You can't smell a website. It's the whole problem with selling candles online, and most shops get round it by writing something evocative and hoping. Here's how to actually work it out.

Start with what you already like

Not candles — everything else. The washing powder you buy twice. A perfume you've finished. The pub with the woodburner. People are far more consistent than they think, and the answer is usually already in the house.

Then translate it. If you keep coming back to warm and sweet, you're in vanilla, tonka, amber territory. If it's clean and green, you want citrus, basil, cut grass. If it's the woodburner, you want cedar, oak, tobacco.

Learn the five families

• Fresh — citrus, sea air, cut herbs. Wakes a room up. Good for kitchens and mornings.
• Floral — jasmine, rose, neroli. Softer than people expect when it's paired with wood.
• Woody — cedar, sandalwood, oak. The one people mean when they say "cosy".
• Sweet — vanilla, caramel, blueberry. Reads as comforting, and tips into sickly if it's overdone.
• Spicy — pepper, clove, tobacco. Dry rather than warm. Good in a room you sit still in.

Nearly every candle is two families in conversation. Cedarwood and jasmine is woody meeting floral. Vanilla, tobacco and spice is sweet meeting dry.

Read the notes in order

Most descriptions list notes roughly in the order you meet them. The first one is what you get when you walk in. The last is what's still there an hour later, and it's usually the one that decides whether you like the candle.

So "lime, basil and mandarin" is sharp all the way through. "Vanilla, tobacco and spice" starts sweet and dries out. If you only read one note, read the last one.

Match the scent to the room, not the house

Strong sweet scents in a kitchen fight whatever you're cooking. Fresh citrus in a bedroom can keep you awake more than you'd like. Woody and low works nearly everywhere, which is why it sells the most.

Size matters more than people expect, too. A 170ml candle scents a normal-sized room. In a big open-plan space you either want something bigger or two of them at either end.

When in doubt, buy the one that describes a moment

A list of ingredients tells you what's in it. A sentence about a slow Sunday or a closed door and a record playing tells you what it's for. If a description makes you picture something specific, that's usually a scent someone has actually thought about.

If you'd rather not think about it at all, I built a four-question quiz that does the working out for you. No email needed — I'm not going to make you sign up to find out.