From the lab
Everything the burn logs taught us that did not fit into a review. No candle folklore, no wellness copy, just what the measurements support.
We burned 35 candles across three wax families and logged melt time, throw distance, soot and residue. Here is what each wax is genuinely good at.
TakeawayParaffin throws hardest, coconut blends give you most of that throw with far less soot, and pure soy is the cleanest burn but needs a well-built candle behind it to compete.
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Cold throw, hot throw and the distance number nobody publishes. How scent actually moves through a room and how to buy for the space you have.
TakeawayCold throw sells the candle and hot throw is the one you live with. Buy for room volume, not for how strong the jar smells on the shelf.
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The sticker price tells you almost nothing. Here is how to work out the real cost of a candle, and where the ten brands in our index land.
TakeawayDivide price by rated burn hours. Anything under $0.60 an hour is cheap, $0.60 to $1.00 is the normal luxury band, and above $1.20 you are paying for the object.
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Tunneling wastes up to a third of what you paid for. It is almost always caused on the first burn, and it is fixable.
TakeawayGive the first burn enough time for the melt pool to reach the edge of the vessel, roughly one hour per inch of diameter. That single habit prevents almost every tunneling problem we saw in testing.
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