After swimming is generally the better choice: apply perfume once you’re dry and out of the water, rather than before, since chlorine or salt water will distort the scent and swimming will simply wash most of it off anyway.

The practical reasoning

Perfume needs time on dry skin to develop properly through its opening, heart, and dry-down stages. Get straight in the pool after spraying and you interrupt that process, wash off most of the top notes, and expose whatever’s left to chlorine, which as we cover in our piece on chlorine changing how perfume smells rarely does the fragrance any favours. There’s also a skin comfort issue: fragrance combined with chlorine and sun exposure can occasionally increase the chance of skin irritation.

The better routine is to shower, moisturise, then apply your perfume once your skin is properly dry, which also helps it last longer since dry, well-moisturised skin holds fragrance better than damp skin. Our how to apply and wear perfume guide covers timing and technique in more depth, and the complete guide to perfume has the fundamentals if you’re building good habits from scratch. If you do want a light scent poolside, a barely-there application well before you swim causes far less clash than spraying immediately beforehand. A quick rinse afterwards also helps remove any chlorine before it has a chance to properly settle into skin.