Essential oils for candles and candle making

Essential oils for candles

Who does not like candles?

They can create a relaxed ambience within seconds. A combination of a little fire and a gentle scent is extremely soothing, heart -warming and intimate.

But how to create this beautiful scent that comes with the candle burning?

Consider essential oils. Essential oils are nature’s own healing fragrant agents. They are made from plants’ fragrant parts and possess therapeutic properties for our body and mind.

If you are passionate about candle making, you might consider using natural essential oils for candles instead of synthetic fragrances, as essential oils contain healing and protective components which are extremely beneficial for our well-being. And they smell amazing.

There are some important details you might need to know before you start adding essential oils to candles.

Flash point of essential oils

It is about how the essential oil, the scent of which you like to add to your candle, will behave when added to a hot wax. If you add it too soon, the essential oil will evaporate together with its therapeutic benefits.

The higher the flash point, the more the oil can handle heat and not break down.

Essential oils are familiar with heat as they are extracted at a high heat temperature, but it is useful to know which oils work better when it comes to high heat.

There are essential oils that are distilled, expressed, or extracted by chemicals.

Flash point is the lowest temperature at which essential oil can vapour and break down. Essential oils have different flash points, some higher, some lower.

Distilled oils are not affected by heat when kept tightly closed. They have a higher flash points.

Citrus essential oils and absolutes are more likely to break down when exposed to their flash point even when they are tightly sealed in a bottle.

Expressed essential oils, all citrus oils, are extremely delicate even at low temperature of 38C.

Absolutes are chemically extracted as their therapeutic benefits including aroma will be destroyed by heat. The heat will break down their big molecules into smaller ones with much less pleasant scent as a result. The flash point will be at 32C.

This means that you will need to cool the wax down to a temperature suitable for the essential oil of your choice before adding it to candle.

The amount of the essential oil to put into a candle

The number of drops of essential oils for candles depends on how strong you want the scent to be. The advisable amount is 6-7%. After you figured out the number, it is important to distribute the oil evenly through the candle before the wax hardens.

Candles with pure essential oils have a stronger natural scent with plenty of healthy benefits.