The Best Incense Sticks, Cones, and Papers to Give as Gifts (2025)

Like the flickering of your favorite candle, the best incense provides visual interest through spirals of smoke while perfuming your home. With a storied history, incense can nurture a sense of spirituality in a way that’s unique to its counterparts in the world of home fragrance. If you’re looking to curate a mindful space like Anitta’s mountainside Rio home, incense effortlessly adds a grounding element.

While it’s true that incense is best suited to earthy and hazy notes—it is a fragranced smoke after all—don’t think it’s precluded from other scent profiles. It goes far beyond the frankincense and myrrh you might remember smelling in church. High-quality incense can span a wide range of notes, often activated in inventive ways through the burning process. Ranging from woodsy to sweet and everything in between, the scents we tested in our own spaces will curate an indelible vibe in your home.

Plus, with the holiday season just around the corner, incense also makes a great present. Candles are regularly among the list of items to buy when you have no idea what to get someone (right alongside coffee mugs or a gift card), but incense sets you apart from the crowd. Throw in an incense holder with a hand-dipped set of incense sticks, and you’ve got a housewarming gift that your host will enjoy long after the party is over.

Our Top Picks for the Best Incense

Best Overall

Nippon Kodo Kayuragi Incense Sticks

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Best Incense Papers

Papier d’Armenie Armenie Incense Papers

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Best Splurge

Loewe Tomato Leaves Incense Set

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The Best Incense, Overall

A natural addition to a wabi-sabi home like this Pune, India, apartment, commerce producer Lauren Arzbaecher says the mild woody scent of this sandalwood pick “sets a calming tone.” She notes how well crafted this sandalwood incense feels, coming in a sleek wooden box. And it’s no surprise: Nippon Kodo is one of the few incense brands that follows old traditions of Japanese incense in their formulas, citing the writings of Takai Juemon, an incense preparer who supplied the Emperor of Japan in the Tensho era of the late 16th century.

Best Incense Papers

Burning these incense papers will instantly transport you to a regal Parisian parlor à la Lenny Kravitz’s historical home. Vanilla echoes the sweetness of French pastries while the undertones of slightly smoky myrrh add intrigue. Unlike typical incense sticks, the ritual of folding, portability, and shareability make papers an intriguing addition to the incense stash. Reminiscent of department store perfume testing strips, these scented papers are able to be used without burning to gently perfume dresser drawers, wardrobes, even bookcases. Arzbaecher found their scent a bit stronger in a smokeless state: “When lit, the scent definitely perfumed a larger amount of space. However, I felt like I lost the notes of the vanilla, so I actually preferred the smell of the papers on their own.”

Best Splurge

Even with tomato-girl summer in the rearview, you can still celebrate tomato season. Loewe reimagined their iconic tomato leaves candle into incense that’s hand-rolled on bamboo sticks. Arzbaecher praises its unique fruity scent, categorizing it “as if you just dropped a slice of fresh tomato into a hot skillet, and the heat of the pan started to caramelize the natural sugars.” Echoing the ribbed design of their candle containers, the incense holder’s curvilinear shape makes a striking visual contrast against the steep angle of the incense stick as it burns.

Best Incense Cones

For a scent that takes you off-the-grid, look to woodsy notes. Arzbaecher says these small but mighty incense cones are “a walk through the woods condensed into a tiny package.” Now, mushroom might not be the first thing you think to look for in a home fragrance, but hear us out: the base of sandalwood, violet, and amber accented by a mid-level rush of cedar and rosemary perfectly blend with the enoki for something uniquely earthy.

A Classic Smoky Scent

Hinoki wood is most frequently spotted underfoot in bathrooms for an elevated take on a bath mat, and for good reason. The grounding scent of the evergreen tree native to Japan evokes a spa-like atmosphere in any space. Aesop’s incense sticks add warming spices of cinnamon and clove to the mix for an aroma that “feels like a massage to the senses,” according to Arzbaecher. While the set comes with a small Kanuma pumice incense holder, the brand’s bronze asymmetrical beauty—designed in collaboration with Vogel Studio—gives the ritual of burning incense an elegant flair.

Best Incense Set

Binu Binu Incense Discovery Kit

If your taste in fragrance is as fickle as spring weather, try a set with a mix of scents. Inspired by traditional rituals of Korean life—from the bathhouse to tea ceremonies—there’s options for a variety of settings. Contributor Priscilla Ward found that the “green tea scent reminds me of matcha because it’s subtly sweet.” She also found that these incense sticks were nearly smokeless, so they aren’t too overbearing for the smoke-averse. This set is also beloved by tastemaker (and AD guest editor) Beverly Nguyen, who favors the green tea, cypress, and sandalwood scents.

More AD-Approved Incense

Vyrao Ember Incense (Set of 30)

For another woodsy scent, we turned to a recommendation from fragrance tastemaker Carol Han Pyle, the founder of Nette, a clean and sustainable perfume brand. She told AD that she loves the smoky scent of this Vyrao incense, and often “needs to light a stick of incense to clear the air.” That sentiment tracks with Vyrao’s focus on intention—the brand claims that the aroma of this scent made from natural ingredients is intended to eliminate negativity and instill positive energy.

P.F. Candle Co Teakwood & Tobacco Incense Sticks

Set a sultry mood with this charcoal incense affectionately given the moniker of “the boyfriend scent.” The musk-forward mix brings to mind Mark Consuelos’s cigar room or the wood-paneled walls of Walton Goggins’s Hudson Valley hunting lodge. While ‘smells like a masculine cologne’ is an apt summary, it’s more complex than that. Ward says “the base of teakwood and sandalwood make this an ideal scent for unwinding and sipping on a buzzy beverage of your choice.” Hell, with an hour of burn time per incense stick, you might even have time for two.

Pretti.Cool Palo Santo Sticks (Set of 8)

Different in format from typical incense sticks, palo santo is another type of incense that is burned to purify spaces. Translated to mean ‘holy wood’ in Spanish, the mini log-like sticks come from a wild tree native to several South and Central American countries, with a history in the region’s Indigenous culture. Palo santo belongs to the same botanical family as frankincense and myrrh, sharing many of its aromatic and spiritual properties. This set from Texas-based artist collective Pretti.Cool is sustainably harvested in Ecuador, and would look right at home in their terrazzo-inspired incense holder.

Incense Holders and Accessories We Love

We’d be remiss to wax poetic about the best-smelling incense without showcasing some design-forward holders and incense burners. Beyond protecting your surfaces from the falling ash, these small stunners can be a statement piece—some even creating further visual interest by funneling the smoke in interesting patterns. We’ve also tossed in a few of our favorite fire-starters to aid in lighting the incense in style.

How to Safely Burn Incense

As it produces smoke, incense has slightly more considerations to take into account when burning to make sure you’re using it safely.

Consider the size of the room

Smoke concentrates differently in a 300 square foot bedroom than in a spacious living room. To keep incense an ambiance-booster rather than something that sets a sprinkler off, select larger rooms where you can. This will help the smoke to dissipate and prevent any respiratory issues from a higher concentration in the air. Making sure you’re using natural incense will also free you from synthetic smoke. If you only have a smaller space to work with, choose an incense with a shorter burn time to mitigate smoke buildup.

Ensure proper ventilation

Having a window cracked or turning on a fan while burning incense is recommended (even in large spaces) to keep up airflow while still enjoying the fragrance. Moving air can actually help to enhance the aromatics as well as spread the scent further around your home.

Light the incense properly

Unlike candles, which are pretty foolproof when it comes to lighting, incense can be a bit more fickle. To get the most out of your incense and make sure it’s long-lasting, follow these steps:

1. Place your incense inside an incense holder, ashtray, or on another non-flammable surface.
2. Light the end of the stick (or tip of the cone) until a small flame ignites.
3. Allow the flame to burn for a few seconds, then fan or blow out the flame. Be sure to be gentle here; if you blow too hard, you may fully extinguish the incense.
4. Where the flame was, there should be a small ember visible, with a steady but thin amount of smoke coming out of the tip. A small amount of ash at this stage is normal.
5. The incense scent should be apparent almost immediately. If you aren’t getting any smell, repeat the lighting process until the smoke is consistent.
6. Once you are done burning incense, make sure residual embers are entirely extinguished before you discard.

Is Incense Therapeutic?

Incense is more typically associated with mindfulness and aromatherapy than candles or other home fragrance options, and for good reason. It has a long history in spiritual practices, dating back thousands of years to ancient Egypt, India, and Japan, among other civilizations. It was used to cleanse negative energies, aid meditation, and uplift spirits. The calming feeling you may get when you burn incense pays tribute to this storied history, though there is also a scientific basis behind it.

Renee Hughes, a psycho-aromatherapy specialist and founder of Holistic Champions, notes that linalool, often found in floral, citrus, fresh, and sweet scents, is the primary component to look for when you’re trying to get grounded. “When it comes to coining a scent as therapeutic, we can thank the constituents such as linalool, linalyl and D-Limonene,” she explains. “These chemical components give us a great feeling.”

Are Incense Sticks, Cones, or Papers Better?

Choosing the right type of incense depends on what level of fragrance and mood you’re aiming for. Incense sticks are the most common and tend to have a longer burn time, though they do require a holder, where cones and papers can be plopped onto essentially any heat-resistant surface and you’re ready to burn. Papers offer a more versatile usage as they can also be used without burning to perfume anywhere you’re able to stash them.