How important is it to smell good on a date?
When it comes to attraction, our bodily experiences can be more powerful than our conscious thoughts and feelings. How your date experiences you through their senses contributes a lot to whether they feel safe and comfortable. For example, the right smell could communicate a sense of familiarity which could make them more likely to trust you, or a sense of freshness could represent energy, excitement or adventure.
Body odour and bad breath can be temporary or chronic. If you have a problem, you might need to see your doctor or dentist. You could also try a different deodorant or different diet, drink more water or less alcohol, give up smoking, or wear only natural fabrics or moisture-wicking ones that are designed to manage sweat and prioritise breathability.
If you are unsure whether you smell good, you may be able to ask a family member or close friend. But if not, here are some suggestions to reduce the risk:
Checklist before your date
- Brush your teeth and use mouthwash just before the date – take them to work if you’re meeting straight from the office – “work breath” is very common
- Don’t eat spicy food for, say, 48 hours before your date
- Try to avoid coffee on the day – avoid “coffee breath”
- Smokers never have nice breath, so give up or at least don’t smoke before your date. (If you smoke, it’s a good idea to have that on your dating profile so people can make a choice about whether to date a smoker.)
- Drink plenty of water in the hours leading up to your date
- Don’t have any alcohol before your date arrives – it’s best if you don’t smell of alcohol when you first meet
- Wear freshly laundered clothes (wash your clothes regularly – after one day for underwear and tops; roughly two or three for trousers and skirts)
- Make sure you’ve had a shower that morning or just before the date if possible
- Think about taking deodorant, a change of clothes (or at least underwear) if you’re meeting after work
- Make sure you have some mints and have one just before meeting
Make sure you are washing your clothes enough: a good rule of thumb is one day for underwear, socks and shirts, two or three days for trousers and skirts. Fabric conditioner is good for making your clothes (and bed linen) smell especially fresh.
The semiotics of hygiene
What could smelling good represent? Making an effort shows respect for your date, and that you’re the kind of person who is attentive, conscientious and focused on the other person. The same goes for where you live if/when you invite them round. Make sure it’s all clean and tidy, with the bins emptied – your bathroom and kitchen especially – and with clean bed linen if they might be going in the bedroom.
As researcher Paul Rozin says in Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow, “a single cockroach will completely wreck the appeal of a bowl of cherries, but a cherry will do nothing at all for a bowl of cockroaches.“ People create much stronger associations between the person and any example of something disgusting than with something positive. So I’m afraid one dirty bathroom more than cancels out your amazing conversation and delicious kisses!
What do you do if your date has bad breath?
If you don’t want to kiss them, you could say “I don’t feel comfortable kissing you.” If they ask why, you could then say “I’m sorry to say your breath doesn’t smell very fresh to me.” Try to be as polite and gentle as possible, and don’t say any more than you need to, to allow them to retain dignity. How they respond could reveal a lot about them, although it’s a hard thing to hear for anyone.
Pheromones – is there anything in it?
Studies (with people choosing between smelly T shirts worn for three days) have shown that we are attracted to the smell of those who are genetically different from us, because we then complement each other for immunities in our offspring. So it may be that you are just not attracted to someone for good reasons, and you shouldn’t try to fix it.
Meet face to face soon!
Don’t fall into the trap of sending hundreds of messages to someone online without meeting them. For many (especially those of us who are neurodivergent) if they don’t smell right, it doesn’t matter what books they’ve read or how emotionally intelligent they are. So you might not want to get invested before meeting. Good smell equals good chemistry.
‘‘Ultimately there is something that people must assess face-to-face before a romantic relationship can begin. Scholars are still working to identify exactly what that something is, but it appears to reside at the intersection of experiential attributes, chemistry, and gut-level evaluations. Some emotional reactions could even be based on sensory experiences, such as olfaction, that cannot be gleaned any other way. Meeting in person also serves as an important reality check before intimacy progresses: People are less likely to misrepresent their observable attributes in a real-world setting as compared with online correspondence.’’
(Finkel et al, 2012, p 32)
Further reading
Finkel, E. J., Eastwick, P. W., Karney, B. R., Reis, H. T., & Sprecher, S. (2012). Dating in a digital world. Scientific American Mind, 23(4), 26-33.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(4), 296-320.
Thomas, R., & Roiser, J. P. (2010). In the nose of the beholder: are olfactory influences on human mate choice driven by variation in immune system genes or sex hormone levels? Experimental Biology and Medicine 235, 1277-1281.
Wedekind, C., Seebeck, T., Bettens, F., & Paepke, A. J. (1995). MHC-dependent mate preferences in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 260, 245-249.
Yi, Y. J., & Heidari Matin, N. (2025). Perception and experience of multisensory environments among neurodivergent people: systematic review. Architectural Science Review, 1-19.
Some good advice here Rachel. Brush your teeth before a date is a good idea. I think scent is very much in the nose of the beholder. For example I really dislike almost all aftershave that is strong enough to smell. I’d actually prefer a smell of fresh sweat than aftershave on a man. But not every man – like you say when you mention ‘smell dating’ some people smell ‘right’ to me and some smell ‘wrong’. So one person’s run in the park might smell great to me and another’s might smell horrible.
Not sure on your line of thinking that older people need to wash more? I’ve never heard that before. Except that once we are adolescent we start needing to use deodorant. Or if we have a health problem which causes any kind of incontinence issues but that’s not necessarily associated with age.