Yankee Candle Reveals 2022 Scent of the Year: What It Means According to a Fragrance Expert

Yankee Candle

Yankee Candle wants to inspire you this year.

On Wednesday, the beloved fragrance company revealed its 2022 Scent of the Year: Inspire.

What does inspiration smell like? The carefully crafted scent has notes of lime, verbena, bamboo and cedar. But it's not simply a pleasing combination. It's based on the Japanese philosophy of Ikigai, which is intended to help guide you to find your passion and reason for being. Ikigai's 10 rules of happiness, including instructions like, "take it slow and live in the moment," "reconnect with nature" and "give thanks."

"All of these principles and Ikigai and really living your best life really inspired our team to create an uplifting and radiant fragrant for 2022," Yankee Candle fragrance expert Taylor Perlis tells PEOPLE.

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Yankee Candle Rewards members can purchase Inspire on Wednesday, March 16, and customers worldwide can buy it starting next Monday, which also happens to be National Fragrance Day.

Inspire joins previous Scents of the Year: One Together (2019), Awaken (2020) and Discovery (2021).

Yankee Candle

Perlis, who holds a degree in cosmetics and fragrance marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology, says Inspire's lime and verbena top notes aim to be "happy and bright and can really help you find joy in a happy life."

"We're really seeing citrus fragrances trending right now because they have that added wellness benefit and can help bring joy and happiness into consumers' lives," she adds.

The COVID-19 pandemic's focus on cleanliness also contributes to the citrus trend, which Perlis predicts will continue through 2022 and beyond. "We're seeing consumers are creating that freshly-cleaned feeling by bringing bright fragrances filled with lime and lemon and other citrus fruits into their home," she says.

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The bamboo middle note adds a touch of woodiness and "azonic naturality." And the cedar base note delivers a soft, an earthy element that is fresh and resinous. "It does add a touch of depth and comfort to this fragrance and really just grounds it in optimism and happiness," Perlis explains.

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Inspire's other notes include ginger, freesia, ocean breeze accord, seaside driftwood and sun musks. The candle builds upon Yankee Candle's Signature Spring fragrance line, the Sakura Blossom Festival Collection, which draws on Japanese culture and the traditional Sakura (or cherry blossom) festival.

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"Since we spent the last few years in a global pandemic, it's definitely fair to say that everyone could use an extra boost of joy and happiness these days," Perlis says. "And did you actually know that 75 percent of emotions that we generate on a daily basis are affected by smell? One thing that I learned from that is that we all should be smelling something that makes us happy or makes us smile on a daily basis."