Valerian Oil Sizes: Which Bottle to Start With

A half-ounce bottle of valerian oil holds enough for roughly fifty one-ounce bottles of a leave-on blend, and that is before you have found out whether you love the smell. Valerian is used in traces, and it splits opinion more than almost any oil we know. Those two facts shape the whole question of size.

Valerian Root Essential Oil bottle

Valerian Root Essential Oil

Our own Valerian Root Essential Oil, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.

From $31.99

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What a bottle holds, in drops

We sell one valerian root oil, in six retail sizes (0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 oz) and three trade sizes (5, 25 and 400 lb), and every size is drawn from the same standard batch. Counting drops is rough work, so here is arithmetic rather than a measurement: at the usual convention of about 20 drops to the milliliter, a 0.5 oz bottle (14.8 ml) holds up to around 300 drops, and a 1 oz bottle up to around 600. Dropper sizes vary and slow-running oils can give larger drops, so treat those numbers as a ceiling and weigh the oil if you need accuracy.

A small distillery with a plain stainless-steel still and sacks of a tangled mass of thin, wiry

Now set that against how the oil gets used:

By that arithmetic, a single 0.5 oz bottle covers around fifty of those six-drop blends. Even someone who made one every month would take years to finish it, which is a big part of why we point most people to the small bottles first. Our posts on diffusers and roller bottles show the working.

Let your nose choose the size

We describe valerian as earthy, musky and woodland-damp with a balsamic sweet finish, and we add a plain piece of advice: use it in traces rather than by the drop, because it will dominate anything beside it, and buy the smallest size first to find out which camp you are in. Part of the reason for the camps is chemistry. In a laboratory study of five Estonian valerian root oils, the components included bornyl acetate and, in some samples, a little isovaleric acid, the compound Arctander blamed for the objectionable odor an aged valerian oil can acquire. Our certificate gives no constituent breakdown, so we cannot say how much any bottle contains, but the pungent side of valerian chemistry is a fair explanation for why some noses say "wow" and others say "no".

The cheapest way to settle the question is a small bottle. If you are in business, our wholesale page offers sample bottles for exactly this reason. See the shop page for current prices.

A first-bottle checklist

A small first bottle makes all of that easy, and you can always order a bigger size once you know how you use it.

Two large amber glass bottles and a small one, all tightly closed with a black screw cap

When bigger makes sense

Batch makers are the natural customers for larger sizes. We mention trace amounts in soap, candles and perfume accords, and someone making those regularly may use hundreds of drops over a year. After a first small batch to learn their own usage rate, 2 oz or 8 oz can be a sensible step. They should lean on their own supplier's usage rates and the cosmetic and fragrance rules for what they make.

A tiny 1 ml glass sample vial, a 5 ml and a 10 ml amber bottle, all tightly closed with a black screw cap

Businesses can look at our bulk page and wholesale page, which describe the trade sizes, samples, a free consultation, private label and custom formulations. If you need the same batch across a long run, ask in writing which batch an order will ship from.

The Certificate of Analysis we publish covers one batch and lists density, refractive index and optical rotation. If your work needs GC-MS data, species or origin confirmation, an allergen declaration, an IFRA certificate or a safety data sheet, tell us through the contact page and ask for the lot you will receive, and get the answer in writing before you rely on it.

A note on shelf life and yield

We say the oil typically keeps 3 to 5 years unopened, stored tightly capped in a dark, cool cabinet away from pets. Opening a large container again and again exposes the rest to air, so for bulk quantities we suggest decanting working amounts into smaller airtight bottles.

It also helps to know where a small-volume oil comes from. In that same Estonian study, laboratory distillation gave between roughly 0.3 and 1.2 percent oil from dried root. If those percentages are by weight, filling one half-ounce bottle (about 14 g of oil at the density on our certificate) takes somewhere between one and five kilograms of dried root. That is a laboratory figure offered only for scale, but it explains why valerian oil is a precious, small-volume material.

Whatever size you pick

Our oil is for aromatic and cosmetic use only, never for swallowing. For skin, our dilution guidance is 0.5% to 2% in a carrier oil with a patch test first, and we would begin at the low end for a first blend. Keep it away from eyes, children and pets, since cats in particular are drawn to the scent. We suggest avoiding it in pregnancy as a precaution and not combining it with sedative medication. Our piece on diluting a powerful aroma walks through the first blend.

Smell first, plan second, and let the first bottle tell you whether the second one should be bigger.

Valerian Root Essential Oil bottle

Valerian Root Essential Oil

Valerian Root Essential Oil from our own shop, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.

From $31.99

Shop Now →

Sources & Further Reading