Unlike Sol de Janeiro’s popular body mists, the brand’s new solid perfume sticks don’t exactly work to fill a room. But the Brazilian-inspired body-care line is positioning that as a feature, not a bug.
“I think there are as many consumers who want a different scent experience — maybe that is not an overwhelming moment of overtaking a whole room, but instead a more skin-felt, more intimate moment,” said Sol de Janeiro chief marketing and digital officer Jordan Saxemard. The brand’s new Jelly Perfume balms are free of alcohol, the ingredient primarily responsible for giving traditional spray perfumes their projection.
Solid perfumes have long since been on the market, with brands like Le Labo and Diptyque offering solid versions of their traditional spray perfumes for over a decade. But with fragrance sales still on the rise, a new wave of brands is experimenting with solid fragrances to appease customers looking for novelty and affordability in their fragrance options.
Sol de Janeiro launched its trio of Jelly Perfume Balms, which retail for $36 each, in February. Gen-Z-friendly fragrance brand Noyz debuted the format in 2025 for $42 a tube. Body-care brand Sidia introduced solid perfumes to its line in 2025 for $48 each. Grooming brand Viking Revolution launched its solid cologne in 2023, at $9.99 per tin. The brand sold more than 1 million solid colognes in 2025 and expects to see a 20% bump in solid cologne sales by the end of 2026.
According to Spate’s 2026 fragrance trend report, the popularity of solid perfume — based on its proprietary Popularity Index, which tracks Google search volume and posts on TikTok and Instagram — grew 174.6% year over year in 2025. Like body mists, solid perfumes offer a lower-priced option for consumers looking to layer multiple scents rather than invest in just one eau de parfum. And as wax-based solid fragrances can be infused with nourishing ingredients like jojoba oil or vitamin E, brands can make an appeal to consumers looking for skin-care benefits across their beauty routine.
“Portability is super helpful for our demographic,” said Viking Revolution founder Victor Mendoza, who described his brand’s primary audience as blue-collar men. He attributed the colognes’ success to their launch on TikTok Shop in March 2025. “It’s a product that’s not as expensive, of course, as another perfume, but then you can reapply it whenever you want. This will last on your skin for four to five hours. It also hydrates and moisturizes.”
When Fulton & Roark debuted in 2013 with solid fragrance as its sole product, the format was still something of an outlier. But co-founder Kevin Keller believed there was a market for consumers looking for a more subtle approach to scent.
“For a lot of our customers, it sounds kind of like a nightmare to completely take over the room [with fragrance],” said Keller. “They really appreciate a slightly more introverted fragrance experience.”
Fulton & Roark initially targeted men with its solid perfume, though Keller said its audience is now majority female. Newer solid perfume arrivals, like those from Sidia, target a more feminine audience, with scents like the coconut-and-vanilla-based Braless.
“There’s no alcohol in [our solid perfume]. It’s just like such a lovely, intimate, if-you-know-you-know type of product,” said Sidia founder Erin Kleinberg. “Does it last as long as [eau de parfum]? No, it doesn’t. But that’s OK, because the ritual of reapplying is what’s lovely about fragrance, in my opinion.”
But the solid perfume category still has a long way to go to catch up to the craze of body mists, and not just when it comes to scent projection: U.S. sales of hair and body mists reached $474 million in 2024, representing an increase of 94% year over year, according to market research firm Circana.
According to Keller, Fulton & Roark now sells around 50,000 solid perfumes a year, which retail for $65 each. But while he estimates that the brand achieved 30% year-over-year growth in solid perfume sales in 2025, extrait de parfum sales overtook solid perfume sales when Fulton & Roark debuted the format in 2023.
But sales of spray perfume and solids are not necessarily mutually exclusive; Kleinberg said that while body mists are the top-selling format at Sidia, she often sees consumers buying a solid and a perfume-mist version of the same scent.
“Those rituals for us really move the needle, because it is a layering moment,” she said. “Eventually, there could be a fine fragrance that you could layer on top of that, as well.”
Building on the success of its solid colognes, Mendoza said Viking Revolution is planning to launch body mists in the fourth quarter of 2026.
“Once people trust the scent you have and the scent profile across the [product] line, it’s much easier to try different delivery methods,” said Mendoza.
