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Why Do I Still Smell After A Shower

Your routine is solid. You take a good shower with warm water and soap, always wash your armpits, use deodorant and wear clean clothes. So how come you can still smell yourself? It’s annoying and makes your routine seem like a waste of time.
Don’t assume it’s coming from your skin though, because that's just one possibility.

Find Where The Smell Is Coming From First

It sounds pretty obvious, but there's a big difference between “I smell” and “my armpits smell.” Body odour doesn’t have to be coming from below the neck. If you’ve been sweating, wearing a hat or haven’t washed your hair for a while, do some smell tests.
Run your hands over your hair then give your scalp a 3 second massage, now smell your hands. All good? Do the same across the back of your neck, behind your earsand for all the creases on your body. So, was it a body smell?

Check What Happens In The Shower

Man using a long-handled shower brush to wash the middle of his back.

Are You Missing The Same Area Every Time?

Showers and baths are efficient and have just one job - to get you clean. You get in, wash the obvious bits, rinse and get out. But when you do that on repeat you’ll skim over the same places on repeat too. All those areas you’re saving for when you’ve ‘got more time’ to have a proper scrub: behind the ears, back of the neck, belly button, under the scrotum, groin creases, between the toes, around the toenails, soles of the feet, under skin folds.
For your next shower, don't wash harder. 
Just think ‘Everywhere needs the same amount of washing’.
Wash all those areas one by one before you rinse. If the smell is gone afterwards, you’ve found the soap dodging stink.

Is Your Old Deodorant Still There?

Water and shower gel don’t always get rid of antiperspirant and deodorant. After you’ve showered, dry off, then run your fingers over a dry armpit. Does it feel coated, waxy or a bit slippery? If it does, there might be some stubborn product sitting there.
We’re showing you a simple test on our model using white cotton pads, first dry and then damp with water and soap, to see what they pick up from the underarm. Okay, we know a cotton pad can’t tell us what's happening under a microscope, but it tells us if warm water and shower gel can  lift this stuff off the skin.
If you use a lot of heavy antiperspirants, spend a bit more time washing your armpits, instead of layering on more product over whatever’s still there.

What Are You Washing With?

Whether it's a flannel, exfoliating gloves or a shower puff, you wet it every time you bathe and then leave it hanging around for a few hours before you use it again.
Before you load it up with soap or shower gel, dampen it with warm water, rub the cloth between your fingers and smell it.
If there’s even a hint of anything stinky coming from it, don’t wash yourself with it. If it’s washable, give it a proper wash at the hottest temperature the care label allows. If it still smells after that, get a new one.

What Happens After Your Shower?

Your Towel Can Undo Your Shower

Actually you might want to check this first. Your dry towel looks perfectly acceptable when it’s just hanging there dry. But as soon as it gets wet, you can smell that stale, damp mustiness. And you've just rubbed it over your freshly washed body.
Before your next shower, wet a bit of your dry towel with warm water. rub it with your fingers and smell it again. If there's a smell that you don’t want on your body, fling that straight in the laundry basket, and grab a fresh disposable bath towel instead. 

You Might Be Damp

This is for those of us that shower, towel off fast and immediately pull on underwear, socks and trousers.
No need to stand naked in the bathroom waiting for a strong weather system to pass. This’ll just take another 30 seconds.
Towel dry like normal, then check between your toes, under your arms, around the groin and anywhere skin sits against skin. If it’s still damp, dry it again then put on deodorant and get dressed. 
If you can handle it, stand in front of the fan at the same time for double the drying action.

Don’t Put Your Clean Body Into Smelly Clothes

Get that top you were wearing before your shower, rub the armpits between your hands for 20 seconds and smell it.

If you notice an old smell after you warm the fabric, then you need to give that top a good clean before you wear it again. Especially the armpits. If you don’t wash it first, as soon as your body heat warms it up, the old smell will reappear.

Don't just check the armpits either. Smell the crotch of trousers, shorts, gym wear and underwear that you've worn before.
The crotch on those clothes gets warm when you put them on, which can wake up an old smell in the fabric.
And if a ‘freshly washed’ shirt already smells around the armpits before you put it on, that's a laundry problem you deal with separately.

Is The Smell Coming From Somewhere Else?

Is It Your Feet Or Your Footwear?

What if you smell totally fine until you wear your socks and shoes? Well, there’s no point in putting clean feet into smelly socks, or clean feet and fresh socks into smelly shoes.
If you're not sure, stay barefoot for a while after your shower. That means no slippers or slides either because they could have a smell of their own. Then put on a clean pair of socks and wait a bit. Still fine? Put your shoes on. If the smell comes back after the shoes go on, you’ve narrowed it down.
If your shoes are the problem, find out why your feet smell worse in some shoes.

If You Smell Clean And Then Smell Bad Again Later

This is not the same as when you get out of the shower and notice you smell, or wear clothes and then notice the smell. We’re talking about when you smell good at 8am but by 10am, the smell is back.
If that happens, don't just decide “my deodorant has stopped working.” Find out where the smell came back first. Armpits? Shirt? Feet? Shoes? Hair?
That’s better than endlessly changing shower gels and deodorants.
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