Couples perfume class in Bukchon, Seoul: coffee bean reset at Muhwawon

What is Muhwawon Bukchon Perfume Workshop?

Muhwawon Bukchon Perfume Workshop is a perfume studio on the 3rd floor at 23 Yulgok-ro 6-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, near Anguk Station. I visited wanting to try a different kind of date 🌿 The location is near Anguk, a neighborhood I already like, and there's so much to see and do around it, which made me even happier haha 😆 It's also great for wandering around the Anguk area before or after making your perfume, so I'd recommend pairing it into a full date course ✨

📌 Visit info Location: 23 Yulgok-ro 6-gil, 3rd floor, Jongno-gu, Seoul Hours: Daily 12:00–22:00

Inside Muhwawon: a 3rd-floor space like a perfume lab

Muhwawon is on the 3rd floor! Walking in, the space was far more stylish and tidy than I expected 😮

The overall look is calm, centered on white and black tones, and with the soft lighting and the neatly arranged fragrance bottles and blending tools, it felt less like a typical one-day class space and more like walking into a small perfume lab ( •̀∀•́ )✧

On the table were scent strips for sniffing and various blending tools, all neatly arranged, and just sitting down made me feel like I really needed to make a proper perfume haha 😆ㅎㅎㅎ

Above all, I loved how quiet and calm the space itself was!!

The pre-survey and headset perfumery theory lesson

At the Muhwawon perfume experience, once you sit down you first fill out a pre-survey! You can also choose how much help you want from the perfumer while blending. We chose to blend ourselves but with some guidance.

After the survey, you put on headsets and watch a video lecture covering basic perfumery theory! Since this was my first time making perfume, I knew almost nothing about it, so I thought it was a great class to learn the basic theory before mixing fragrances. I felt there would definitely be a difference between just picking scents you like and blending them versus understanding how scents are structured and combined first.

They also offered to take photos if we wanted, so we left a few behind haha ㅎㅎㅎ📸 Us diligently? listening to the lesson wearing headsets lol

Top, middle and base notes, plus a Korean scent

Following the basic structure of perfume, Muhwawon's fragrance oils were arranged from top to bottom as top – middle – base – Korean scent, and the last row, the Korean scent, is a fragrance Muhwawon developed itself!

First, we each checked off our own scent preferences, and it turned out our tastes were so completely different lol

Next, we started sampling from the top notes, checking off scents we liked ✨

Why you reset your nose with coffee beans

If you keep sniffing scents, at some point your nose gets a bit numb, so you refresh it with coffee beans in between lol ☕️ When you can't quite smell a fragrance anymore, taking a whiff of coffee beans feels like a quick reset — really useful to use in between samplings!

The perfumer connected the scents we'd checked off with the mood we wanted and recommended each one, so we could proceed without much difficulty !(•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑

Once you pick out the scents you like, the chosen fragrances get placed on a tray like this to bring back! The number of scents each person picks can vary a bit from person to person~~

From a 1:1:1 blend to a third round of ratio tweaks

At Muhwawon, you first put everything into dropper bottles at a 1:1:1:1... ratio, dab it onto a scent strip to test, and then adjust the ratio a second and third time depending on your preference.

Traces of our struggle?! lol

Since it was our first time, we sometimes lost our sense of direction while picking out scents one by one, but the perfumer gave great advice each time, so we could keep the feeling we wanted while blending d=(´▽｀)=b

My own material blend, complete 💖

On the scale: base, then middle, then top

Once the ratio is set, the perfumer calculates the exact weight of each ingredient according to the ratio and writes it down for you. Following that, you place a beaker on the scale and add each ingredient one by one haha

At first I was nervous about making a mistake, but after adding a few I got the hang of it and found myself pouring in boldly haha

The ingredients have to be added in base → middle → top order! Once everything is in, stir with a glass rod over 100 times. Pour the mixed ingredients into an empty container, and that's the end of my job.. 🌟 The perfumer takes it from there to finish it up.

Two weeks of aging, name labels and gift box packaging

The finished perfume isn't ready to use right away — it needs about 2 weeks of aging. If used immediately, the alcohol scent can be quite strong, so they recommend letting it age fully for 2 weeks before use haha

Then, each of us named our own fragrance

They print a label with the perfume name you chose, and you get to stick the label wherever you like~~ㅎㅎㅎ

Is Muhwawon worth it as a Bukchon date course?

They even packaged it in such a luxurious box that it was perfect as a gift too 💖 It had been a while since we'd done something this different for a date, and the whole process of talking about what scents we each liked and picking them out together was so much fun haha. We got to discover each other's scent preferences that we never knew before, and since our tastes turned out to be so different, we found new sides of each other too! 🥰 Sitting together, picking scents, and making a perfume by hand made it a date to really remember, and if you're looking for something a bit different from a typical date, this is a place I'd recommend.