Candle Care
What are some ways to improve my candle burning experience?
With most candles, trimming the wick in between each burn helps reduce or eliminate sooting, and provide you a longer burn time (Your ideal wick length should be 1/4in - 1/8in, preferably closer to the 1/4in mark). It’s especially important with most of the cotton wicks because they have carbon build up aka “mushrooming”, which helps melt the wax during the burn, but must be trimmed and removed for future burns (images below).
Properly Trimmed Wick
The candle flame is roughly 1 inch high and not sooting.
Not Trimmed Enough
The flame of the wick is too high, almost 2 inches high and will briefly flicker and soot occasionally.
The first burn on the candle is also the most important, you want to make sure that you burn the candle long enough to melt to the edge of the container, this will ensure that your candle doesn’t “tunnel”. “Tunneling” is a term used when the wick burns down towards the bottom of the candle without melting and combusting the wax around it, this can also happen if the wick is trimmed too short, or the wick diameter is not big enough for the vessel.
What if my candle is still sooting? What can cause it?
Small amounts of sooting can happen, and is normal with properly wicked candles, it doesn’t matter if it’s soy or paraffin wax, they both go through the same combustion process. Sooting comes from incomplete combustion, whether it’s due to a clogged wick, lack or excessive oxygen, too much or too little wax.
The most common ways or reasons some candles may smoke or soot is from:
Drafts or wind, this disrupts the flow of oxygen to the flame.
Not trimming the wick, your flame can get too big and not have enough oxygen.
Initial lighting, the candle can soot a very little amount on the initial light for a couple of seconds while it melts the wax to reach full combustion.
Extinguishing the candle, this is where you will probably get most of your sooting from.
If you just blowout the candle you will still have an ember on the wick and it may soot for a few seconds to up to even 30 seconds. You can put out the candle in a few different ways to reduce this type of sooting, such as
Dipping the wick in the wax after its blown out (make sure to move the wick about the wax after).
Use candle snuffers, this will help cut off the oxygen and only allow a little bit of smoke.
Using a lid from the candle to put out the flame or to contain the smoke. This will also cut off oxygen, however some of the smoke may make your candle smell smokey when you first relight it, as the smoke scent can bind to the wax.
