Lavender leaves contain aromatic oils similar to those found in the flowers, and you can extract them at home using a simple oil infusion method. The leaves won’t produce as intense a fragrance as the flower buds, but they still carry enough volatile compounds to make a useful scented oil for body care, massage, or aromatherapy. The most accessible approach is a carrier oil infusion, which requires no special equipment.
Why Leaves Work (and How They Differ From Flowers)
Most people associate lavender oil with the purple flower spikes, but the leaves and stems also contain oil glands. The key aromatic compounds in lavender are linalool and linalyl acetate, which give the plant its characteristic calming, floral scent. True lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) flower oil contains 25 to 38% linalool and 25 to 45% linalyl acetate, with very little camphor, typically under 0.5%. The leaves carry these same compounds in lower concentrations, so leaf oil tends to be milder with a slightly greener, more herbaceous edge.
If you’re growing lavandin (a hybrid often sold at garden centers), the leaves will have noticeably more camphor, around 6 to 8% in the flower oil alone. This gives the oil a sharper, more medicinal smell. For the sweetest-smelling leaf oil, stick with true lavender or English lavender varieties.
Harvesting and Drying the Leaves
Pick leaves in the morning after the dew has dried but before the heat of the day. Warmth causes volatile oils to evaporate from the leaf surface, so early harvesting preserves the most fragrance. Choose healthy, green leaves without browning or insect damage. You can use leaves from any part of the plant, though younger growth near the tips tends to be more aromatic.
Drying the leaves before infusion is important. Fresh leaves contain moisture that can introduce bacteria or mold into your oil, spoiling the batch. Spread the leaves in a single layer on a drying rack or screen in a warm, dry room out of direct sunlight. At room temperature, they’ll take 2 to 4 weeks to dry completely depending on humidity. You can also use a food dehydrator set to a low temperature (around 95 to 105°F) to finish in 1 to 3 days, though this can reduce the fragrance intensity slightly.
Resist the urge to use high heat. Slow drying at room temperature preserves the natural oils far better than rushing things in an oven. The leaves are ready when they crumble easily between your fingers with no flexibility or dampness.
The Carrier Oil Infusion Method
This is the most practical way to make lavender oil at home. You’re essentially dissolving the plant’s aromatic compounds into a neutral oil over time. The result is an infused oil, not a pure essential oil, but it’s perfectly usable for skin care, massage, bath oil, or homemade salves.
What you need:
- 1 cup of dried lavender leaves, lightly crushed
- 1.5 to 2 cups of carrier oil (jojoba, sweet almond, or olive oil all work well)
- A clean glass jar with a tight-fitting lid
- Cheesecloth or fine mesh strainer
Cold Infusion (Best Quality)
Pack the crushed dried leaves into the jar, filling it about halfway. Pour the carrier oil over the leaves until they’re fully submerged with at least half an inch of oil above them. Seal the jar and place it in a sunny windowsill. Let it sit for 3 to 6 weeks, shaking it gently every day or two. The warmth from the sun helps draw the aromatic compounds into the oil without damaging them.
After the infusion period, strain the oil through cheesecloth into a clean container, squeezing the leaves to extract as much oil as possible. If the scent isn’t strong enough, you can repeat the process: add fresh dried leaves to the already-infused oil and let it sit for another 2 to 3 weeks. This double infusion produces a noticeably more fragrant result.
Warm Infusion (Faster Results)
If you don’t want to wait weeks, a gentle heat method speeds things up. Place the leaves and oil in a double boiler or a heat-safe jar set in a pot of water. Warm the oil over the lowest heat possible, keeping the temperature below 150°F. Let it infuse for 2 to 5 hours, checking periodically to make sure the oil isn’t getting too hot. You should see a faint color change and smell the lavender when you lift the lid.
Strain as described above. The warm method produces a usable oil in a single afternoon, though the scent profile is slightly less complex than a slow cold infusion.
What About Steam Distillation?
Commercial lavender essential oil is made through steam distillation, where steam passes through plant material, carries the volatile oils into a condenser, and the oil separates from the water. You can buy small home distillation kits for this purpose, but there are practical limitations worth knowing.
Lavender leaves yield significantly less essential oil per pound than flower spikes. Commercial flower distillation typically produces only a small amount of oil from large volumes of plant material, and leaves yield even less. You’d need a substantial harvest of leaves to collect even a few milliliters of pure essential oil. For most home growers, the carrier oil infusion method gives a far better return for the effort involved.
If you do use a home still, the process is straightforward: pack the leaves into the distillation chamber, heat the water to produce steam, and collect the condensate. The essential oil will float on top of the hydrosol (the scented water). The hydrosol itself is useful as a linen spray or facial toner.
Boosting the Scent
Because leaves are less oil-rich than flowers, there are a few tricks to get a stronger final product. Crushing or bruising the dried leaves before infusing helps break open the oil glands and release more aromatic compounds into the carrier oil. Using a higher ratio of leaves to oil also concentrates the scent. The double infusion technique mentioned earlier, straining out spent leaves and adding a fresh batch, is the single most effective way to intensify a leaf-only infusion.
You can also combine leaves with whatever flower material you have. Even a small handful of dried lavender buds mixed into a leaf infusion adds noticeable depth and sweetness to the finished oil. There’s no rule against mixing plant parts.
Storing Your Lavender Oil
Store infused lavender oil in dark glass bottles (amber or cobalt blue) in a cool place away from direct light. Light and heat break down the aromatic compounds over time. A properly made and strained infusion with no residual moisture will keep for 6 to 12 months, depending on the shelf life of your carrier oil. Jojoba oil lasts the longest since it’s technically a wax and resists going rancid. Olive oil has a shorter shelf life of roughly 6 months in an infusion.
If the oil develops an off smell or becomes cloudy, moisture likely got in during the process. Discard it rather than using it on your skin.
Using Lavender Leaf Oil Safely
Infused oils are already diluted in a carrier, so they’re generally safe to apply directly to the skin for most adults. If you’ve made a pure essential oil through distillation, never apply it undiluted. Skin reactions are the most common adverse effect of essential oil use, and undiluted application is the leading cause. For adults, essential oils should be diluted to roughly 2 to 3% in a carrier oil for full-body use, which works out to about 12 to 18 drops of essential oil per ounce of carrier. For children under six, use a much lower concentration, around 0.5 to 1%.
Test any new oil on a small patch of skin on your inner forearm before using it widely. Wait 24 hours and check for redness or irritation.