How to buy cologne you'll actually like

Cologne is one of the hardest things to buy. It's also the hardest thing to buy for someone, which is why it's one of the most regifted items during the holidays.

Why? Because smell is an incredibly personal thing, and it's nearly impossible to tell what a cologne will smell like until you spray it on your skin and let it sit for a while to mix with your own oils.

Combine this with the other misinformation spread about cologne and fragrance (like that more expensive or higher-strength fragrances automatically smell better), and you'll see why shopping for your perfect scent can be a very difficult task.

Well, the facts are very simple: you need to try out a fragrance on your skin in order for you to be able to tell if you actually like it.

The way around this is pretty simple: samples. But we're not talking about those little strips of fragrance that come in magazines. Those aren't going to be able to tell you if you'll actually like how they smell on your body.

What we are talking about are those one- to one-and-a-half-ounce bottles of cologne that can be had very cheaply as a kind of test drive before you spring for a bottle that may cost dozens to hundreds of dollars. Some stores like Sephora even sell kits with a dozen or so fragrances just for this purpose, and you can pick and choose samples on fragrance hobby websites like Fragrancenet.com.

It's easy to find your next favorite scent. Just make sure you apply it correctly.