How to Make Homemade Candles

Learn how to make natural wax homemade candles in Mason jars. This simple project makes three 8-ounce candles you can dress up with festive decorations. They’re scented with a gorgeous fragrance and make excellent holiday gifts. You can also scale the recipe up to make more candles at a time.

Container candle making is relatively easy once you get the hang of it. It involves melting wax, stirring in fragrance, and pouring the mixture into a container fitted with a wick. After they harden and cure, you can use the candles or decorate them. I love using labels and ribbon on mine when I give candles as handmade gifts.

It sounds simple enough, but you need to pay attention to temperature, materials, and technique. That will help them look and perform their best. Let’s go through the basics of making natural wax container candles, then, at the end, we’ll go through how to make homemade candles. They have a festive, Christmasy scent and decoration, but you can choose another fragrance and style if you wish.

Making the Best Homemade Candles

You don’t really need much equipment or that many materials to make small batches of homemade candles. What you do need is the right supplies to make the best candles possible. Good candles have a long burn time, a good throw (if they have added fragrance), a wick that optimizes wax burn, and a smooth finish.

Too many candle-making tutorials are created by people who haven’t agonized over creating product-worthy candles. I put my hand up to say that I have! I’ve had weird, uneven tops, wicks that weren’t right and caused tunneling, and candles that didn’t smell strong enough. Unprofessional candles don’t sell well, so I’ve had to make many changes over the years. Let me share my tips for making the best homemade candles possible.

Choosing the Best Wax

The most common wax to make candles is paraffin wax, followed by soy wax. Then, there’s beeswax, coconut wax, and rapeseed (canola) wax. You can also make candles with many other types of wax, as well as blends of different waxes. The wax(es) that you choose for your candles should reflect your ethos, what’s locally available, your budget, and who the candles are intended for. It can get complicated.

To make natural wax candles, you will need to skip using paraffin wax. It’s made as a by-product of the petroleum industry and is considered synthetic, non-renewable, and not natural.

Beeswax candles are rustic and traditional with a natural beeswax scent. However, even though I’m a beekeeper, I reserve my precious beeswax for making lip balm, furniture polish, and other home products. My three colonies don’t produce much extra wax, so it’s not viable for me to use it in candles. Beeswax also doesn’t hold extra fragrance well, and I want my candles to appeal to a broader customer base, including vegans.

Plant-based waxes like soy, coconut, or rapeseed (canola) wax are much easier and cheaper to use than beeswax. They can be scented and colored and are easy to use for container candles. They also clean up easily, so you don’t have to worry that much about dribbles on the kitchen counter. I mainly use sustainable European rapeseed wax, but soy wax is the most widely available.

Containers for Homemade Candles

Once you have a candle wax in mind, focus on the type of container you want to use. Don’t make candles in any container that can melt or catch fire. That leaves two main materials: metal or glass.

Metal tins are among the best options, and the most economical are old food tins, as long as they aren’t lined with plastic. If you notice a white film inside, it’s an epoxy BPA lining that can catch fire and/or emit fumes. You can also buy aluminum candle tins that come with lids, which is what I use for Lovely Greens candles.

Glass containers also work well, as long as the glass is strong and thick enough not to get too hot or break. Thick-walled canning jars are the best option for homemade candles, which is why I recommend them further below. You can also use wine bottles to make wine bottle candles, as long as you can cut them without chipping or cracking them.

You can also use recycled jars from the supermarket, but be careful. Most glass used for food jars is fragile and weak when heated. You don’t want the glass to break while you’re burning a candle. If you do use recycled jars, choose ones that contained hot-packed food and have no chips or imperfections. Lastly, I would only consider using glass containers for plant-based natural wax candles. They burn at a much lower temperature than beeswax.

Choosing the Correct Wicks

I suspect that using the wrong type of wick is one of the most common issues people have when making candles. It’s easy to overlook because it’s not well known that wicks come in different sizes, are made from various materials, and are for specific types of wax. They’re also made to burn a wax pool of a specific diameter.

If you use a wick that burns a small diameter, and you use it to make a candle with a much wider diameter, you’ll get an effect called tunneling. That’s when there’s a pit created in the middle of the candle as it burns. You’ll also notice that the flame is smaller and the candle’s fragrance is weak. That’s because the small flame can’t vaporize the scent as efficiently.

If you use a wick made for a much larger diameter candle than the one you’re making, your candles can be unsafe. They can burn very hot, have a large flame, and cause the container to get hot or crack. They also use up the wax much faster and can burn off the fragrance before it has a chance to vaporize.

Wick Recommendations for Natural Wax

For homemade candles using natural wax, such as soy wax, choose cotton wicks made specifically for it. I’m in the British Isles and prefer using Wedo VRL or Wedo ECO wicks. I also sometimes use wooden wicks. The best wicks for natural plant-based wax in the USA are ECO wicks and CD wicks (Stabilio). Whatever wick you choose, make sure it’s the right size for your container and that it comes with tabs.

In the homemade candle project below, we use soy wax in a glass container that’s about 2.75-3″ (7-7.5 cm) in diameter. The best wicks for these include, by brand, ECO 12, Wedo VRL 22, and LX 16 or 18. To be sure, measure the inner diameter of your container and match it to the manufacturer’s wick-size recommendations. Also, buy wicks long enough to fit in your containers and extend far enough to be clamped by chopsticks or another centering device.

Candle Fragrances

Aside from the light, fragrance is one of the best things about candles. I suspect that most people wouldn’t consider buying a container candle unless it was scented. Fortunately, there is a wide range of candle fragrances to choose from, and most work in soy wax and other plant-based waxes. Typically, you would use an 8-10% fragrance load in your recipe, but always check the recommendations from both the wax supplier and fragrance manufacturer.

Essential oils, though natural, aren’t the best choice for homemade candles. They might smell nice in a candle when it’s cold, but once lit, essential oils burn off and don’t really give the scent throw you’d expect—they might even smell bad. For that reason, I either make unscented candles for home use or use fragrance oils. They aren’t natural, but they provide the scent most people love in candles.

Fragrance Safety

If you use fragrance oils in candles, be aware that they are synthetic perfumes that can irritate your skin if they come into contact with it. Always wear gloves when working with fragrance oils. Never pour them down the drain, since they can harm aquatic life—everything that goes down your drain eventually ends up in the soil or the sea. Once mixed into wax at the correct percentage, they’re relatively benign for most people.

I recommend using phthalate-free oils that contain no metals and have proper documentation. They should have a material safety data sheet (MSDS), be IFRA-compliant, and spell out any allergens that may be present in the fragrance. The documentation will include these. Always adhere to the recommended maximum fragrance loads, too, and inform recipients if your homemade candles contain allergens.

Candle Colors

Though I’ve used color chips to tint candles, such as in these DIY ombre candles, I tend not to use them. They’re an extra ingredient that isn’t natural since they’re made with FD&C or D&C dyes. Most of my candles are the lovely, creamy natural white of the wax itself.

Some candle makers do tint their candles with natural dried extracts such as turmeric, spirulina, paprika, and beetroot. I’ll be honest—I’ve not tried this before. If you do, please be aware that they can affect the candle’s wax, wick, and scent throw.

Candle Making Temperatures

So far, I’ve mainly focused on homemade candle materials. There are a couple of things you do need to know about temperatures and technique, though. Candle wax and fragrance are two completely different materials that we need to blend together at the optimal temperature. We also need to pour the wax at a specific temperature. These temperatures vary based on the wax you use, and the manufacturer and/or supplier should make that information clear.

This is because if you add fragrance to wax that’s too hot, it might evaporate. If you add it to wax that’s too cool, it might not mix in properly. When pouring wax into containers, temperature matters. If the wax is too hot, it can cause frosting, cracking, and sinkholes in the candle. If it’s too cold, the wax might not set correctly, causing both aesthetic and functional issues.

Single Pour vs Double Pour

Even if you do everything correctly when making candles, you can still run into issues—especially aesthetic ones. Soy wax and other natural waxes can shrink when they cool, causing cracks, dimples, sinkholes, and wick wells. It can be incredibly frustrating. Even running a heat gun over the surface doesn’t even them out, and doing that can affect cold throw (how a candle smells unlit) anyway.

The solution is to make candles using the double-pour technique. Instead of filling the candles completely in one pour, fill them only about 85-90% of the way. Then let them fully harden. After that, pour a second thin layer of wax on top of the candle to hide any imperfections. We’ll use that technique to make the homemade candles below.