23/03/2024 BURNING QUESTION NR1: HOW TO MAINTAIN AND ENJOY YOUR CANDLES LONGER
Proper candle care is key to enjoying your candles to their fullest potential. Discover essential tips for maintaining your candles, including how to trim wicks, store them correctly, and handle them safely.
Here is what you need:
- Scissors or candle wick trimmer
- Piece of paper or towel
TRIMMING THE WICK
Prior burning (doesn´t matter if its new or already old candle that has been lit for several times) you need to trim your wick to 5-6mm, either with scissors or specially meant candle wick trimmer (it makes trimming the wicks from deeper vessels easier). Make sure your wax is solid as its easier to clean the fallen blackened parts on the surface that are from wooden or hemp wick.
CANDLES DO GET "TIRED"
You probably have seen information "do not burn the candle longer than 3-4 hours at time". What does this mean and why it is written like this way? Well, candles lit because of wax and wick, and if its been burning over 4 hours, the wick starts to collect carbon buildup. Too much carbon on wick puts a candle in struggle to lit. Also the vessel itself can get quite hot and can crack, becoming hazardous. That is why it is important to follow the safety rules! So, simple solution is to after 3-4 hours of burning, use candle snuffer to extinguish instead of blowing it out. Blowing can spread hot wax, create a smoke and odor. Prior burning, trim the wick (to remove the carbon, blackened part).
CANDLE HAS A MEMORY
So what does that even mean? Storing information? YES, information of how "melted pool" the candle surface is looking like before it got blown out. This means, that if you decide to burn your candle for 1 hour and then blow it out you can see that whole surface is usually not fully covered with liquid wax. And candles do mostly save that part how much of the area got liquid while burning, so next time when you lit your candle again, it only melts as much from the surface as last time and starts burning the wax down, creating "tunnel effect", leaving lots of wax unburnt, which becomes a waste, and candle burning time decreases significantly. Tunneling can also occur when the wick is too small for the vessel, so it doesn´t create enough heat to burn down the whole diameter. So each time you burn your candle, make sure that the candle surface is mostly liquid (within 3-4h of burning time), which is also named as "melted pool" before you blow it out.
LET THE WAX SOLIDIFY BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ELSE
After blowing out the candle, candle wax is starting to cool down. But you should never cover with any lid while it is solidifying. This could ruin the candle´s scent and wax itself. This is the part of candle care, which is essential to keep the candle burn long enough while looking neat.