So you just bought a candle.

Your candle has just arrived. What’s next?

Before you go about lighting your candle, you should consider taking precautions and educating yourself on how to best maintain and care for your candle.

Below I’ll list some short bullet notes that you should practice to safely handle your candle.

Burn your candle within sight.

This may sound like a “doh” point, but it’s an important one nonetheless. You never know when a pet, child, or an unexpecting natural phenomenon can knock your burning candle down from the table. Better yet, maintain a conscious effort to keep pets and children away from your candle.

Burn your candle on a safe surface.

Where you burn your candle plays a factor in determining your safety. Don’t burn your candle on an uneven surface, or on a surface that’s littered with combustible items. Find a fire-resistant surface to burn your candles on.

Ensure you are only burning wax.

Double-check that the inside of the candle container contains only wax. Make sure there aren’t anything other than wax within your candle’s cavity. Having other substances present risks the unexpected sparks that could lead to disastrous fires.

Burn your candle in intervals less than 4 hours.

Burning a candle for upwards of 4 hours could affect how the carbon collects on the wick. The underlying wick may destabilize from carbon accumulation. Be safe, and extinguish the candle after 4 hours.

Don’t prematurely blow out your first burn.

For your first burning, burn the candle for at least 1 hour per inch of container diameter. So for a candle that has a diameter of 2 inches, try to have the first burn last 2 hours. Note that these time suggestions aren’t exact, rather they are meant to help you gauge how long it might take until the candle is able to develop a strong melt pool. You can tell a good melt pool has been established when the top layer of wax is completely melted.

Having a good melt pool helps prevent tunneling. Tunneling is when the edges of your candle have remaining wax that is unable to get burned off, leaving your wick to slowly tunnel away.

Trim wick to 1/4” before lighting.

This will help better control the height of the flame to be at a safe level. Having anything higher than 1/4” would be considered dangerous.

After your first burn, the wick will blacken with carbon accumulation. You want to try and trim most of this off. You’ll sometimes note that a circular block of soot may form. You don’t want to burn that. Burning that will result in you burning the carbon, which may result in unexpected sparks. So be safe, and trim the wick.

Don’t panic if the surface of your candle becomes uneven.

Soy candles are known to be notoriously hard to get to cleanly settle. There are ways around this by adding additives, but that, in my opinion, defeats the purpose of building an all-natural product.

Nonetheless, if there are holes or pockets that form after a burn, don’t panic. This is completely normal. Your candle isn’t any lower in grade or quality, rather the effect is a natural one that occurs all the time within soy candles.

Throw your candle away when only 1/4” of wax remains.

When your candle gets to this point, it’s a sign that it’s time to throw it away.

Don’t be sad. Your candle lived a full life of radiating beautiful fragrances to its surroundings. More than many nights has it helped set the mood, lightened the aura, and brought relaxation among those around it.

If anything, be grateful for what it offered. It’s time for another candle to shine.

And that is the end of my list of tips!

I’ll do my best to work through a solution with you. And if we can’t come up with one, I’ll refund you back your money.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy your candle burnings!