Please help me pinpoint the source of the smell in my teenage son's bedroom

[Smallsteps88]

I know plenty of you have raised teenagers so I’m hoping some of you will know what this is.

He’s 15. Showers every day including washing hair. Brushes his teeth once a day at least, twice if he remembers in the morning. He uses roll on deodorant daily. He spends his days barefoot and the shoes he wears out of the house are kept downstairs. His clothes are washed daily. He has a laundry basket that they stay in and it is emptied every evening. There are no dirty pants/socks/anything lurking in his room because I completely stripped the room bare last weekend, moved all furniture, washed absolutely everything, including his mattress, all surfaces, bed linen, curtains. The whole lot. He doesn’t wear pyjamas and the offending smell does transfer to his bedsheets. So it’s coming off his body but I just don’t know how! He is washed every day. It is a bodily smell but doesn’t smell like BO. It is horrible though and his room is small and gets warm and stuffy so the smell is strong. His window and curtains are open for a few hours a day. I would have them open all day but he spends a lot of time in his room and likes to close them. The smell is from him but if I sniff him he doesn’t smell. If he leaves his bedroom door open the smell comes through the house.

Please help. I feel awful constantly reminding him to open his windows and asking to sniff his hair to see if it’s clean but we really need to get to the bottom of this. The smell is really horrible.

Can anyone shed any light and/or recommend some products he/we can use to combat this?

You seem determined that it's something you can 'fix' come hell or high water and are not considering that it's normal and will go on its own eventually.

Well yes, because it’s absolutely honking and not something anyone should have to put up with, including him if other people are smelling it off him. Im not just going to leave it, I’ll try what I can to at least minimise it. I’m not going to be made to feel bad about that thank you.

It may be his actual pillow or duvet. My son was (and probably still is) a sweaty lad from very early on. Add to that the natural evening emissions of every teenage boy & his usual boyhood aroma suddenly became a pungent wall of stench that hit you as you entered the room.

Baths or showers morning or night are essential, but I also invested in a washing machine with a maximum of a 9kg load, so I could wash duvets & pillows.

I also dumped the expensive goose down duvet & posh pillows for cheapo supermarket ones I could quietly bin & cheaply replace a couple of times a year.

I never grew up with brothers or around boys, so didn’t realise how many smells a teenage boy can produce. Rest assured, it does get better, although I shall sniff my 28 year old son when he visits just to check. (And, you will really miss the nicer of the pings when they leave home. With video calling on tap these days, I see his face all the time, but it’s his smell I miss most).

Waxy ears?

Sorry if you've already described it but what sort of smell is it?

I don't have a cleaning routine half as stringent as yours and my ds smells lovely. He showers every day and that seems to be enough.
My younger brother was a bit stinky as a teen but he rarely washed and his room was foul!

The obvious question is what’s his diet like? I know when I used to eat lots of sugar and carbs my bodily fluids smelt stronger. For example any discharge or during my period. If he’s eating the normal trash a teenager eats then maybe it’s making his sweat smell really strong. I remember being in the same aisle as three teenage boys some years back and the smell emanating from them was putrid. I had to walk away.

ahh the 'tiger cage' teenage boy smell.
nothing you can do about it, apart from the things you are already doing.
at least you don't have b.o. in addition

@Smallsteps88 I work in a boarding house with 65 teenage boys, ages 14-18 years. Boys definitely have a 'smell', no matter how much everything is aired / washed / cleaned.
Please don't make him paranoid about this though. As long as you are doing all the usual things and he has good hygiene then you can't do much else.

It’s just teenage boy smell.

It will pass.

Is it just a 'teenage boy' smell though? Ds can be a bit whiffy after playing football but nothing that a shower & fresh clothes do t sort out.
His room smells fine too and I'm honestly not blind to it because I do notice the odd time he or his room smell a bit!

Might not be much help here but just wanted to say that I had a relationship with someone for a few years who suffered from back acne. He had super oily skin which certainly caused our mattress and his pillows to smell terribly. In turn this made the whole bedroom smell. Even when he used a towel after a shower it stank to high heaven. Very difficult to describe the smell too.

Could your DS be experiencing excess sebum secretions rather than sweat?

My sister uses bicarb of soda on her mattress every couple of weeks because her partner is an excessive night sweater.

I have it all to come with a 13 yr old DS and an 11 yr old DSS!!!

@Smallsteps88

You seem determined that it's something you can 'fix' come hell or high water and are not considering that it's normal and will go on its own eventually.

Well yes, because it’s absolutely honking and not something anyone should have to put up with, including him if other people are smelling it off him. Im not just going to leave it, I’ll try what I can to at least minimise it. I’m not going to be made to feel bad about that thank you.

Then you'll need some males to sniff it out. They don't as a rule smell that teenage hormone coming from boys. Well I've never heard of it anyway.

I was thinking lactose intolerant, along with the scalp condition, and then read he drinks loads of milk. Try him on oat or almond or coconut milk instead for a while and see if it helps.

Oh my god. My son stinks too. He's 13, almost 14. I have to open the window wide every morning. It's his sleep he gets stinky in.

He does wear pjs and I notice the smell on those. He has to change them a lot more often now.

Is this a thing? I never knew.

I have 4 sons (all now thankfully fragrant adults) but I noticed this "smell" when they were younger and came to the conclusion that what they eat and drink had an effect on their "smell".
Whilst they were all very clean if DS1 ate any type of spicy food his whole room smelt revolting for a few days. DS 3 always smelt strange and we realised it was down to the energy drinks he drank daily, when he ran out once the smell stopped.
It could be something quite innocuous that he is eating every day that is coming out in his nightime sweat.

It's not just a boy thing btw both my girls have had smelly phases, it's just hormones.

My son's room - especially bedding stank of rank boy. Him too. It was a particularly feety, cheesy smell and I realised it must be coming from his skin, which had become oily in the last year or so. (And his hair too - bleurgh.). Nothing shifted it and nothing disguised it. Of course sebum can cause a yeast overgrowth, so I bought a strong dandruff shampoo (Nizoral & Selsun Gold are the best ones - you need a clinical strength one, not just Head & Shoulders.) and a shower puff thing to build a good lather. He was to wash his hair and his whole face and body and stand in the shower for 3-5 mins before washing it off, every second day for a week, then twice a week. The pong is gone.

Could he be “tidying away” worn once clothes and putting them back in drawers?
If you suspect it’s possible, try washing the whole wardrobe one go.

Would you describe the smell as vinegary at all? If he is drinking a lot and very clean it could be his blood sugars are out of wack...not necessarily diabetes could just be sugars are off slightly.

How old is his mattress? Maybe it needs replacing?

This may sound really disgusting and rude but it might be him not washing his under carriage area specifically under the skin if you know what I mean and then when he goes to sleep its in the air he may need to wash that bit properly

I agree with pps saying it's just boy-smell. However I cleaned teenage son's bedroom it always smelt like a wet dog had rolled in a muddy field and then died.
By the time he came back from uni the first time, aged 19, it had gone.

Yes I remember this I think it's universal, I was tempted to nail his door shut and make him leave from the window by rope ladder.
Luckily he was paranoid about hygiene and the smell in the house was largely excessive lynx. He would take hour long showers. Our water bill was huge.

Sadly teenage boys do.dmell. D's showers twice most days
Once in morning and again after sport. He runs, plays cricket, bike rides or swims every day. He used to use roll on deodorant but still smellef. We have now given him anti perspirant to spray on, let it dry, then a spray of deodorant. Roll ons don't work if they do lots of sport. DS smells less with spray.

I agree with the night sweat theory. My youngest son sweats profusely in bed and he smells vaguely musty in the morning, he's only 8 and I'm dreading the smell when he's a teenager

Sometimes boys slap on a bit of shower gel rather than properly soaping up to give themselves a really good wash.

IMO, soap is better than shower gels.
I have one smelly and one fragrant son!