LONDON — Selfridges is the latest British retailer to raise its fragrance game with the unveiling of its freshly refurbished hall that’s meant to appeal to connoisseurs and curious customers alike.

Located inside the main Oxford Street entrance, the fragrance hall was the final phase of a two-year refurbishment of Selfridges‘ London beauty floor. The updated space, with its clusters of colorful bottles, bell jars and original Beaux-Arts architectural details, is a blend of past and present.

The new counters, which are lighter in color to ensure those colored bottles stand out, showcase scents from nearly 50 established and niche fragrance houses. There are more than 30 exclusives, including Nishane Oudous Cerasus Extrait de Parfum, and Body Heat by Discothèque, a unisex oriental woody fragrance.

Melissa McGinnis, director of beauty buying at Selfridges, said fragrance is the store’s fastest-growing category. “We’ve seen that consistently since even pre-COVID. Fragrance has gone from strength to strength, and it’s also where we’ve seen the biggest shift in customer behavior,” she said in an interview.

Selfridges’ aim, she added, is to create “a world-leading fragrance destination. The hall sits right at the entrance to our store, and it’s become a place of discovery, and a destination for niche and new brands.”

McGinnis said 75 percent of the fragrances on offer are niche, or have limited distribution. The store has grouped those smaller fragrances around different themes — established, contemporary and emerging.

Niche names include Maison Crivelli, Marc-Antoine Barrois, Initio, Mancera and Matière Premiere, which specializes in single, concentrated raw ingredients.

Sales associates, she added, are on hand to guide customers every step of the way.

“Fragrance can be quite an overwhelming category, and you can’t possibly smell everything we have to offer, so that level of expertise, that assistance on navigating, is so important,” she said.

The customer has also changed. Gone are the days when someone wore a single “signature” scent. Nowadays, shoppers have more knowledge and choice and are building a wardrobe of fragrances for different occasions, or moments in the day.

McGinnis also said that young people are exploring fragrance in a different way to their parents and grandparents. They’re listening and learning on social media, and looking for limited-distribution brands, or “something that feels a bit more unique, exciting and special.”

Among the other trends McGinnis said she’s seeing is the evolution of more sophisticated gourmands, or fragrances with edible notes. She said there are now leather-based gourmands, and other twists on the popular category.

There is also a growing trend for extraits and absolutes, which have a higher concentration of oil, or an intense focus on a certain note.

McGinnis said the new hall also has a broader offer, and many exclusives.

Among them are Mind Games, inspired by chess; Solferino, which offers 10 distinct, genderless scents; and the Seoul-based Born to Stand Out by Jun Lim, which is meant to defy the norms of East Asian beauty culture.

Heritage brands include Clive Christian, which opened a flagship earlier this year on New Bond Street, and Amouage, known for its hand-blended creations that aim to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western perfumery.

Later this year, some 40 new and exclusive fragrances will arrive on the shop floor from brands including Clive Christian, Ormonde Jayne, Ex Nihilo, Parfums De Marly, Maison Margiela and Initio.

From spring, Selfridges will also launch two fragrance bundles, one showcasing six niche brands and the other focusing on unisex fragrances. In the summer, Selfridges said its sell-out Fragrance Wardrobe will return, offering a series of niche scents to discover.

There are some old favorites in the hall, too. Dior and Chanel are the twin anchors of the space, and each has a sit-down service and bespoke gifting options.

The space still has the original chandeliers, designed by Christian Liaigre and installed in 1999, and Carrara marble floors and columns. The bronze Oxford Street entrance doors and surround from 1928 are also firmly in situ.

Four new countertops have been added, and they are all made from Dekton, a carbon-neutral, ultracompact porcelain surface inspired by the aesthetics of natural stone. The countertops have patinated brass edge trim details that match the existing bronze finishes.

The fragrance hall is one of the oldest parts of the Oxford Street store, and featured in the original 1909 configuration.

Founder Harry Gordon Selfridge was the first to put beauty on the ground floor in London, inspired by Parisian retailers who sold makeup and fragrance on countertops in the early 20th century. In doing so, he set the blueprint for department stores worldwide.

Because Mr. Selfridge believed that shopping should be enticing and tactile, he also placed central displays in the aisles and lowered counters to be more customer friendly and to encourage interaction with products.

Today, Selfridges is also thinking about the afterlife of those products. Across all Selfridges stores, customers can refill their favorite fragrances with more than 300 options across 30 brands.

The store also offers Reselfridges Recycle, a new initiative enabling customers to return beauty empties, including fragrance bottles. For every five items recycled, customers will receive a key as part of the new Selfridges Unlocked membership program.

The London store wasn’t the only Selfridges that got a face lift.

Last fall, Selfridges Birmingham unveiled a beauty destination. At 30,000 square feet, the new space is 20 percent larger than before and is now the U.K.’s biggest beauty hall outside of London. There are 37 new counters, a suite of services and a team of more than 300 experts across the different categories.