Projection

Projection is how far a fragrance travels from your skin into the surrounding air — essentially, the radius of scent you create around yourself. A perfume with strong projection can be smelled by someone standing a few feet away without leaning in, while a low-projection fragrance stays close to the body and rewards proximity. Think of it as the volume knob on a perfume: how loudly it announces itself in a room.

In practice, projection is the word you reach for when describing how a fragrance "performs" in social settings. Reviewers will say something like "huge projection for the first two hours, then it settles" to signal that a scent fills the room early on before tightening to the wearer. It's also the metric people care about when choosing between an office-friendly cologne and something built for a night out — high projection can be a feature or a liability depending on context.

The common mistake is conflating projection with longevity or sillage, but they measure different things. Projection is the *distance* the scent reaches at any given moment; sillage is the *trail* you leave behind as you move; longevity is *how long* the fragrance lasts on skin in any form. A perfume can have low projection but excellent longevity (a quiet skin scent that lingers all day), or big projection but poor longevity (a loud opening that vanishes in three hours). Reading these three traits separately is the difference between a vague impression and a useful review.