DirtyScent
The standard · draft v0.1

What good actually looks like.

Published in full, so you can work towards it without talking to us — and so that anything we verify means something specific.

Two things before the detail

Scope is part of the claim. Almost nowhere is fragrance-free everywhere. A café can control its own cleaning products and not its customers; a clinic can control staff and not the shared lobby of the building it rents. So every level is declared with a scope, and a partial honest claim is worth far more than a total vague one.

We flag fragrance function, not fragrance origin. Essential oils, botanical blends and "naturally derived" scent are fragrance. A lavender diffuser fails this standard exactly as a synthetic one does. Anything else would be useless to the people the standard is for.

The three levels

They're cumulative — Level 2 includes Level 1, Level 3 includes both.

Level 1

No added fragrance in the space

The single highest-impact change, and usually free — it's mostly removal.

  • No plug-in air fresheners, aerosol sprays, or automatic dispensers
  • No reed diffusers, scented candles, wax melts or incense
  • No scent diffused through the HVAC system — no scent marketing of any kind
  • No scented bin liners, drawer liners, or scented waste bags
  • No fragrance-emitting devices in restrooms, including urinal blocks and toilet-rim products
  • Seasonal decoration free of scent — scented pinecones, room sprays, holiday candles
Level 2

Fragrance-free consumables

Everything you buy that ends up in the air a customer breathes.

  • Cleaning products fragrance-free — floor, surface, glass, restroom
  • Hand soap and hand sanitiser fragrance-free
  • Laundry detergent and, critically, no fabric softener or dryer sheets on any linen, towel, robe, or napkin a customer touches
  • Paper products unscented — tissue, paper towel, toilet paper
  • Bin and floor deodorising powders eliminated, not switched to "fresh scent"
  • Any product labelled "unscented" checked against its ingredient list — see the warning below
Level 3

Staff and supplier policy

The hardest level, and the one most worth being honest about.

  • Written policy asking staff not to wear fragrance — perfume, cologne, scented lotion, strongly scented hair products
  • Policy communicated at induction and available in writing
  • Contractors and cleaning services bound by the same requirement in their contract
  • Someone named as responsible for it, so it survives a manager leaving
  • A route for customers to report a lapse without confrontation

Declaring scope

Alongside the level, a claim states where it applies:

  • Whole site — including restrooms, treatment rooms and staff areas
  • Public areas — customer-facing spaces only
  • Designated area — a specific room, floor, or appointment time

"Level 2, public areas" is a genuinely useful thing for someone to read. "Fragrance-free" with no scope is not, because the person reading it has to assume the worst and stay home.

Where places usually fail

This isn't ranked by evidence, because we don't have any yet. These are the failure points we expect to matter, reasoned from how buildings are actually run — not measured from member reports, of which we currently have none.

When there are reports, this list gets reordered by them and we'll say so. We're not going to borrow authority we haven't earned on the page that exists to be credible.

Overlooked

Restrooms

Everything gets fixed except the one room with an automatic dispenser in it. Ventilation solves the underlying problem that air freshener is masking.

Outsourced

Laundry

Towels, robes and napkins carry fabric softener straight to a customer's face. Often outsourced, so nobody in the building knows what's used.

Mislabelled

"Unscented" that isn't

Masking fragrance added to cover a base odour, then marketed as unscented. Read the ingredient list, not the front of the bottle.

Structural

Shared buildings

A perfect suite off a lobby the landlord scents. Worth declaring honestly — "our floor only" is a real and useful claim.

Contractual

Contractors

The cleaning company brings its own products at 6am. Fix it in the contract, not with a conversation.

Seasonal

December

Compliance all year, then scented candles and cinnamon spray for six weeks. Members notice, and it costs the trust built up over the year.

How to check a product properly

Ignore the front label. On the ingredient list, look for fragrance, parfum, aroma, or any named essential oil. If you see parfum, you cannot know what else is in there — that single word can stand for hundreds of undisclosed compounds. Genuinely fragrance-free products list no fragrance ingredient at all.

What this standard is not

It is not an air-quality test, and it is not a guarantee.

We do not measure anything. There is no sampling, no VOC reading, no laboratory. The standard describes practices, and verification confirms those practices were documented and evidenced on a date.

A business meeting Level 3 at whole-site scope can still have a customer react — to a member of the public wearing perfume, to a delivery, to something nobody controls. That's why verified listings show member reports alongside the badge, including reports that contradict it.

This is a draft, and we want it argued with

Version 0.1 — reasoned rather than measured, since we have no member reports yet. It will be wrong in places. If you live with this and something here is missing — or if you run a business and a requirement is unreasonable in practice — that's worth more to us than agreement.

hello@dirtyscent.com, or start verification if you're already there.