How To Increase Candle Burn Time -

Candles are expensive and often seen as a luxury these days but if you’re a fan of candles on a strict budget you’ll want to make those flamey-friends last as long as possible.

How to increase candle burn time

1. Trim the wick.

If the wick is even a smidgen too long your candle will burn too fast. Trim the wick by around 1/2cm before you light it – every single time.

2. The first burn is the deepest

When you’re burning a candle for the first time make sure you burn it for a good amount of time and do not extinguish the flame until the pool of wax trickles away from the wick and settles nearer the edge. Allow this wax to set before burning again.

3. Don’t blow

Don’t blow out your candle, rather extinguish the flame with a candle snuffer. A wick is delicate and can easily be destroyed or bent if you blow wax on to it when blowing out the flame. A snuffer is a far gentler approach. We have one of these cheap candle snuffers from eBay.

4. Candle in the wind

Avoid draughts and windows. Draughts can cause the wax and wick to burn in an inconstant manner.

Now here’s the old wives tale that some dispute and others insist is true:

5. Freeze your candles

For this you require two things.

A candle.

And a freezer.

Put the candle in the freezer…ground breaking stuff.

And leave it for at least 4 hours.

Light candle.

Let it burn.

It will burn for longer and burn further down. Most candles will also drip less and cause less mess.

This is something I mentioned way back in 2009 in my Winter Weather Checklist and since then I’ve learnt a few things.

– This doesn’t really work well with tea lights, opt for taper candles.

– I would previously place taper candles in the freezer one big pack at a time and just fish them out when I needed one but a few of them cracked in the freezer (I believe they froze unevenly) and cracked again when I tried to rescue them for use which seemed wasteful. They had previously worked perfectly fine just being shoved in the freezer in bulk but when we changed freezer we encountered the trouble with splitting – perhaps the old freezer (which BTW was rubbish) didn’t get cold enough? I now pop the candles in for no longer than 48 hours and no longer have problems with the candles splitting.