal itself.
| An evening, in order | |
|---|---|
| Before cooking | Kitchen door shut, if there is one. Extractor on. Any fragrance window already finished. |
| While cooking | Extraction and an open window. No fragrance. |
| After the meal | Clear the hob and the bin. Leave the extractor running for a while, and air the room. |
| Later | A short, low run in the living room, away from the kitchen and the table. |
| Next morning | If the room still smells of food, the answer is more airing, not more fragrance. |
“Treat the kitchen as a ventilation problem and the living room as a fragrance one, and keep the two apart in time.”
For your interior designer: fragrance and kitchen airflow
If the kitchen and living space are being planned together, a scent point should be drawn with the extraction in mind, not after it.
- Mark the extractor. Where it sits, and where it discharges.
- Mark every opening between the kitchen and the living space. A door, a hatch, an open counter.
- Put the scent point in the living zone. At the far end from the hob.
- Keep it away from the dining table and the worktops. Fragrance has no place near food.
- Test a low setting after a cooked meal. An empty flat tells you nothing.
वायु and पवन · for the living room, after the air is clear
A short run, late in the evening
वायु Vaayu: published for up to 1,000 m³ of a suitable connected zone · waterless cold-air mist with no water and no heat · run windows of 1, 4, 8 or 24 hours · 400 ml tank · app and timer · key-lock · under 38 dB.
पवन Pawan, for a living room that is one enclosed room: up to about 500 sq ft · plugs straight into the socket · silent · app and timer · 200 ml of oil included.
Current prices and oil sets are on each product page.
See वायु VaayuSee पवन PawanAbout Raghava IRIS
Raghava IRIS at Raidurgam is listed by its developer with four-bedroom residences that include a home theatre, at 5,430 sq ft in one of its towers. Whether a given home's kitchen is open or closed to the living space is something only its plan can tell you, and it decides which half of this guide applies to you.
Named as an example, not as an installation. SOSA has no affiliation with the project or its developer, and nothing here describes a particular unit.
Questions, answered
How do I make the living room smell fresh after cooking?
Should I run the diffuser while I cook?
Where should the diffuser go if my kitchen is open-plan?
Which scents work best after a meal?
Continue in the SOSA guides
If you would rather ask a person
Tell us how your kitchen opens
Closed, open to the dining area or open to everything, and what extraction you have. We will suggest where the scent point should be and when to run it.
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