Candle Care 101

Now that you have your new candles, I want to give you a few tips for making sure they burn the way they were meant to.

Wick Trimming

When I first started gifting my candles to friends and family I was surprised at how many of them were not familiar with trimming their wicks. Many of them never even knew you were supposed to or even thought of it! You will always hear me now say constantly "trim your wicks!"

When you first receive your candle, the wick will be trimmed to its appropriate size. But before your second burn session and all the ones thereafter, you should use a wick trimmer to trim your wick down to about 1/4 inch. This ensures that you always maintain a clean burn. Wicks can mushroom and become too tall after long burns. You want to remove this residue before lighting again. This will prevent flames from also getting too large and keep your candle jar from overheating as well as pieces of the burnt wick from dropping off into your wax pool.

How Long to Burn a Candle

The first burn is always the most important. When you first light your candle you should burn a minimum of 2 to 3 hours depending on the size of your jar until the wax has reached a full melt pool to the edge of your jar. Some waxes will have a little hang up on the sides despite this but that is completely normal with natural waxes like coconut apricot wax. In burns that follow, the wax on the sides will melt completely as the jar heats up and works its way down your jar. But allowing a good amount of time for a good melt pool to form will allow the burns that follow to melt nice and evenly and avoid tunneling.

Safety

Always keep your candle out of reach of children and pets and never leave a candle unattended. Keep burn times 3 to 4 hours max at a time to prevent your jar from overheating.

Enjoy your candles and happy burning!