Lighting scented candles is a great way to fill a space with fragrances that can really contribute to your wellness goals. Problem is, burning a candle means keeping an open flame in your home, which isn’t the safest, especially with children and pets around. The best essential oil diffusers let you achieve the same aromatherapy benefits, without the hazard of keeping a continuously burning open flame.
Essential oil diffusers are small devices you can keep on a small coffee table, nightstand, or shelf, allowing you to easily find a place for it somewhere in the house. Just make sure it’s an area where the diffuser can spread the scents it produces effectively, with access to a power outlet. To use it, you simply add clean water to the reservoir, put a few drops of your chosen essential oils, plug it in, and switch it on. It’s very easy to use.
The best essential oil diffusers can be grouped into four categories, based on how they disperse the essential oils into the air. Ultrasonic diffusers, the most popular, use vibrations to break essential oils down and distribute the individual molecules in a fine mist. They’re widely used due to their affordability, power efficiency, and minimal maintenance requirements. However, they only work for smaller rooms, so you’ll need something else if you want one that can spread those soothing scents in a bigger space.
Nebulizing models are the popular choice for larger spaces, as they use no water, instead using pressurized air to emit a stream comprised of pure essential oils. That pressurized makes it significantly noisier than ultrasonic models, but their potent, undiluted mist makes them the easy choice for many aromatherapy enthusiasts. Aside from those two, there are also evaporative diffusers, which incorporate a fan that blows air through a filter, and heat diffusers, which use a heating element to transforms the oils into gas.
These are the best essential oil diffusers to bring soothing, energizing, and invigorating scents into a room.
Innogear Essential Oil Diffuser
Pros
- Quiet operation
- Reasonably strong mist
- Offers intermittent mode to extend runtime
Cons
- Small 100ml water tank
Type: Ultrasonic
Coverage: 250 square feet
Runtime: 6 to 8 hours
We love the wood-like exterior finish of this essential oil diffuser, which gives it a really decorative look that fits so well into many interiors. Sure, it’s not real wood, but it looks nice all the same. While the mist isn’t as strong as some of the other options in the list, you can definitely smell the scents and even see the mist it produces. It comes with two settings: continuous and intermittent. As you can imagine, continuous means it just produces mist until the water runs out. For intermittent, though, it produces mist and stops alternately every 30 seconds, allowing it to run for a good six hours, despite only having a tiny 100ml water tank. Is the intermittent setting good? If you have a really small room, then it’s nice. However, continuous is the way to go if you want to really set a good, consistent scent in the air. It also has built-in seven-color LED lighting, if you enjoy that. Overall, we like the simplicity, the quiet operation, and the reasonably strong mist it produces. Sure, the small tank can be frustrating, but we guess that’s why it’s so affordable. Do note, you will need a bottle brush to clean it.
Akasuki 500ml Premium Essential Oil Diffuser
Pros
- Large 500ml water tank
- Adjustable timer and misting strength
- Easy to clean
Cons
- Uses beeps for alerts, which is annoying
Type: Ultrasonic
Coverage: 322 square feet
Runtime: 18 hours
If we’re going to use an ultrasonic essential oil diffuser, we’d prefer to get one with a large water tank. We just don’t like having to refill that thing every few hours. That’s exactly what you get with this model, which comes with a whopping 500ml water tank, allowing it to run for up to 16 hours straight. Of course, you probably don’t want it to run for that long, so it comes with a timer that you can set to one, two, or three hours, after which, it automatically shuts off. It comes with a remote, too, so you can control it without having to get up from the couch or the bed, although it does beep quite a bit for whatever reason. There’s also an intermittent mode, if you prefer a more subtle fragrance around the room. We love the large opening of the water tank, which makes it super easy to clean, as well as the strong mist, the ultra-quiet fan, the multiple misting modes, and the integrated seven-color LED lighting. It has a listed coverage of 322 square feet, although we doubt the strength of the mist will really be able to cover that large area.
Urpower 300ml Aromatherapy Essential Oil Diffuser
Pros
- Produces strong scent that fills the room
- Perfect size
- Adjustable timer
Cons
- Turning the light off requires you to cycle through all settings
- Beeps a fair amount
Type: Ultrasonic
Coverage: 108 square feet
Runtime: 6 hours
Essential oil diffusers with large 500ml water tanks are nice, but they also take up more space. If you prefer something a little smaller, but with a little more space in the tank, you might appreciate this 300ml option. Despite the smaller size, it offered a really strong stream of mist that delivered the scents all across the room, while also coming with an adjustable timer that let you set it to run for one, two, or three hours. If you don’t set the timer, the 300ml water tank is enough to keep going for around six hours, while the large opening to the tank also makes it easy to clean. Overall, we love the size, the strength of the mist, and the adjustable timer, all of which make it one of the best options out there, especially at this price. Oh yeah, this has a seven-color LED lighting, too, similar to the Akasuki above, which is quite annoying to turn off, since you have to cycle through the entire light settings.
Pura 4 Smart Fragrance Difffuser
Pros
- Compact size
- Surprisingly strong scent
- No cable mess
- Convenient app control
Cons
- No physical controls
- Not compatible with third-party vials
Type: Nebulizing
Coverage: Small to medium-sized rooms
Runtime: Up to 120 hours
Unlike other essential oil diffusers in the list, this one doesn’t have a power cord. Instead, you plug the device itself into a wall outlet, since it’s small enough to stay there (it’s like a slightly bigger nightlight), which is possible because it doesn’t use water, so there’s no need to accommodate a water tank. You can load up to two essential oil cartridges at a time, as well, then choose which one you want the diffuser to use, so you can easily switch things up without having to put in a new cartridge every time. Even better, it comes with an app that lets you choose between the two cartridges, set timers, adjust intensity, create a diffuser schedule, and even change the color of the nightlight (yes, it doubles as a nightlight). Sadly, there are no physical controls, so you have to use the app every time. Honestly, we were surprised at how strong the scent it produces for something so small. Do note, if your room has high ceilings, it can struggle a bit, so you might want to upgrade to the larger Pura Plus in those instances. This 4th-gen model requires the outfit’s new smart vial, by the way, which allows the diffuser can automatically adjust the strength of the scent it produces based on the temperature in the room, further simplifying the whole process. That means, it won’t take third-party offerings, which previous versions did, so you might want to get the Pura 3 instead if being locked in with the outfit’s refills isn’t all that appealing to you.
Canopy Bedside Diffuser
Pros
- Produces strong, intense scent
- Doesn’t use water
- Minimal maintenance
- Runs for over two weeks continuously
Cons
- Requires replacing the well and puck regularly
- No timer
Type: Evaporative
Coverage: 400 square feet
Runtime: Two weeks
The only evaporative essential oil diffuser in the list, this one eliminates the need for water, so there’s no build-up you’ll need to regularly clean. It offers two ways to add oil, one for milder fragrance (put a few drops on the puck) and one for more intense scent (put the whole vial into the well). Whichever option you choose, it does the same thing, which is to use the integrated fan to slowly turn those oils into gases that it spreads throughout the room. We opted to put a whole cartridge into the well and it produced a really intense fragrance continuously for over two weeks, making it so much more convenient than ultrasonic diffusers. Only problem is, there’s no timer option, so the thing just keeps running until you remember to turn it off before leaving the house. At least, your house smells good when you come home at night. Do note, the well only works with standard vials of essential oils, since the taller bottles just won’t fit, so keep that in mind. The big catch is, you need to replace the well regularly as it gets saturated by the oil, which adds an ongoing expense on top of your oil purchases.
