Candle Safety

Here at CandleWarehouse.ie, Candle Safety is important to us. Ultimately, candles exist to help make your house feel like a home, our basic guidelines on candle safety will help extend the life of the candle and your enjoyment.

The Basics of Candle Safety:

Candles emit heat, so be sure to place them on a heat resistant surface so that you don’t end up with heat marks on furniture.

Keep well away from any fabrics such as curtains and keep out of any draughts.  

Never put candles under shelves – there’s a lot of heat that comes directly up from the flame.

Little hands and paws can be inquisitive – keep out of reach of children and pets.

The Best Way to Burn a Candle

Before lighting

• Trim the wick to about ½ cm each time before burning. The safest way to do this is with a wick trimmer. Long or crooked wicks can cause uneven burning, dripping or flaring.

• Always use a candleholder specifically designed for candle use. Yankee Candle glass jars are heat resistant, sturdy, and quality tested. For votives use an appropriate holder and for wax melt use a quality melt warmer.
• Burn candles in a well-ventilated room.

• Place the jar candle or appropriate holder on a stable, heat-resistant surface.

• Keep the wax pool clear of wick trimmings, matches and debris at all times. This will alleviate smoke.

• Avoid having your candle in a draft. This will help prevent uneven burning, dancing flames and excessive smoke or blackening of the jar.

• Follow the recommendations on burn time and proper use. You will find EU regulated pictogram information on the bottom of all candles - see descriptions at top of this page.

While burning

• Never touch or move a burning candle. Never move a votive or jar candle when the wax is liquefied as the holder may be hot.

• Don't burn a candle all the way down. For a margin of safety, discontinue burning a candle when 1cm of wax remains. This is always allowed when burn times are calculated and with most candles, a safety mechanism is built into the design to automatically extinguish the candle when the 1cm is reached.

• Allow wax to pool -  Always allow your jar candle to pool fully each time you light it to prevent tunnelling. Each 1cm in diameter takes 20-30 minutes to pool, thus a large jar takes 3-4 hours to pool.

• Extinguish a candle if the flame becomes too high or flickers repeatedly. Let the candle cool, trim the wick, and check for unwanted drafts before re-lighting.

• Always keep the candle within your sight. If you are going to leave the room, be sure to first blow out all candles.

When extinguishing

• Use a candle snuffer to extinguish a candle. It's the safest way to prevent hot wax from splattering.

• Never use water to extinguish a candle. Water can cause the hot wax to splatter and might break a glass container.

• Don't touch or move the candle until it has completely cooled as the jar or holder may stay hot for a period after the flame is extinguished.

• Our safety tips apply to all candles of all makes and styles.

Time to say Goodbye

All Jar candles have a built in safety protruder that prevents the flame reaching the bottom.

This will mean approx. 1cm of wax left at the bottom of the jar, but most of the fragrance oil will have evaporated out of that wax by the time the safety protruder extinguishes the candle.

New Life to Old Jars

Jars, even with some wax left in them, can be recycled in your local bottle bank. But why not upcycle them yourself? – Check our online blog and information pages for how to clean the jars and loads of upcycling ideas.

Common Fragrance Issues

Large Rooms

Where you have a particularly large room or open plan living space, we recommend choosing wax that has a wider pool of melted wax which will give off a wide ranging throw – choose from classic loved forms including:

• Large jar candles
• Tarts Wax Melts & Warmer

Scent Intensity

Our fragrances are true to life and just like their names; the intensity of those fragrances can vary. If you want a fragrances that is more or less intense think of the strength of its inspiration and you’ll be on the right track.

Fragrance let down

Are you struggling to smell a candle after it has been burning for a while? Sometimes like with any other fragrance product you may temporarily lose the ability to smell the fragrance due to repeated exposure, whereas other's new to it will detect it.

The best way to reconnect with your favourite fragrance is to try out a new fragrance for a while, before returning to your favourite fragrance and the smell should return.

Sensory Overload

Take a tip from the experts and sniff coffee beans between your candle scents, just like the master perfumers from long ago who learned that coffee beans will neutralise your sense of smell allowing you to enjoy the next fragrance. Alternatively – you can use the sleeve of your shirt or other fabric.