What is the best color bottle for essential oils?
We hear a lot about what colored glass is best for storing essential oils.
We see a lot of information saying you shouldn’t store your oils in anything but amber roller bottles or amber boston round bottles.
Why is that?
The reason that the color of the bottle matters is that colored glasses can protect against uv light.
So companies manufacturing and bottling pure essential oils will typically want to go with amber glass bottles because:
- They are the least expensive.
- They provide protection against uv rays.
Understanding the electromagnetic spectrum
Just kidding … we’re not going there. Phew….
For our uses at WoopDIY, we very seldom leave our essential oil roller bottles sitting in direct sunlight for long periods of time. Our guess is that, like us, your bottles are in your house and in a cupboard or on a counter and not in direct sunlight.
According to Dr. Pappas, you should be more concerned about refrigerating certain oils and keeping airspace to a minimum. Heeding those two will do much more for you in preserving the integrity of your oils than the color of the glass they are stored in.
This is where the popularity of the colored glass comes in. In household environments, where there isn’t great concern about long exposures to sunlight, a little character can be had with different colored glass bottles.
key points
- Ensure they are stored in a dark space.
- Ensure they are stored in a cool space.
- Keep airspace to a minimum.
- If in prolonged direct light exposure, keep in amber glass
So whether you have cobalt blue glass, amber colored glass, frosted glass or any other color glass bottles for essential oils, just make sure they are stored in a cool dark space that is not in direct visible light, and transferring to a smaller container once the current one is under halfway full for the best shelf life - and you will be good to go.
P.S. This conversation would be much different if you were a manufacturer and you were shipping your products across the country to unknown facilities. If that was the case you would want to go with the amber glass to ensure maximum protection in the unknown environments. Fortunately, you know your environment … hopefully.