The best fruity perfumes that are good enough to eat

Our beauty team's picks of the best fruity perfumes are fresh, elegant, and not at all sickly

the best fruity perfumes including Jo Loves, Malin & Goetz and Marc Jacobs
(Image credit: Future)

The best fruity perfume will lighten your mood, slice through Monday morning brain fog and transport your mind to sunny climes no matter the season. A universal favourite for all ages and occasions, these perfectly sweet scents are rated highly by our beauty team.

If you’re anything like us, your first foray into fragrance probably began with a juicy little number. Like most 90s teens, a dousing in sickly-sweet Impulse was succeeded by fruity perfumes whose ingredient list read like the menu of a smoothie bar. Like hair mascara and Tamagotchis, most of us outgrew this phase, moving on to the best perfumes for women with headier aromatics and crisp unisex fragrance, so it's no surprise many of us see fruity fragrances as youthful.

"Fruity notes explode at the start of a fragrance, so for a young person who wants a powerful hit of fragrance, they are very attractive," agrees Master perfumer Ruth Mastenbroek. But newer iterations are not all sickly-sweet. "I personally love using fruity notes as they’re so versatile. I’m seeing them used more in high-end fragrances. It’s about how these notes are combined that creates the actual fragrance and tells the story," she adds. If you're looking for a fruity perfume that can work for all ages and occasions, there's no going wrong with our beauty team's top picks.

The best fruity perfume 2024

How we tested these fruity perfumes

As we say in all of our fragrance guides, perfume shopping is incredibly subjective. There aren't definitive measurements by which you can smell a scent and put it into the 'good' or 'bad' camps, so instead we have chosen these fruity perfumes based on a wide range of tastes and preferences across the beauty team, as well as assessing a few factors that might influence whether you, our reader, might enjoy them. These were: 

selection of the best fruity perfumes tested by our Beauty Editor

A selection of the fruity fragrance our Beauty Editor tested 

(Image credit: Stephanie Maylor)

Of the countless scents we tried, every fragrance featured in this guide came out on top for a particular type of buyer, mood or scent preference. We update this edit regularly with any of the latest fruity perfume launches that make the grade, as well as keeping our long-term tried-and-true favorites in the permanent collection. 

FAQs

How to choose your perfect fruity perfume

This all comes down to personal preference. But if you’re in the market for a new fruity fragrance, whether you're hitting the department store or want to learn how to buy fragrance online, our experts have some great advice:

  • Fruity doesn't always mean sweet: "Just because a fragrance says it has strawberry in it, doesn’t necessarily mean the fragrance will smell of strawberries," explains Mastenbroek. "It may be using the qualities and characteristics of strawberries to add a dose of green freshness and mouth-watering sweetness."
  • Give it time: "Fruity notes don’t often last long, so if you’re choosing a new fragrance, I would always suggest wearing it for an hour or so to make sure you still like it once the top notes have faded," says Mastenbroek.
  • Choose the right notes: "Fruity notes can be off-putting as we get older because when combined with sweet notes like vanilla, they can feel childish or unsophisticated," admits Mastenbroek. "Some elegant fruity notes are citrus, especially grapefruit, combined with floral notes like orange blossom, or as part of a cologne. These combinations can provide a good balance to the comfort and freshness that fruity notes offer."
  • Have fun: "Be creative and remember to have fun," says Malone. "Fragrance can be taken seriously but picking your scent for the day should be joyful - and fruity fragrances are the perfect way to embrace spring and summer too." 
Stephanie Maylor

Stephanie Maylor is a Beauty Editor working across five national magazine titles, with almost 15 years' experience in the industry.  She has written for many brands, including woman&home, Grazia, Now, More!, Fabulous, NW, Woman, Woman's Own, Woman's Weekly, Essentials, Best, Chat, and OK! online. 

In 2010 she launched her own beauty blog, which was shortlisted for Best Beauty Blog in the 2011 and 2012 Johnson & Johnson Beauty Journalism Awards. She has interviewed many high profile industry experts and celebrities including Alesha Dixon, Twiggy and Christina Hendricks. 

With contributions from