It's the most common question we get, and the one with the least useful answers online. Here's a straight one.
The short answer
- 2ml — roughly 20 sprays
- 5ml — roughly 50 sprays
- 10ml — roughly 100 sprays
A standard atomiser delivers about 0.1ml per press, so ten presses to a millilitre. That's the arithmetic, and it holds well enough for planning.
What that means in days
At four sprays a day, every day:
| Size | Sprays | Days at 4/day |
|---|---|---|
| 2ml | ~20 | 5 |
| 5ml | ~50 | 12–13 |
| 10ml | ~100 | 25 |
Very few people wear the same fragrance every single day, though, so in practice a 5ml tends to stretch to three or four weeks and a 10ml comfortably clears a season.
The variables
Spray volume differs between atomisers. A fine-mist sprayer might put out 0.07ml; a coarser one closer to 0.15ml. That's a two-fold difference in spray count for the same volume of liquid. Our vials are fine-mist, so if anything you'll get slightly more sprays than the numbers above, not fewer.
Concentration changes how much you need. An EDT might want six sprays. A parfum or extrait might want two. Gulf-house extraits in particular need a lighter hand than people expect, so the same 5ml goes considerably further.
The last few sprays are hard to get. Every atomiser leaves a small amount sitting below the dip tube. It's a fraction of a millilitre, but on a 2ml that fraction is proportionally more noticeable — another small argument for sizing up.
How to make a decant last
Store it away from heat, light and humidity. A bathroom shelf is the worst place in the house, because swings in temperature and humidity degrade fragrance faster than anything else. A bedroom drawer is ideal.
Don't decant it again into something smaller. Every transfer introduces air, and oxidation is what turns a fragrance sour.
Fragrance also lasts noticeably longer on moisturised skin, which means fewer sprays for the same effect. Unscented moisturiser on the pulse points before you spray is the cheapest way to stretch a decant.
Which size should you actually order?
If you're sampling several things at once, take the 2ml. Five days is enough to tell whether a fragrance is worth pursuing.
If you already suspect you'll like it, take the 5ml. A fortnight of daily wear across changing weather tells you far more than a single afternoon does.
If it's something you want to wear all season without buying the bottle yet, take the 10ml. At around 100 sprays it's genuinely a season's supply, and on most fragrances it's the lowest price per millilitre of the three — though on a handful the 5ml now edges it, so it's worth comparing the two on the product page.