Cedarwood is dry and sharp, like fresh pencil shavings, while sandalwood is creamy, soft and gently sweet — cedar reads as a woodshed, sandalwood reads as warm skin, and the price difference between them reflects how much rarer good sandalwood has become.

Why sandalwood costs so much more

Cedarwood is widely available and affordable, which is why it appears as a base note in countless fragrances across every price point. Sandalwood, particularly the prized Mysore variety, has become increasingly scarce due to sustainability pressures on natural supply, driving both its price and its use of synthetic alternatives up considerably. In terms of character, cedar is drier and more austere, while sandalwood has a genuinely creamy, almost milky warmth that’s hard to replicate exactly, even with modern synthetics.

  • Cedarwood: dry, sharp, affordable, widely used
  • Sandalwood: creamy, soft, warm, increasingly rare and expensive
  • Many modern fragrances use synthetic sandalwood accords to manage cost and supply

It’s also worth knowing that a lot of what’s labelled ‘sandalwood’ in affordable fragrances today is actually a synthetic accord built to approximate the real thing, since genuine Mysore sandalwood oil is now tightly regulated and expensive.

Both woods are frequently blended together in the same composition, using cedar’s dryness to offset sandalwood’s creaminess rather than choosing one over the other entirely.

Our guide to fragrance notes and our complete guide to perfume both cover wood notes like these, and our perfume oils include several genuinely sandalwood-forward options worth exploring.