Before you whip out the Christmas candles this holiday season, read this.
There is supposedly a ~proper~ way to burning candles than just flicking off the lid and lighting the wick with a lighter… Experts say you should be trimming the wick BEFORE ever lighting them.
According to the Yankee Candle website, “Keeping their wicks trimmed properly will help your candles burn fully and last longer. Specifically, your candle’s wick should be trimmed after every 4 hours of burn time.”
The site also explains that giving your wick a trim will give you a “clean, even flame for a longer lasting candle and maximum fragrance.”
Maybe this is a way for companies to just sell those fancy wick-trimmers??? Nope! Vogue recently interviewed a candle-maker and it’s 100% legitimate.
“I’ve heard that wicks should be a quarter of an inch, but in my experience, that’s too short,” explained Alia Raza, cofounder fragrance brand Régime des Fleurs. “Eyeball it for a third of an inch.”
But that’s not all!
Raza told Vogue: “In general, when you burn a candle, and especially the first time you burn it, you want to burn it for about two hours or more, depending on the size of the candle. That means the whole surface will burn evenly so it won’t create those dips.”
This two-hour rule is meant to ensure that melting the entire top layer of wax will make it dry smoothly, instead of creating that weird hole that your wick usually gets lost in.
Happy candling!
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