10 Common Candle Making Questions
We all started somewhere. Sometimes that just means researching candle making until the cows come home, but that’s still somewhere!
Asking questions is the heart of self improvement in all areas, including candle making. We’ve gathered 10 common candle making questions to cover a few areas of the craft and business to help set you on the path, no matter where you are!
Table of Contents
How do you pick the right wick size?
Where do you buy candle making supplies?
Which wick type should you pair with that wax and jar?
How do you prevent soy wax imperfections?
How many candles should you make to sell starting out?
How do you choose a fragrance oil?
Should you buy a candle making kit?
How do you pick the right wick size?
True beginners coming into the craft with nothing but some wax and a spirit to try things might not even know that wicks come in a large variety of sizes and types. Why? Every wax-fragrance oil-container combination impacts the behavior of the flame on top of the wick.
More specifically, the stability of the candle’s combustion.
The role a wick plays in a candle is so critical. Choosing the right size ensures your wax blend has the greatest chance at being safe and smelling good! Unfortunately, the tremendous variety of factors the wick influences means picking one doesn’t boil down to a single measurement, wax type, or container.
You’re stuck with a starting point. And you only know which way to go after you perform a burn test on the completed candle.
The greatest tool for selecting a wick is experience, but the second greatest is a wick chart. Simplified wick charts, such as the one developed and maintained by CandleScience, ask for a wax type and container diameter, and they give you a wick type and size.
Will it work? Depends on how the burn test goes! Those charts are developed with some sturdy assumptions, and don’t (and can’t) account for every factor present in candle making.
Use wick charts as a starting point, and try making more than one candle at a time from a single batch. Take the recommended wick size and try one larger and one smaller. After a burn test, you can determine how successful each size is for your particular candle!
Where do you buy candle making supplies?
Building a varied portfolio of suppliers is one of the 10 Commandments of Candle Making. Why?
To limit risk, for starters. But having multiple suppliers fueling your business gives you options. Figuring out who to buy from is a different questions altogether.
Shipping costs can cripple young candle making operations because you’re transporting heavy-ish wax. Outside of a few companies, weight = money. And although buying online offers incredible variety and flexibility, finding a local area to buy supplies enables you to save money if you can spare the time and personal costs to make the trip. You are your own freight.
But you can buy candle supplies from a lot of places, including Amazon. Local hobby store? Sure, but you’re probably getting a non-commercialized wax for a higher price. Not a big deal if you’re making them for fun.
If you’re starting a business or want higher quality blends, consider seeking them from a reputable candle supplies store. You may end up paying a lot more for shipping than you wish, but the quality is higher and the supply is almost always guaranteed. If you’re lucky enough to live near a supply store, even better!
A few suppliers include:
Which wick type should you pair with that wax and jar?
Easier answered with a chart. Your mileage may vary, but these are general recommendations throughout the industry using most of the major wax and wick types.
| Wax Name | Wick 1 | Wick 2 |
| Golden Brands 464 Soy | CD | ECO |
| Golden Brands 444 Soy | CD | ECO |
| Golden Brands 415 Soy | CD | ECO |
| Cargill NatureWax C-1 | HTP | CD |
| Cargill NatureWax C-3 | CD | ECO |
| Cargill NatureWax C-6 Soy/Coconut | ECO | CD |
| IGI 6006 Paraffin/Soy | LX | CD |
| IGI 6046 Coconut/Paraffin | ECO | CD |
| IGI 4630 Paraffin | LX | CD |
| IGI 4627 Paraffin | CD | LX |
Again, these are just starting points. So many factors impact the performance of a wick, meaning these might be golden or they might flat out stink for your process.
How do you prevent soy wax imperfections?
Soy wax is polymorphic, meaning it reacts in unpredictable ways at the microscopic layer. Often, these behaviors cause unwelcome cosmetic and performance problems, which we have a guide for:
While some problems, like frosting, are unavoidable, many components of soy wax comes down to temperature management. Things like pour temp, stirring the fragrance evenly, and curing for a proper amount of time and in the right environment help tremendously.
How many candles should you make to sell starting out?
Many people start out with a small product line of choices but aren’t sure how many of each choice to make. Candles have a shelf life of a year or more, depending on the wax, but you don’t want to invest in a large inventory that never sells.
The magic behind inventory management is data.
You need data to make decisions. If you have a candle or two that sell like hot cakes, you’ll know the inventory for them needs to stay relatively high. On the contrary, candle designs that rarely sell don’t need to take as much shelf space.
Gathering data takes time, so use the following ideas to help guide your inventory management strategy at first until you have a better idea of who your first class products are.
- Invest an amount of supplies or money you’re okay with never making back (financial risk management)
- Create a product line with no more than 4 or 5 different candle blends that you’ve safety tested (sanity management)
- Keep an inventory of roughly 20 of each candle – increase or decrease that quantity as sales wax or wane
Inventory management is a game of data. Study how your customers react to your product line, and don’t over-extend yourself with huge varieties of candles.
Above all, be patient in your product development and always conduct safety testing before selling candles to anyone.
How do you improve hot throw?
Hot throw describes how strong a scent smells. While subjective because we can’t easily measure how “good” or “strong” a smell is, you can still find criteria to judge it with.
Multi-Room Test
Start with a fully cured candle in a bathroom and light it for 4 hours. Check it every hour and rate it with your personal opinion on a random scale, like 1 to 5 or 1 to 10.
If you have others that can weigh in, more opinions typically help.
If you get undesirable results in the bathroom, you probably won’t get much in other rooms, but you can still try. Graduate to a room about the size of a living room, and conduct the test again after the candle has cooled back to room temperature.
Burn for 4 hours, but change the location of the candle in the room dramatically every hour. Moving the candle accounts for different air currents, which are known to play a significant role in hot throw.
Give Candles Away
Once you’ve safety tested the candle and it passes, make a batch of 3 or 4 of that design and send them to everyone you know for free.
Well, not exactly or free. You’re giving it in exchange for their commitment to burning it however they want (to simulate the random nature of people’s candle burning habits) and soon. An aggregate opinion of the scent is better than yours in isolation.
Having an idea of how strong the hot throw is tells you if you need to improve it or even tone it down. You can use the following recommendations when you have data:
| If your hot throw is… | Recommendations |
| Too strong | – Reduce fragrance oil – Increase wick size |
| Just right | – Celebrate |
| Too weak | – Reduce wick size – Increase fragrance oil – Decrease fragrance oil – Change container shape – Change fragrance oil |
Not every recommendation goes with the others, and the major assumption is you’ve already passed a safety test. Unfortunately, some wick/wax/fragrance oil combinations just weren’t meant to be.
Add to that there are plenty of fragrance oils on the market that just plain won’t throw in certain waxes.
How do you choose a fragrance oil?
A decent product line could touch every major fragrance family:
- Woody
- Floral
- Fresh
- Oriental
Sometimes you’ll focus on a theme where this doesn’t make sense, but otherwise it doesn’t hurt to touch every major category. A little something for everyone!
Fragrance oils, and essential oils, vary in their quality and performance. Typically the more campy a flavor is, the less likely it’ll be a winner. That’s not always true, but sometimes it is.
The only way to know how well a particular oil works in your system of wax, wick, temperatures, and container choice is to make a candle from it and test. Only with real data can you vet out if the aromatic properties meet your desired complexities and strength – it ties back to hot throw.
You can buy fragrance oils and essential oils from many different places, online and in person. If you’re fortunate enough to have a candle supply store nearby, you can even smell them before purchasing. Hobby shops carry some of these too, however they’re usually lesser quality.
High quality fragrance oils have complicated notes, stand up to heat well, and don’t require a large fragrance load in a candle to perform well. Low quality oils struggle with hot throw, may burn off their top notes easier, and need to be added in tremendous quantities to a candle for good throw.
Should you buy a candle making kit?
Candle making kits are a great investment in certain circumstances. Buy one if you:
- Don’t intend on making more than four candles in the next year
- Are interested in trying the craft before making a larger investment
- Don’t want the hassle of figuring out what you need to buy to get started
Do you need insurance to sell candles?
You do not need insurance to sell candles in the United States, but most candle makers carry Product Liability insurance to ensure any damages caused by the product are covered. Candles present a significant fire risk, and just having a safety sticker is not enough protection in most municipalities.
Avoiding buying insurance to sell candles is a bit like drinking pond water: you might be fine for awhile but you’re taking a risk every time.
Insurance is an overhead cost, and if you’re serious about building a candle company you shouldn’t think twice about getting a policy. However expensive, consider it part of the cost of business.
Why does my candle smell bad?
Building a candle that smells good and burns safely relies on a solid understanding of fragrance notes.
Fragrance breaks down into notes:
- Top note. Quick evaporation. High volatility.
- Middle note. Characteristic, memorable scent of the blend.
- Base note. Supports the top and middle notes and extends the longevity of the scent.
Notes are sensitive to heat, which means if a candle flame runs hot enough it will literally evaporate notes before they throw into the air, starting on top. After top and middle notes are removed, the remaining properties of the fragrance often smell bad.
The solution? Either swap the fragrance oil out for something more resilient to higher temperatures or rebuild the candle to burn at a lower temperature. The lower temperature system typically works better for most makers – start with decreasing the wick size and adjust from there after a test.
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