The Most Natural Ways to Make Your Home Smell Like Fall

Welcome guests into your home with a fragrant homage to the season. You don't have to invest in artificial sprays and chemical-based products to do so, though. Simple and natural ingredients can go a long way when it comes to making your home smell like the autumnal season.

Mix a warm cider and rum punch that wafts its delicious fragrance throughout your home. Similarly, heat up a simmer pot—a great way to add fragrance without chemicals. It creates mouth-watering aromas that add moisture to the dry fall air. The key is to combine several elements that amplify the fragrance. With simmer pots, you are using heat to evaporate water droplets which travel throughout the house. Dried herbs like star anise and rosemary also make great decorations when combined with dried flowers in autumnal hues like yellow and orange. Place the fall bouquets in every room, inside of drawers and in doorways. Natural scented candles are another way to add fragrance to the home. Choose fall-inspired scents like apple cinnamon and pumpkin spice. Soy candles are scented with essential oils to provide the fragrance you want.

Give your home its signature seasonal scent by trying one of these natural ideas. You can even scent every room by incorporating a few different techniques. Fragrances will linger even after you blow out the candles or turn off the simmer pot at night. That's the lovely thing about scent permeance. Baking an apple pie leaves the scent in the kitchen for several hours, and these natural ways to add fragrance to your home follow the same principle.

Use a pumpkin incense burner to suggest the cozy scent of pie just out of the oven. All you need is a whole pumpkin, a few tools, and some baking spices from your pantry. To start, cut off the pumpkin's top and scrape out the innards, and carve round vents with an apple corer. Rub cinnamon or pumpkin-pie spices onto the lid, or push cloves into it. With a tea light candle inside, the pumpkin will give off a lovely fragrance for about six hours.

An arrangement of fresh pears—pressed with whole cloves—offers a festive greeting and a subtly spiced scent. It also doubles as an impressive mantel decoration that carries into the holidays.

Hosting an autumnal party? Here's how to give your home a warm, inviting fragrance and serve your guests a signature cider drink! Pour water into a crock pot or regular stovetop saucepan, add a few cloves, apple slices, orange peels, and cinnamon sticks, and you've got a distinctively fall scent wafting through your kitchen. And here's an unexpected bonus: It adds moisture to the dry air at the same time.

Gather a bundle of dried flowers in autumnal hues, sprigs of rosemary, star anise, and eucalyptus branches. You can tie them with a ribbon, set in a vase, or string them with a needle and thread. Either way, the mix of scents will be a delight for the senses.

Pumpkin spice, apple, pear—there are so many beautiful and natural fall scents to try just make sure you're using an all-natural preferably soy candle with a non-lead, cotton wick. When the candles are homemade, you can choose from your favorite natural scents and essential oils.

Nothing smells like fall more than the woodsy smells of cedar and cloves. To capture that "walking in the woods on a fall day" feeling, sew together a wool and linen fabric square—measuring five inches each—into a pouch and spoon-fill them with your preferred fragrance such as clove, cedar, or chamomile.

What exactly are they? The beauty in these fire starters is that they cleanse the air and are entirely customizable. Wrap them in a bundle of dried fall florals and seasonal herbs, and simply ignite. Palo santo, in particular, gives off the fragrance of lemons and pine, and are said to promote creativity, clear negative energy, and invite good luck—a perfect sentiment for the new season.