Can perfume expire?

Here’s the bad news: yes, your perfumes (and colognes!) do expire, and this applies to all fragrances across all brands, regardless of whether it’s a Jo Malone London perfume or a no-name brand you bought cheaply off the Internet.

There is no hard and fast rule to perfume expiration dates. Most fragrance manufacturers will recommend tossing your bottle after anywhere from one to three years, but since fragrance doesn’t expire in the same sense that food does, some experts have given the okay for you to keep using a perfume that you really love for four, or even five years.

HOW CAN I TELL IF MY PERFUME HAS EXPIRED? If you’re still feeling unsafe about using the cologne that you haven’t touched in eight years (as you rightly should!), these are some ways you can check if it has already expired:

1. TEST HOW IT SMELLS

The most precise way to tell if your perfume has gone bad is to test its scent

If your perfume or cologne smells a little sour, like vinegar, or if you notice a significant change in the concentration of the original scent, chances are that it has already expired.

Another precise sign of perfume gone bad is if the scent is very different from the one you started with.

2. SEE HOW IT LOOKS

A change in colour is also another telling sign of expired perfume.

A perfume that has turned darker in colour than what you started out with could mean it has gone bad, especially if you started out with a clear or translucent gold liquid and now have a more opaque or amber liquid.

Of course, you can also look out for a significant drop in the volume of the fragrance in the bottle. An expired perfume will have less perfume in the bottle than it did the last time you checked it, partly due to the fact that many perfumes have high alcohol content, which tends to evaporate over time.

3. CHECK EXPIRATION DATE

Don’t trust your senses? Here’s a more foolproof way of confirming whether your fragrance has gone bad: checking the expiration dates.If you have already opened your perfume before, you should be looking at the PAO number. PAO stands for “Period After Opening”, and is symbolised by an open jar, usually at the bottom or the back of your bottle. The corresponding number refers to how many months the item is likely to last after opening:

If you have never opened your perfume before and want to estimate its shelf life, you can also look up the batch number of your product on websites such as CheckFresh to see when exactly it was produced.

Take note: it is not to say that your perfume needs to be thrown away after this time, but you need to check for signs of deterioration as its quality is no longer guaranteed.

Credit: https://dailyvanity.sg/