We are often asked by our customers which diffuser is the best. We will do our best to educate you on the various options you have when it comes to buying a diffuser. A lot of the products you see online and in stores are made of cheap materials and non-BPA Free, toxic, plastics.
In addition, most of the units sold today have some sort of water feature that needs to be addressed. Unless you are using pure, distilled water each time, you are potentially diffusing harmful chemicals that are in our everyday tap water. I mean who wants a fluoride, lavender mist combo?
There are four different categories of diffusers available on the market today. Each of these types of diffusers differs in the way that it puts essential oils into the air. These four categories include the following: nebulizing diffusers,air ionizing diffusers, evaporative diffusers, and heat diffusers.
Nebulizing Diffusers
A nebulizer works basically the same way a perfume atomizer works. A jet of air blowing across a small tube creates a vacuum that pulls a liquid at the bottom of the tube to the top of the tube. The air flow blowing across the surface of the oil at the top of the tube blows the oil away in a fine spray or mist. With a constant air supply source, this type of diffusion can quickly put a large amount of oil into the air.
Because this type of diffusion works to put the whole oil into the air in the form of tiny droplets, it is often considered for the therapeutic use of essential oils but it does have it drawbacks. Because you cannot use large amounts of oil, you are limited spatial coverage.
Since nebulizing diffusers work with a powerful electricity supply to quickly saturate the air with essential oils, they are run at a higher sound level and can become noisy, and they use oil at a higher rate than any other type of diffuser which will increase your operating costs. There is no option for a large area nebulizing diffuser so this limits the space you can diffuse oils in.
Air Ionizing Diffuser
Negative ION diffusers create the best possible essential oil disbursement because it uses no heat or water to get the particles into the air. Picture a standard air purifier or ionizer but with the ability to release essential oil particles back into the atmosphere. The method by which this is accomplished is much different and more beneficial than any other type of essential oil diffuser. Large Area Essential Oil Diffusers that use the Air ionizers technology are used to eliminate the occurrence of air-borne bacterial infections and help the air quality while releasing the healing properties of the essential oil. You get the best of bost worlds, clean purified air and healing particles from the oil.
Negative ions (” air vitamins”) are oxygen atoms charged with an extra electron.
This how ionizing diffusers can both clear the air in your home of allergens like pollen and mold and hazardous airborne particles such as bacteria and viruses, and also prevent illness as well promote relaxation through use of the oils or blends in combination.
Evaporative Diffusers
Evaporative diffusers are pretty basic in how they operate. A fan blows air from the room through some sort of pad or filter that has essential oils dropped onto it. The air blowing through the pad causes the oils to evaporate more quickly than normal, and the air with the evaporated oil is blown into the room. You cannot diffuse large areas with this method either.
While this method of diffusion works well at getting the scent of the oil into the room, there are drawbacks to this method: anytime an essential oil evaporates, some of the lighter, or more volatile, components of the oil tend to evaporate much faster than the heavier and less volatile components. This means that instead of getting the whole oil all at once, you are getting a higher percentage of the lighter components at the beginning of the process and a higher percentage of the heavier components towards the end of the process.
While this fractioning of the oil may diminish any therapeutic properties that the whole oil had possessed, evaporative diffusion is still a good and relatively quiet means of getting the aroma of the essential oil throughout a very small area if that is what you are after.
Heat Diffusers
Like evaporative diffusers, heat diffusers also cause the essential oils to evaporate quicker than normal but use heat instead of blowing air to accomplish diffusion. This method reduces the quality of the oils being dispersed and brings out other toxins that may be in the water or plastics used in the diffuser itself.
Heat diffusers use high levels of heat to produce stronger smells. This difference is important because high levels of heat can actually alter the chemical constituents of the oils and counteract the very purpose of the essential oils.
