People sat around a fire long before there were houses, lamps or electricity. So when you light a candle jar in a room that already has bright lamps, what you are looking for is not light. You are looking for a place for your eyes to rest, and a sign that today can stop here now.
Put simply, a scented candle is a block of wax holding fragrance, with a wick running down the middle. When the wick is lit, the heat melts the wax around it into a small melt pool, the liquid wax travels up the wick, burns into flame, and the fragrance in the wax spreads into the air along with that heat.
The three things that make a candle jar
The first is the wax, which is nearly all of the mass. Wax can come from petroleum, from plants such as soy, palm or coconut, or from beeswax. Each has its own melting point, so each gives its own kind of wax surface, speed of burning and way of releasing scent. In our workshop we use soy wax blended by ZUNGZA, a wax with a low melting point that needs about fifteen minutes for the wax surface to heat evenly before the scent comes up to its rhythm.
The second is the wick. The wick is the road for liquid wax to travel up and meet the flame, so its thickness has to match the diameter of the cup. Too thin and the melt pool never reaches the wall; too thick and the flame runs tall. We use a cotton wick, with no other core, and the wick is set to stand right in the middle of the cup, because half a centimetre off and that whole jar will later burn lopsided.
The third is fragrance. The fragrance in a candle can be essential oil extracted from plants, or synthetic fragrance, or both. What is worth saying is that fragrance in a candle works by heat, meaning it only releases once the wax is warm, and that is why the scent you smell on opening the lid differs from the scent after half an hour of burning.
Why the first fifteen minutes matter
This is what we tell nearly everyone new to jar candles. In the first fifteen minutes, the wax around the wick is only beginning to melt, the melt pool is still small, the surface for evaporation still little. After that stretch the melt pool widens out to the wall of the cup, and the scent you hear then is the true scent of the jar.
With a new jar, on the first lighting let it burn until the wax melts evenly right out to the wall, usually about two hours for a 200 gram cup. Soy wax remembers the edge it has melted out to, and on later burns it melts along exactly that same line, so the first time lays the ground for the whole life of the jar.
On later burns, trim the wick to about five millimetres before lighting and burn rounds of two to three hours. A 200 gram jar goes about thirty-five to forty hours; the 220 gram version adds a few hours more.
Why do people still light candles when the house is bright enough
Scent reaches the brain by a short road, through the olfactory region and then straight to the areas that handle emotion and memory. That is why a scent can call back an afternoon from twenty years ago faster than any photograph. So when you use the same direction of scent for the same thing each day, you are building yourself a marker, and after a few weeks just lighting the candle is enough for your mind to know what time it is.
We make candles because we believe in that small marker. A candle jar changes nothing large in your day, but it marks the beginning of a pause, and for us that is enough for an object in the home.
A few questions you often send us
What is a scented candle made of
Of wax, a wick and fragrance. The wax holds the fragrance, the wick carries liquid wax up to meet the flame, and the heat from the flame brings the fragrance into the air.
How long does a scented candle burn
It depends on the mass of wax and how you use it. A 200 gram jar usually burns about thirty-five to forty hours, and you trim the wick before each lighting to keep the burn even.
Why is the scent not clear right after lighting
Because fragrance in a candle works by heat. The wax surface needs about fifteen minutes to heat evenly, and only then does the scent come up to its rhythm.
Read more soy wax in a candle jar, the story of a wick, and how to keep a scent in the room longer.