A Client Wants a Custom-Coloured Candle — Should I Finalise Fragrance, Colour, Wick and Wax Before Ordering 1,000 Jars?

The order of decisions

The scenario: a lifestyle brand wants 1,000 candles in their signature sage green, with a fresh scent to match. They've seen a photo of a candle in a clear jar and want "that, in our colour". You're weighing up whether to order the jars now to save time. The table shows why the jar model is decided now, but the jar order waits.

The development kit is 5.4% of what the jars alone cost. It's the cheapest way to find out whether the colour works in this glass, whether the scent pulls it off-shade, and whether a wick can carry a full melt pool through a dyed, scented candle in this diameter. Every one of those can go wrong, and every one of them is cheaper to discover in five jars than in a thousand.

Why the jar model comes first

The jar decides how much of the colour anyone sees. A clear jar like the 200 ml Salsa shows the whole candle from the side; the colour is the product. A White Matte jar shows only the top surface, so a custom colour is mostly a lid-off surprise. That's not a reason to avoid matte — it's a reason to decide before anyone mixes a dye.

The jar's diameter matters as much as its glass. The wick has to melt the full width of the jar, and wick sizing for a given diameter isn't in our data — it's found by burn test. If you order 1,000 jars and then find the wick that suits your coloured, scented wax can't get a full melt pool in them, you are choosing between a new jar and a compromise candle. What to test before bulk materials sets out the full test list for a 1,000-piece custom order.

Building the colour

With no green dye in stock, a sage has to be built. Blue and yellow make green; a touch of brown or black knocks it back toward sage. Start with small, weighed additions in a known weight of melted wax, pour a test in the real jar, and let it set fully before judging — soy often looks different set than molten. Dye doses aren't in our data; follow the dye's product page for guidance, and record exactly what you used per kilo of wax. If the brief is a colour you can't build from what's in stock, ask on WhatsApp when the missing dye is expected before you promise a date.

Colour also interacts with the other decisions. Soy wax sets opaque and creamy, so a dye reads softer in soy than it would in paraffin. Some fragrance oils carry a tint of their own. Cucumber Green Tea suits a green brief on scent, but pour a dyed test with the oil in — not a dyed test without it — because the oil may shift the shade. That's why colour is decision four, after wax and fragrance.

Why the wick comes last

In general practice, dye, fragrance and load can each change how a candle burns: heavier loads and some dyes can affect the flame and the melt pool. So a wick that burns well in plain wax may under- or over-perform in the finished, coloured, scented candle. The only reliable answer is a burn test of the finished formula in the real jar. Wick sizing per diameter isn't published in our data; Eco Candle Wicks at ₹5.90 each make trial wicks cheap.

Scaling the approved sample to 1,000

Once the sample is approved, the order is arithmetic. At a 170 g fill (assumed — weigh yours) and 8%, each candle is 13.6 g of oil and 156.4 g of wax. With 15 test and QC candles and a 3% allowance on oil and wax (plan 3–5% extra for pour loss and test burns — a working assumption), the order is:

Dye is scaled from the dose you recorded in the approved test, multiplied by the wax in the order (163.5 kg). The table below shows the arithmetic for three example test doses of the blue component. These are not dose recommendations — dye doses aren't in our data — they are there to show how your own recorded figure turns into an order.

Do the same for the yellow chips: count or weigh what you used per kilo in the approved test and multiply by the order's wax. Chip pack weights aren't in our data, so ask on WhatsApp how many packs that comes to. Then mix colour in a fixed weight of wax per batch, always the same, so batch twelve matches batch one. Keeping colour identical across batches covers that in detail.

The quantities side of a custom order is covered elsewhere in the cluster: costing the first quote, inventory before production for 500 pieces, the full bill of materials for 5,000 in one jar and kilograms of fragrance for a one-scent order. If the colour is part of a wedding brief, extra oil for a custom wedding scent applies too, and materials with the longest lead times helps when a dye you need is out of stock.

Frequently asked questions