You walk into a good hotel and, before you have noticed the flowers or the lighting, something has already happened. The air smells of something. Not strongly, and not of anything you could put your finger on. But you feel looked after, and weeks later one breath of the same scent will take you straight back to that lobby.

None of it is an accident.

The hotel trick

Hotels worked out long ago that we remember a place through our nose. So the best of them have a scent of their own, made for them and nobody else.

The Leela, in India, has one called Tishya, built around lotus and a flower said to bloom once every twelve years. The Peninsula goes further and gives each of its hotels a different scent, created by a local perfumer. In Hong Kong, a city whose name means fragrant harbour, it is agarwood, jasmine and amber. In Paris, rose and resin.

The clever part is how you meet it. At The Peninsula the scent is in the shampoo, the shower gel and the body lotion, so it follows you from room to room without ever shouting.

That is the real lesson for a home. A hotel does not smell good because someone lit ten candles. It smells good because one quiet scent has been chosen and repeated.

Start with what grows

The simplest way to scent a room is with something alive.

A bunch of eucalyptus hung in the shower, where the steam wakes it up. A pot of rosemary or mint on the kitchen windowsill. A bowl of lemons on the table. Garden roses by the bed in summer, narcissi in the hall in spring. They change with the season, which is exactly what a signature scent bought in a bottle can never do.

Put a pan on

The simmer pot is the oldest trick there is, and it is having a moment.

Fill a small pan with water, add orange peel, a cinnamon stick and a few cloves, and leave it on the lowest heat. In winter the whole house smells like the inside of a good bakery. In summer, try lemon, rosemary and a spoon of vanilla.

Choose your candle like your food

If you love a candle, read the label the way you would read one in the supermarket.

Look at the wax first. Beeswax and plant waxes such as soy, coconut and rapeseed are the natural choices. Then the wick, which should be plain cotton or wood. Then the scent itself: the brands worth your money are the ones that tell you what it is made from, and many now use essential oils.

Beeswax on its own, with no added fragrance at all, has a faint honey smell that is hard to beat.

A hotel does not smell good because someone lit ten candles.

Let the oils do the work

A diffuser with a few drops of essential oil will scent a room without a flame. Lavender for a bedroom, something green or citrus for a hallway. Keep it light. The aim is the hotel effect, where you notice the scent on the way in and then forget it is there.

One scent, repeated

Then do what the hotels do. Pick the scent that feels like your home and let it turn up in more than one place: the hand soap by the sink, the candle in the sitting room, the linen spray on the pillows.

People will not be able to say why your house feels the way it does. They will only know that it smells like you.

Four names to know

Bamford. Candles made in England from natural waxes, with a pure cotton wick and a blend of natural essential oils.

Neom. Natural vegetable wax, a cotton wick and a fragrance the brand describes as 100 per cent natural, with a high concentration of essential oils.

Bertioli. From Thyme, the Cotswolds hotel, so a hotel scent in the truest sense. Candles hand-poured in Britain from soy, rapeseed and beeswax, scented with botanical essential oils.

Grove England. Founded by the interior designer Laura Butler-Madden and named after her Cotswolds home, Grove Farm, with a shop in Stow-on-the-Wold. Its scents follow the seasons in her garden, beginning with Anemone.