1st Burn Guidelines

Cricklewood Gardens new instructional labels, found at the bottom of most candles, outline best practices for burning natural soy candles. The key to a consistent burn, and to maximize fragrance, is to ensure your ‘1st burn’ allows the entire top layer of your candle to melt to an equal depth from all sides of the candle’s interior. This is usually a 2 hour burn, with fluctuation depending candle size. Your soy candle will remember your 1st burn, and if only a portion of the wax was melted, the candle will burn, thereafter, within those confines creating a tunneled effect down the center of your candle. This will shorten candle life and limit fragrance, or your candle’s throw.

Why soy?

Soy wax is a natural vegetable based wax and unlike some other waxes it is non-toxic and therefore better for the environment. Paraffin wax is used by many well known candle companies as the additives allow makers to dictate more of the candle’s performance, jar adherence, how the wax looks and the chemicals in paraffin allow these makers to create heavier fragrances with extensive throw. Though some of these fragrances are great, paraffin wax, which is petroleum/chemical based, burns off black soot. Soy wax, by comparison, burns roughly 90% cleaner.

Cricklewood Garden’s candles are all natural soy based. Our scents are soft to medium in their throw and following some basic burning guidelines, will burn long and beautifully.