How To Make Candles At Home
Before Starting
You can make candles at home with some basic “candle” supplies and about an hour of time by following this step-by-step process. In this guide you will learn:
- What supplies you need to buy versus what you already have at home
- How to measure out wax and fragrance oil
- How to use the double boiler method for melting wax
- How to prepare your containers for the wax blend
- How to pour wax into a container
Candle making is where art and science meet to make pretty combustion machines. Let’s get started!
1. Gather Supplies
This is a beginners guide to making candles at home. A few things to clear up before we get to a point of no return:
- This is a guided tutorial for making candles with a simple DIY approach (read: simple), meaning the laboratory will look a lot like your kitchen and the equipment will resemble basic household items. This is not A Professional’s Guide To Candle Making.
- The tutorial will make the candles out of soy wax. Soy wax cleans up well with dish soap and water if it spills on any surfaces, though we’ll talk about that step below. You can use whatever wax type you prefer.
- Although household items will be used, there’s still a need to buy some basic candle making supplies. It’s not like we’re making candles out of dust bunnies (talk about “upcycling”!)
- We’ll be making container candles, not pillars, votives, or tea lights. These are simple candles to craft – the container can be just about anything that can handle 150 °F heat (mason jars are a great fit!)
- Read this guide for more information about equipment (then come back here!)
You’ll Need
Items in bold usually come in a candle making kit or hobby/craft store.
- Containers
- Butter knife/spatula (for stirring)
- Measuring glass, 4-cup (for melting wax in)
- Pot, large enough to fit measuring glass
- Measuring glass, any size (for measuring fragrance oil)
- Food scale, or anything that can measure “ounces” or “grams”
- Thermometer
- Clothespin or pencil
- Stove-top (can be expensive!)
- Soy or Paraffin wax
- Wicks (which one do you need?)
- Fragrance Oil (what is fragrance oil?)
- Wick-stickers, or heat-resistant glue
Make sure to keep a fire extinguisher on hand. If things go well you won’t need it, but you don’t want to mess around with safety.
Feel free to pick up whatever candle making supplies you’d like from a nearby hobby store. A more “chandler-esque” approach, if you’re serious about trying it, is to pick up a candle making kit online or buy directly from a supplier. Otherwise, read the Candle Making Equipment Guide for Beginners for a more thorough overview.
2. Measure Out Wax
Figuring out how much wax you need for your container or vessel can be especially confusing starting out! Fortunately, there’s a fairly reliable “trick” for measuring out the wax for a single container:
- Fill container with water.
- Measure weight of that water. Make sure to subtract the container weight (or properly tare the scale).
- Multiply water weight by 3 then divide by 3.5.
Whether you are using ounces or grams, this should be the approximate amount of wax for the container. Here’s an example to help:
Say you’re making two candles using these amber jars.
- One jar = 7.2 ounces
- One jar filled with water = 15.2 ounces
- Water weight: 15.2 – 7.2 = 8 ounces
- Wax weight (one jar): 8 x 3 ÷ 3.5 = 6.86 ounces
Since there are two jars…
Total wax required: (6.9 ounces/jar) x (2 jars) = 13.72 ounces of wax
If you’re making candles at home for the first time and using a kit, they may include instructions for how much wax you need. Use our wax calculation guide if you need help. Very good if you are using a cut wine glass, a coffee mug, a mason jar, or some other glassware you have around.
Weigh the wax using the food scale. If you’re interested in doing this ever again, keep good notes of everything you’re doing.
Technically, this calculates the total weight needed, which includes the weight of fragrance oil, so you’ll end up with 6%-10% more blend than your vessels need. At a small scale, this over-calculation isn’t normally an issue, but there is a more complicated formula if you want to be hardcore.
3. Melt Wax Using Double Boiler
The double-boiler method for melting wax isn’t as scary as it’s name’s diphthong would have you believe. All it means is your wax, safely in the measuring glass, will sit in a pot of boiling water instead of directly on the heat.
Fire is hot (duh). Wax has a melt point under 150 °F and really doesn’t have any business being above 200 °F for any period of time. Stove tops are easily capable of reaching well over 200 °F not to mention the danger with flash points.
It’s not impossible to heat wax directly on the stove top, but there are three main reasons you shouldn’t:
Temperature management
This is the most critical component to successful candle making. You’re operating carefully in the range of 120 °F to 190 °F most times and you want the most possible control over that. Trying to tame the stove top that always wants to be hot will complicate your ability to easily tune your temperatures.
Not everything you heat wax in is tolerant of high temperatures
If your stove got away from you or you exceeded too high of a temperature, it could damage or even break the melting-container your wax is in.
Safety
This is especially true for open-flame stove tops, but at higher temperatures the fragrance oils used in candle making start emitting more vapor. This vapor is flammable and will ignite in contact with an open flame. Controlling the melting-container in a double boiler is a necessary layer of protection against a fire hazard.
(Other wax melting methods, like Presto Pots, limit these risks though they aren’t entirely gone. Always keep a fire extinguisher nearby.)
Creating a double boiler is as easy as filling a pot with water, placing the measuring glass with wax in it, and boiling the water:
Heat will transfer from the boiling water to the measuring glass. Boiling water is 212°F which provides a gentle heat blanket to the “melting pot” (the measuring glass) so the wax won’t get too hot, melt too fast, or be exposed to an open flame.
Turn the stove to medium-high and let the wax start melting.
4. Measure Required Fragrance
The math is a lot easier for fragrance than it is for wax. There are two things you have to know for this step:
- The weight of the wax you’re melting down (you should already have this)
- The fragrance load you want in your candle
The main waxes available through candle suppliers all list the allowable fragrance load. It’s a percentage. Different wax blends can hold different amount of waxes, but there’s always a limit to how much fragrance can be trapped in the hardened candle wax.
Even if a wax can hold a certain amount of fragrance doesn’t mean it should hold that amount. Adding more fragrance doesn’t always mean the candle will smell stronger. It could just end up smelling like burning fuel – yuck!
There are two scenarios for figuring out how much fragrance should go into the candle.
You bought the wax at a hobby store and it doesn’t have a listed “max fragrance %” on the package
That’s okay! In this case it’s better to stick with the rule of “1 ounce of fragrance for every 16 ounces of wax“.
Convert the weight of wax you measured earlier into ounces (if it isn’t already) and divide it by 16. These are the ounces of fragrance to add.
If you used a pound of wax, you should end up with 1 ounce of fragrance. (this works out to a fragrance load of 6.25% which most waxes can hold comfortably)
Your wax lists the max fragrance load
You can follow the “1 ounce of fragrance per pound of wax” rule if you want, or you can pick a custom number.
Every fragrance oil has unique properties in wax. They are composed of different ingredients, manufactured in different ways, and have different physical properties that result in different performance levels. One fragrance might be overwhelming at 8% while another is pleasant – figuring out these relationships are all part of the candle makers joy (and strife).
Remember: measure wax and fragrance by weight not volume. Wax manufacturers list properties for weight for fragrance.
Okay, math time.
Divide the number you selected for fragrance load by 100 and multiply it by the weight of wax you are currently melting. So if you decided to make your fragrance 7.2% strength and you’re melting down 20 oz of wax:
- Wax weight: 20 oz
- Fragrance load selected: 7.2%
- Fragrance weight: (7.2 ÷ 100) x (20 oz) = 1.44 oz
Use our fragrance oil calculation guide if you still need help!
Once you have that dialed in it’s time to measure it out. You won’t add it until after the wax is off the heat.
5. Melt Wax, Add Dye
At this point the wax should be melting. The pictures shown are using C3 soy wax which comes in flakes. If you have paraffin it might be in a block form. Either way, it melts – solid to liquid. It’s worth tracking the temperature once it is a liquid, whether by old-school thermometer or with a fancy infrared thermometer.
Your wax is fully melted now, and on it’s way towards a maximum wax temperature.
Melting the wax to a liquid and carrying it to a specific temperature is important for breaking up the structure of the wax so it can blend with additives well. Some waxes, especially more natural waxes, blend the best with fragrance oils and dyes when they have been “opened up” by heat to excite the molecular structure.
The max wax temp may vary depending on who you ask. Use somewhere between 185 °F and 195 °F if you’re not sure.
At this point your only goal is to make sure wax doesn’t exceed the max temperature. Stir occasionally.
Read the temperature after a little stirring and near the center of the wax where it is hottest for the best read (or be consistent, at least).
Take the measuring glass out of the boiling water once you reach the max temperature. Add the dye. How much? Totally up to you. Dye bottles may have a recommended “drops per pound”. If not, don’t stress out over this.
If you plan on making a candle again with this dye, write down the amount you use. In fact, write down everything.
Most dye is concentrated to the point that you’re really never adding more than 5-10 drops per pound, but experiment to your satisfaction.
6. Prepare Candle Containers
The next interaction with the wax is to add fragrance, but it needs to cool before that’s ready. So let’s get the vessels (candle containers) ready for the pour!
There are only three things you have to do:
Make sure containers are clean and dry
This gives your wax the best chance of filling out the container without taking on extra moisture. Moisture = bad.
Apply the wick
Easily done with a wick sticker, but can also be stuck to it with heat resistant glue.
Secure the wick
A clothespin or pencil can hold the wick. You may prefer to secure the wick after you pour so it’s not in the way.
If you’re interested in pre-heating your containers, this would be a good time. Some chandlers pre-heat their containers to minimize the temperature difference between the wax and the vessel to mitigate shrinkage and increase jar adhesion. Don’t overthink this. Your mileage may vary.
7. Add Fragrance
Fragrance should be added at a certain temperature. Which temperature depends on the chandler – there are multitudes of opinions about the impact of when fragrance should be added for the best cure profile, performance, etc.
You can add it as high as 185 °F and as low as whatever-temp-the-wax-is-at-right-before-pouring. Determining what works for you and your processes is the fun of making candles.
If it doesn’t work out exactly how you want it? Make another candle with a different number. If it does work out how you want… make another candle with the same number.
Either way you end up with more candles!
Otherwise just stir the fragrance in between 155 °F to 165 °F.
Things to keep in mind
- Fragrance oils do not (for the most part) chemically combine with wax. They simply mix together very tightly as the wax solidifies and the fragrance remains a liquid.
- Adding fragrance will drop the temperature of the blend a certain degree. Continue to monitor the temperature.
- Stir for at least two minutes after adding, but not like a maniac. Too aggressive and you can introduce air bubbles into the blend. You can stir the blend up until the moment you pour it – that doesn’t hurt.
8. Pour and Cure
Now it’s a race to the end! As with the temperature to add fragrance oil, pour temperature is hotly debated in the candle making industry. Anyone who has done it for a long time knows temperatures that work best in their system, but there are a lot of variables for a single candle – pour temperature is only one of them.
This walk-through recommends regular stirring after the fragrance oil is added until the blend reaches approximately 120 to 135 or gets foggy. The theory with “pouring cool” is that it limits the thermal difference between the wax and vessel to mitigate shrinkage and differential cooling.
Some candle makers have their best success pouring at a higher temperature, citing a more even cool rate in that environment. Whatever you do, be consistent from candle to candle and keep good notes, especially if you plan on making candles at home anymore. Record keeping is crucial to getting better.
No matter how good the first pour is, some waxes (especially paraffin) have to have a thin second pour of wax to finish the candle top. It’s an inherent behavior of the wax, not poor craftsmanship.
In any case, pour the wax from the measuring glass into the vessels at a nice, even rate. Then it’s a waiting game for it to solidify!
As far as curing the candles:
- Paraffin is usually ready to burn within 24-48 hours of the pour time (or second pour time)
- Natural waxes (soy, coconut, etc) are usually ready to burn 3 days to 3 weeks after. Some wax continues to cure for a long time. If it doesn’t perform well right away, put it on the shelf for a few days and try burning it again!
9. Light and Enjoy!
Congratulations! You just made candles at home like a boss! Share the love with anyone who likes DIY or candle making (you know, if you want).
~ Articles To Read Next ~
How To Choose A Wick | How to build a testing strategy to choose a wick for your candle.
How Do Candles Work? | How oxygen, fuel, and heat work together to serve humble little lights. This is the best explanation of how candles work on the internet.
How Does Fragrance Work? | Scent is so tightly connected to our emotions and memories, but how does it work? Read more about the black magic of how fragrances work.
