A customer contacted us after last weekend’s email about home fragrance. She loves candles, but finds that most scented candles irritate her eyes, and wanted to know what sort of wax was used in ours.
The simple answer was vegetable wax. Geodesis use sunflower wax in the Nature candles we stock, while Collines de Provence use vegetable wax across their candle ranges. Alongside fragrance quality and an even, long-lasting burn, this has been one of our criteria for choosing candles for years; the bit that surprised me was that we’ve never really talked about it.
There are lots of different waxes used to make candles. Paraffin, or mineral wax, is probably still the most familiar, but there are also soy, rapeseed, coconut and sunflower waxes, as well as blends of different waxes. Mineral wax is particularly good at carrying fragrance, which is one of the reasons it has been so widely used in scented candles. Achieving the same depth of fragrance, while also getting an even, long-lasting burn, is much more difficult with vegetable wax.
We know because we spent nearly three years looking for another candle maker. We tried candle after candle and rejected perfectly good brands because, for us, perfectly good wasn't good enough. We wanted vegetable wax, a really good fragrance and a candle that burnt evenly and lasted. Plenty gave us two out of three. It wasn't until we found Collines de Provence that we were happy we'd found all three.
Geodesis have been doing it for much longer. When we first started stocking them, their candles used an innovative vegetable wax made from coconut and apricot-kernel oils, developed to combine a vegetable base with really good fragrance diffusion. The Nature candles we stock today use sunflower wax.
For us, that's the clever bit. Putting vegetable wax into a jar is easy enough; making a really good scented candle from it isn't. We have candles from both makers that can scent a room before you've even lit them, but once lit they burn slowly and evenly and the fragrance continues right through the candle. We've never been interested in accepting a mediocre candle simply because we approve of the wax.
And our customers notice the difference too. We have customers who specifically come back for our candles because they find they can burn them when other scented candles have irritated their eyes or given them headaches. We also regularly hear that visitors have walked into their homes and asked what the fragrance is. We supply candles to dental practices, architects' offices and boutique hotels too, where the fragrance needs to make a good impression without taking over the room.
What do we look for in a candle?
Fragrance is a big part of it, and not simply how strong it is. Both of our candle makers have a considerable amount of knowledge behind the fragrances themselves, although they've come at it from rather different directions.
Geodesis was founded by Norbert Hiblot, and the original fragrances came from his family's travels around the world. They developed the fragrances themselves using high-quality raw oils and ingredients, including materials such as sandalwood and patchouli, to capture the scents and memories of the places they had visited. The place wasn't a story invented afterwards to sell the candle; it was where the fragrance started.
Collines de Provence have their own long history with home fragrance. The Rossi family started with oil lamps and diffusers, and today Collines work with named perfumers in Grasse to develop each fragrance individually. The perfumer is part of the story too; Collines tell us who created the fragrance and, in their own words, the inspiration and thinking behind the finished perfume.
When we're choosing a candle, we want to be able to smell it before it's lit, for it to properly fragrance the room once it is, and for the fragrance still to be good enough that you want to live with it for several hours. Stronger isn't automatically better. A candle can throw a lot of fragrance without it being a particularly good fragrance.
We burn them too, because the first sniff doesn't tell us whether a candle is any good. The flame needs to stay controlled, the wax needs to melt evenly rather than tunnelling down the middle, and the fragrance needs to keep coming as the candle works its way down the jar. We've tried plenty that smell fabulous when you first open them but disappoint once they're lit, or start well and lose their fragrance halfway through.
We also notice the smell left in the room after a candle has been put out. Some scented candles leave a slightly bitter, oily, almost diesel-like smell behind them, regardless of what they cost. It's something I particularly dislike and something we notice when we're trying candles. I can't tell you exactly what causes it — there are too many variables in the wax, fragrance and wick — but we don't get it from the candles we stock.
Longevity matters too. You are quite literally burning your hard-earned pounds, so a candle needs to last. Price isn't necessarily a good guide here either; we've tried expensive candles that burn surprisingly quickly. We wanted candles with an excellent fragrance and a slow, even burn, but at a sensible enough price that you actually light them rather than saving them for best.
So, is vegetable wax better?
Geodesis actually make another range of candles using a blend of mineral and vegetable wax, their Universal range. They've chosen that blend for its fragrance performance; mineral wax carries scent extremely well. It's a useful benchmark for how the same fragrance can work in a different formulation and suit different preferences — much like soap really. We don't stock it because the sunflower-wax Nature range is more aligned with what we do. We prefer vegetable wax, and our experience of selling these candles gives us good reason to continue doing so. We regularly hear from customers who find they can burn our candles without the irritated eyes or headaches they've experienced with other scented candles.
Don't get me wrong, we're not going to turn our experience into a scientific claim that hasn't been established, but equally, we're not going to ignore what we've seen and been told repeatedly over years of selling them.
A scented candle is a combination of wax, wick and fragrance, so it isn't possible to isolate the wax and say that it alone is responsible. There is plenty written online about ‘clean’, ‘non-toxic’ and ‘toxic’ candles, often with rather frightening lists of substances that can be detected when a candle burns. A candle is combustion, so it will produce gases and particles whatever wax it uses. Finding a substance and establishing that somebody is being exposed to it at a harmful level are not the same thing, and studies looking at normal candle use have generally found concentrations below the relevant guidance levels.
For us, vegetable wax is still the choice we make. But I would rather tell you what wax is in a candle, who made it, how the fragrance was developed and how well it burns than simply call it ‘clean’ or ‘non-toxic’. A poor vegetable-wax candle is still a poor candle.
Getting the most from your candle
One thing we have noticed is that lots of people don't actually know how to get the most from a candle. How you burn it can make quite a difference to how long it lasts and, particularly, whether you end up with half the wax still sitting around the edge of the glass.
The first burn is worth getting right. Let the wax melt across most of the surface before you put it out; if you light it for half an hour here and there, it can start to burn down through the middle instead, leaving all that perfectly good wax around the sides.
The wick needs a little attention too. If it gets long, or you get a mushroom on the end, trim it before you light it again. A very long wick gives you a bigger flame, burns through the wax more quickly and can start to smoke. Don't get carried away though — a wick cut too short can be just as annoying when it won't stay alight.
We generally suggest around two hours at a time for our candles. That's long enough for the wax to melt properly and for the fragrance to fill the room, without leaving it burning unnecessarily for hours. Keep it out of a draught too; if the flame is constantly flickering to one side, the candle won't burn as evenly.
None of it is difficult, but it does make a difference. If you've bought a good candle, you may as well burn all of it rather than leave half of it stuck to the glass.