Looking for the best essential oils to make your handmade candles burn healthier and, hopefully, smell stronger? We will tell you the pros and cons of essential oils for candle making, tips to make your candles smell stronger with essential oils, and most importantly, the best essential oils for candle making, as you’re looking for.
What are Essential Oils?
According to a record, the earliest use of essential oils dates back to Ancient Egypt in 1,500BC. Nowadays, essential oils are booming in our daily lives thanks to the pursuit of health. You’ll find that using essential oils for candle making, cosmetics, aromatherapy, and even food are very popular.
So, what essential oils actually are? Why are essential oils so popular?
Essential oils are natural and highly concentrated compounds that are extracted from fragrant or potentially beneficial plants, such as lavender, mint, lemongrass, etc. Through the distillation process, essential oils can be extracted from different parts of a plant, including flowers, leaves, seeds, wood, bark, roots, or fruits.
Essential oils are usually expensive due to the really low yield. According to the data from EoWatch, to produce 1 pound of essential oils, manufacturers will use about 10,000 pounds of rose petals, 250 pounds of lavender, 6,000 pounds of Melissa plant, or 1,500 lemons.
That’s why essential oil based candles are far more expensive than ordinary scented candles. Maybe it’s also safe to say that making candles with essential oils is really luxury.
Essential Oils for Candle Making: Pros and Cons
With the growing number of candle makers looking for essential oils as one of the candle making supplies, it’s time to clarify the pros and cons of essential oils for candle making.
The Pros: Benefits of Using Essential Oils for Candles
People using essential oils in their candles are mainly attracted by their natural sources and the potential benefits for health and mood.
100% natural
From the source to the distillation process, the production of essential oils is natural and eco-friendly. Using essential oils in candles requires less or no concerns about health.
Good for sleep and relaxation
Nowadays, more and more people are suffering from sleep issues and overstress. According to some studies, some essential oils, like lavender, have the ability to calm your nerves, reduce anxiety, and blood pressure, and improve your sleep quality.
So, essential oils are an ideal choice for candle making.
Highly fragrant
As essential oils are the essence of plants and are highly concentrated, they are born with strong fragrances. And people who want to make scented candles will naturally think of adding essential oils to candles.
The Cons: Are Essential Oils Really Better for Candle Making?
Essential oils are added to candles, as an alternative to fragrance oils, mainly for scent. However, most of the time, you will be disappointed.
Let’s see the cons of essential oils for candle making in detail.
Barely satisfactory hot throw
Generally, essential oil based candles have a good cold throw but the hot throw is barely satisfactory. It means you will have a lighter or no candle scent while burning.
Though essential oils are naturally extracted, they are in fact complicated chemically. For your information, fragrances have three distinct notes, known as top notes (10%), heart notes (75%), and base notes (15%). Usually, the three notes are made with different fragrances whose fragrant properties may vary. Using essential oils for candle making, it’s probably that top notes and heart notes have been evaporated before releasing fragrance, especially if their boiling temperatures are really low.
That is why so many people ask how to make candles with essential oils smell stronger. We’ll talk about this part later.
Also, some candle waxes burn with a higher heat and usually won’t work well with essential oils.
Essential oil degradation
Essential oils degrade from exposure to increased heat and light. The higher the temperature is, the faster essential oils degrade. So, when you burn a candle made with essential oils for a longer time, you may smell less scent.
Besides, essential oils degrade over time. Even without a high temperature, essential oils will degrade slowly.
Lower flashpoint
Some essential oils have a lower flashpoint than their fragrance oil counterparts. They should be handled and shipped with more care. When making candles with essential oils, you should always keep an eye on the temperatures.
Limited fragrance options
Due to their natural sources, there are fewer fragrance options for essential oils than synthetic fragrance oils.
More expensive
It is more expensive to make candles with 100% essential oils.
Read more: Essential Oils vs. Fragrance Oils for Candles: Which is Better?
Best Essential Oils for Candle Making
Considering the price, fragrance, ingredients, and packaging, we’ve carefully selected the 3 best essential oils for candle making.
#1 Best Overall: Lagunamoon Essential Oils 6pc Set in Gift Box
This is our top choice of essential oils for candle making since it is all-natural. It contains 6 strong scents of essential oils and is packaged in a beautiful gift box. And more importantly, it is beginner-friendly.
Each scent has only 10ml, so you can try which works well with your wax without waste. When you find the best scent, you can then go for a larger bottle.
Besides, to make your candles smell stronger with essential oils, you need to find strong scented essential oils. And most of the six scents are really strong. They are: lemongrass, peppermint, orange, lavender, eucalyptus, and tea tree. And these scents are also very popular in candle making. So, you can be sure your candles will be welcomed.
These essential oils are safe to use for candle making, aromatherapy, and home fragrance.
Key features:
- All-natural
- Six scents: lemongrass, peppermint, orange, lavender, eucalyptus, and tea tree.
- Amber-tinted bottle, reduce exposure to light.
- 10ml per bottle
- Gift box
#2 Best Large Amount: Handcraft Lavender Essential Oil
We really like this essential oil. It’s so huge and great for experienced candle makers.
If you have no idea what scent of essential oils to choose, go for lavender. Studies have shown that lavender essential oil can help people calm down, reduce anxiety and stress, and feel more energetic and positive. It is one of the most used scents in candles.
This product comes in a huge amount – 4 fl.oz (120ml). With this bottle, you can make a batch of candles at a time.
Essential oils from Handcraft Blends Store are 100% pure and natural and have a Premium Quality Guarantee stamp on the bottle label. There are no additives or fillers, and they are undiluted. So, you can use this essential oil for candles without worries.
You can also make essential blends with Basil, Bergamot, Eucalyptus, Lemon, Lemongrass, Peppermint, Rosemary, and Tea Tree, which can also be found in their store. All of these essential oils are popular in candle making.
Key features:
- Popular candle scent
- Large amount 4 fl.oz (120ml)
- Come in an amber glass bottle with a glass dropper
#3 Best Organic: Cliganic USDA Organic Eucalyptus Essential Oil
If you are keen on organic products, this essential oil will meet your requirement.
This is an USDA certified organic essential oil, which ensures the ingredients are organic. It only contains a single ingredient – the essence of eucalyptus leaves, which is extracted through steam distillation. No alcohol, no other fragrance added, and not diluted.
It comes with an amber glass bottle and dropper cap, which can protect the essential oil from UV, and are easy to measure.
Other scents are available: Basil, Cinnamon, Lavender, Peppermint, Lemongrass, etc.
Key features:
- Organic and pure
- Two options: 0.33 fl.oz (10ml), or 1 fl.oz (30ml)
Tips: How to Make Candles Smell Stronger with Essential Oils
We hope to have a strong scent when adding essential oils to our candles. However, things go contrary to our wishes. Often, we will end up with less scented candles., whether you’re making scented candles for men or women.
Here are our tips to make your candles smell stronger with essential oils.
1. Choose a slowly burn wax.
When the wax melts slower, the candle will have more time to gather more scents which makes the scents stronger.
2. Find a strong scented essential oil.
Before making scented candles, take some time to choose some essential oils that have strong scents. For example, lavender, lemon, eucalyptus, cinnamon, or grapefruit.
3. Use essential oil blends instead of a single ingredient oil.
The essential oil blends will be complicated compounds to perform in a wider range of temperatures. Thus, it’s possible to have a stronger hot throw.
4. Use blends of natural fragrance oils and essential oils.
Some fragrance oils are naturally made without phthalate. You can feel free to blend them with essential oils to have a stronger hot throw, aka, smell stronger.
5. Add the maximum amount of essential oils to the wax.
Please pay attention that the maximum amount doesn’t mean adding as many as you prefer. There’s a percentage, known as fragrance load of wax, you need to follow. For example, if a type of soy wax can hold 6% – 12% fragrance, you can add 12% essential oils to achieve a stronger scent. Don’t exceed that.
To calculate how many essential oils to add to your candles, follow this fragrance oil calculation tutorial.
6. Add essential oils to the wax at a slightly lower temperature.
Don’t add essential oils when the wax is still very hot. Let it cool down a little, then add essential oils and stir. But don’t add a too low temperature.
7. Keep your candles in a drawer or some places with less light and heat.
Essential oils degrade over time and from light and heat. So, it’s wise to cover them between use.
Final Verdict
Though essential oils have some downsides for candle making, they are still a great choice to make scented candles at home. Following our guide above, you can make candles with the best essential oils that smell strong.
