Candle Making - Scenting Your Candles


By far, one of the most complex and costly areas of candle making is the selection and use of fragrance. Fragrance is usually the most expensive ingredient in your candles, and will most often be the determining factor in whether or not your candles are a hit or a miss.

The number one reason people purchase candles is for the fragrance, and for this reason, fragrance is vitally important.

When adding scent to your candles, you have two fragrance options available - natural or synthetic fragrance. Each of these fragrance options offers their own benefits. It is up to you to determine your ultimate goals, as well as who your target market is, when determining a fragrance option to choose.

If you choose to produce naturally scented candles, then you will be working with essential oils. Essential oils, unlike fragrance oils, are oils naturally derived from plants and flowers. They are highly concentrated, and usually much stronger than most fragrance oils, so it can be easy to overuse them.

Essential oils are also more costly than synthetic fragrance oils. Typically, essential oils do not burn quite as well as synthetic fragrance oils, and are harder to blend with wax. While they can offer a very good scent throw, they tend to lose their scent faster than their synthetic counterparts making for a shorter shelf life.

Because of their all-natural qualities, many natural wax candle makers find that essential oils are an excellent choice because their customers appreciate an all-natural product.

Fragrance oils are the other option. Fragrance oils are man-made, being synthetically produced by various perfumeries. For the best quality of fragrance oils, it is strongly encouraged that you purchase your fragrance oils from a specialty retailer that specializes in candle making. These candle supply retailers usually seek high quality oils and the oils they carry are made specifically for candle making.

Many candle supply retailers have their scents custom-blended. For this reason, a scent with the same name may smell very different when you buy it from various suppliers. Many of these candle supply retailers offer customer feedback and comments related to specific scents they sell. This information can help you determine what fragrances others are having success with and you may pick up tips on how they are successfully using the scent in their own products.

There are literally thousands of fragrance oil scents available for purchase, so using this type of information can help you narrow your options. When deciding on those you'd like to try, many candle supply retailers will offer sample size containers of each scent so that you can try them economically prior to purchasing a larger size.

When working with scents, consult the websites of the suppliers that sell your fragrance oils and wax. Their websites usually offer a wealth of information. When you look up your wax instructions, there is usually information about the amount of fragrance to add for the best scent throw, and when during the candle making process it is best to add the fragrance for best results.

A typical rule of thumb for adding fragrance to candles is one ounce of fragrance for each pound of wax. However, this is not a steadfast rule. Some candle makers choose to measure fragrance in teaspoons or percentages instead of ounces. And, some waxes will hold more fragrance than others. Each wax and fragrance is different, so plan on doing a lot of testing and trying a lot of fragrance and wax combinations before getting your best results.

Also, remember to test for both cold and hot scent throw in your candles. There can be a big difference in how a candle smells sitting on the shelf compared to how it smells when it is burned. It is important that your candle smells great at first whiff when the jar is opened so that customers can experience the scent. It is even more important that the candle has great fragrance as it burns as that is what brings your customers back for more.