Remember: Your candle has a memory

Even though candles don’t have brains, they do have memory. Confused? I’ll explain…

Have you ever lit a jar candle, only to blow it out a half-hour later as you leave the house? Chances are the melt pool – the area of melted wax – never reached the side of the container. While this may not seem like a big deal at the time, it can lead to some wasted wax down the road. That’s because the next time you light the candle, it will be inclined to “tunnel” (burn a hole down the middle) rather than form a melt pool all the way to the edges. That’s what we mean when we say a candle has a ‘memory.’ A narrower melt pool will also cause a scented candle to emit less fragrance than it would otherwise.

How to help a candle’s ‘memory’

A good rule of thumb is to make sure you burn the candle long enough for the melt pool to reach the edges of the container. Often this means leaving the candle lit for one hour for every inch of the candle’s diameter. But be careful not to burn a candle too long at one time, as that could cause problems, such as too big of a melt pool, an overheated jar at risk of cracking, etc. For a pillar candle, it should be allowed to burn long enough that the melt pool extends toward the edges, as the candle burns down on itself.

And if it’s still not reaching the edge?

If you burn a candle for this long and its melt pool is still far from reaching the edges or the flame looks unusually small, the candle may be “under-wicked” (made with too small of a wick) or the wick may be clogged. Another possibility is that the wick was trimmed too short after the last time it was burned. If it’s a trimming problem, try clearing out a bit of the wax around the wick before lighting it – as that should allow the flame to get big enough so as to form a wider melt pool than it would otherwise.

Buying the right candle

It’s important to buy a candle that will consistently form an “edge to edge” melt pool of wax when burned properly. Otherwise, you’ll find that much of the wax in the candle for which you paid good money will go to waste. Put another way, if you buy a candle with an expected burn time of 80 hours but a quarter of that wax never burns, that cuts 20 hours from the overall burn time.