An essential oil diffuser can be an excellent investment if you want your home to smell clean and fresh throughout the day.
Just a drop or two of your favorite essential oils and you can have a pleasant scent spread around the room with a diffuser.
For a diffuser that has a capacity of 100ml, you should put no fewer than three drops of essential oil in it, and no more than five. Follow this rule and you’ll never have to worry about weak or overpowering scents dominating the room.
Essential oils are often highly concentrated, so you want to be absolutely sure you use the right amount in your diffuser.
A drop too few and the scent might be too subtle to notice, but a drop too many and you might overwhelm your sense of smell.
Using an essential oil diffuser the right way will give you the aroma you’re looking for every time, and save you precious drops of your expensive essential oils.
While 3-5 is the general guideline for 100ml diffusers, you’ll need a different amount of drops if you have a larger diffuser.
A Guide to Diffusers and Essential Oils
If you’ve never experimented with diffusers before, or essential oils, you may be tempted to pour the oils in with reckless abandon.
If this is the case, we strongly suggest that you resist the urge.
While you may want to ensure the room smells of orange and cinnamon, a little goes a long way when it comes to using essential oils.
The way we measure quantities with essential oils is with drops.
A drop doesn’t seem like much, but for a highly-concentrated essential oil, it can be extremely potent.
As such, you may want to perfect your pouring technique before you use a diffuser, since you can’t take back those extra drops that slip into the device.
Slow and steady is the key; a subtle shake of the hand should give you the best results.
As for how many drops you need, we’ve compiled a table with various sizes of diffuser, and what is the appropriate essential oil dose for each one of them.
| Size of Diffuser | Essential Oil Drops |
| 100ml | 3-5 |
| 200ml | 6-10 |
| 300ml | 9-12 |
| 400ml | 12-15 |
| 500ml | 15-20 |
As you can see, in no instance should you use less than three drops, since this won’t be enough essential oil to create an aroma that radiates around the room.
With each size of diffuser, you can err on the side of caution by opting for the lowest number of recommended drops, or you can go for a stronger scent by using the highest number recommended.
The other key thing to bear in mind is that you can easily add more drops if necessary, but you can’t take any back.
As a result, we recommend that even if you think you’ll prefer a stronger aroma that you refrain from adding too many drops straight away.
Start at the lowest recommended number of drops, for example, 12 if you have a 400ml diffuser, and then slowly add more if you need to.
The other important factor to consider is the specific scent you are using.
While some essential oils have a naturally more subtle aroma, others can make it seem like the hairs in your nostrils are going to burn like tea tree oil or peppermint oil when overdone.
Also, realize that the effect of the diffuser will depend on the size of the room it is placed in, so it might take some experimentation before you settle on the perfect amount of drops.
Why It’s Important to Get it Right
With essential oils and diffusers, you want to make sure you get it right.
If you don’t, there could be some unfortunate side effects from diffusing the essential oils.
Side Effects of Too Much Essential Oil
For example, if you’ve been heavy-handed with the essential oil, you will not only create a scent that overpowers the room, but there can also be several other undesirable results.
It isn’t uncommon to experience headaches or migraines if you’ve used too many drops of essential oil.
You may even have more severe symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, or even vomiting.
That’s why it’s crucial that you stick to the guide we presented and never exceed the recommended amount of essential oil drops when using a diffuser.
Remember, start off with the fewest amount of drops recommended, and go from there.
Solutions for Too Much Essential Oil
If you do think that you’ve overdone it with the essential oil, your instinct might be to quarantine the room and return when the aroma fades away.
This approach can be effective, but you might be waiting a while, especially if you have a larger diffuser.
A more efficient approach is to empty out half of the water and essential oil mix into another container with a lid.
Once you’ve done that, you can add more water to the diffuser to dilute the essential oil and try again.
How Many Drops are in an Essential Oil?
If you want to know just how long your essential oil bottle will last you if you use it for a diffuser, here’s a rough guide to how many drops you can expect.
A standard size for a bottle of essential oil is 10ml, and in a 10ml bottle you can expect to squeeze out around 200 drops in total.
So that means if you have a 100ml diffuser and a 10ml essential oil, if you use five drops every time you will get 40 separate uses from a single bottle.
As a result, you’ll be good for at least a month’s worth of aroma diffusing, which isn’t bad at all.
If you were to reduce the amount of drops to three, you could get 66 separate uses, which is just over two months’ worth.
This information is good to know if you want to save money on essential oils, since they can be expensive.
Crunch the numbers and see if it’s worth your time to invest in a larger essential oil bottle or whether you should simply use fewer drops.
| Essential Oil Size | Number of Drops |
| 5ml | 100 |
| 10ml | 200 |
| 15ml | 300 |
| 30ml | 600 |
Frequently Asked Questions About Essential Oil Diffusers
How many drops of oil go in a 100ml diffuser?
If your diffuser has a capacity of 100ml of liquid, you should use no less than three drops of essential oil, and no more than five.
This means you shouldn’t exceed a total of five drops, so don’t just add three drops of one essential oil and three of another.
You might have to factor in the size of the room the diffuser is placed in to get the best results.
How many drops do you add to a diffuser?
The amount of drops you add to a diffuser depends on the size of the diffuser, the strength of aroma you enjoy, and the size of the room.
Generally, you want to adhere to the principle of less is more when adding essential oil drops to your diffuser.
Start off with the minimum recommended dose, and increase it from there if you want the aroma to be stronger.
How long does a 100ml diffuser last?
A 100ml diffuser should be used for 20-minute sessions at a time.
With that being said, some diffusers have continuous running settings which allows them to stay in operation for longer periods of time.
As far as how long the diffuser will last you, you can expect around 2-4 months of use.
A Final Word From Wellness Nova
Essential oil diffusers can lighten up your home and create pleasant scents for any room.
If you’re unsure how many drops of essential oil you should add, always start off with a low amount (never fewer than three) and go from there.
You can consult our table guide for more information about the number of drops necessary for different-sized diffusers.
