Unscented is not fragrance-free
We sell some of what is named here
Routinae sells some of the products written about here, so read this the way you would read any shop’s opinion of its own shelves. Where we think a cheaper product does the same job we say so, and where the evidence is thin we say that too. Our buying standard is published so you can check the argument against it.
Two words appear on skincare packaging and are read as the same promise. They are not the same promise, and one of them is not a promise at all.
Fragrance-free is a claim a company makes. Unscented is a description of how something smells. A product can be unscented and contain fragrance — that is, in fact, the usual reason a product is unscented.
Why "unscented" so often means fragrance was added
Raw cosmetic materials smell of something. Plant oils smell of the plant, some surfactants smell faintly of nothing pleasant, and a few actives smell distinctly of themselves. A formulator who wants a product to smell of nothing has two options: reformulate around the smell, which is expensive, or add a small masking fragrance to cancel it, which is cheap and standard.
So "unscented" is honest about your nose and silent about the ingredient list. If fragrance is a problem for your skin, it is the wrong word to shop by.
What the label is actually obliged to tell you
EU cosmetics law does the useful part here, and it is worth knowing exactly how far it goes.
A fragrance mixture appears on the ingredient list as a single word: parfum, or aroma where it is there for taste. That one word can stand for dozens of individual materials, and the law does not require them to be broken out. This is the trade-secret exemption, and it is the reason "parfum" tells you that fragrance is present and nothing else.
The exception is allergens. A defined list of fragrance materials has to be named individually on the label once it passes a concentration threshold, so they appear by name rather than hiding inside "parfum". That list used to hold 26 entries. Regulation (EU) 2023/1545 expanded it to roughly 80, and since 31 July 2026 any product newly placed on the market has had to carry the expanded list. Stock already legitimately on the market has until 31 July 2028 to sell through.
The practical consequence for you, this year and next: two bottles of the same product, bought months apart, can carry ingredient lists of different lengths. The longer one is not a reformulation. It is the same formula, labelled under the newer rule. A longer allergen list is a sign of a more recent label, not a more allergenic product.
The names to look for
If you are scanning a list rather than reading it, these are the ones that come up most:
- Parfum or aroma — fragrance is present, quantity and composition undisclosed.
- Linalool, limonene, citronellol, geraniol, eugenol, coumarin, benzyl alcohol, benzyl salicylate — individually named allergens. They are frequently there because an essential oil is there.
- Anything ending in "flower oil", "peel oil", "leaf oil" or "fruit oil" — lavender, bergamot, lemon peel, tea tree, rosemary, chamomile, ylang ylang. These are fragrance materials that happen to be botanical. Natural is not a synonym for gentle; several of the most reliable contact allergens in cosmetics are plant extracts.
One thing that catches people out: an essential oil can be in a product for a stated non-fragrance reason, and it will still behave like a fragrance on your face. The reason it is in there does not change what it does to you.
Leave-on and rinse-off are not the same risk
A fragranced cleanser is on your skin for forty seconds and then goes down the drain. A fragranced cream is on your skin for eight hours, under everything else, on skin that is damp. If you are cutting fragrance out and want to do it in one place rather than everywhere, cut it from the leave-on steps first. That is where the exposure is.
We note it on the product pages for the same reason. A pad you leave on carrying seven citrus and herb oils is a genuinely different proposition from a cleanser with chamomile low on the list, even though neither of them is fragrance-free.
What "fragrance-free" means when we say it
There is no EU-defined threshold behind the phrase. Like every other cosmetic claim it sits under the common criteria in Regulation (EU) 655/2013, which require a claim to be truthful, evidenced, honest and fair — but no regulation hands you a number.
So here is ours, because a phrase is only useful if you know what test sits behind it. When a product page here says fragrance-free, it means no parfum, no aroma and no essential oils declared on the ingredient list. Not "no allergens named", which is a weaker test. Not "smells of nothing", which is not a test at all. Where a product is nearly there but not quite — a single botanical oil low on the list — we say that on the page instead of rounding it up.
Two honest limits on that. It is a reading of the manufacturer's declared list, not an analysis we have commissioned. And a product can contain no fragrance whatsoever and still not agree with you — fragrance is the most common single culprit in cosmetic reactions, not the only one.
What we will not tell you
We are not going to say fragrance is harmful, or that a fragranced product is a worse product. Most people wear fragrance in cosmetics for a lifetime without any trouble, and enjoying how something smells is a real reason to keep using it — which, for a step like sunscreen, matters more than most ingredient arguments.
What we will say is that fragrance is the ingredient most likely to be the answer when a reaction has no other obvious explanation, and that it is the easiest variable in a routine to remove and test. If your skin has been unpredictable and you want one thing to try, try that one.
If you want to work out what your skin is actually doing before you change anything, start here. If you already know fragrance is your problem, the sensitive-skin shelf is where the short ingredient lists are, and every page on it says what is declared rather than what it smells of.