I'm Making 500 Candles a Month — What Quantities of Wax, Fragrance Oil, Wicks and Jars Should I Buy to Reduce My Cost per Candle?

The 500-candle month, in quantities

This page uses the series' working candle: 200 g, container, 8% fragrance load, so 16 g of oil and 184 g of wax, with one wick and one jar. The month is 500 sellable candles across five scents of 100 candles each, a common shape for a small brand at this size. Every material gets a 4% allowance for pour loss, test burns and breakage; plan 3–5% and use your own figure once you have tracked it.

Two things stand out at this scale. Wax is by far the heaviest item, but it is one line: every candle uses the same wax, so it is simple to plan. Fragrance is five separate lines, each with its own price ladder and its own sales risk, so it needs a decision per scent. Wicks and jars are counted, not weighed, and they break or get rejected, so the allowance on them is not optional. I'm Making 200 Candles Every Month — Should I Buy One Month, Two Months or Three Months of Wax Inventory at a Time? covers how many months of wax to hold, and I Have 20 Fragrances but Only Five Are Bestsellers — Should I Buy 1 Kg Fragrance Oils Only for Those Five and Keep Smaller Quantities of the Rest? covers splitting stock across scents that sell at different speeds.

Which materials get cheaper in bigger packs

Here is every material in the 500-candle month, with what the listed price does as the pack grows. This is the heart of the title question: quantity only reduces cost per candle where the price per unit falls with the pack.

So for the default candle, three of the four lines do not respond to quantity at all on the listed prices: the Chunks, the Eco wick and the White Matte jar. That is not a flaw in the plan; it simply means buying 1,000 wicks instead of 500 does not make a candle cheaper, it only means fewer orders. The jar is the heaviest cost line after wax and oil, at ₹70.80 a candle, and the only route to a lower per-jar price on it is a quote for a larger quantity. No discount figure is published, so ask rather than assume. By contrast, the 200 ml Salsa jar with its golden lug cap drops from ₹40.12 each in fives to ₹29.50 in fifties, a real break, though it is a different jar whose fill weight is not published; weigh a filled one before you cost a candle in it.

Fragrance: where quantity pays

Each of the five scents needs about 1.66 kg a month with the allowance. The table prices one candle's 16 g at three pack sizes, then the month's 1.7 kg two ways: as seventeen 100 g bottles, and as a 1 kg plus a 500 g plus two 100 g bottles.

Across the five scents, buying the month in larger bottles saves ₹3,205.00, or 8.6%. But look at where it comes from. Mango Coconut, which breaks at 500 g, carries almost half of it on its own; Lavender barely moves. The larger step is the one from 15 g: pouring British Rose from 15 g testers costs ₹100.69 a candle against ₹49.09 from the kilo. If any production still comes out of testers, that is the first fix. I Use 500 g of One Fragrance Oil Every Month — When Should I Stop Buying 100 g Bottles and Move to 500 g or 1 Kg Packs? works one oil at 500 g a month, and A 1 Kg Fragrance Oil Is Much Cheaper per Gram than 100 g — How Quickly Should I be Using a Fragrance Before Moving to the Larger Pack? lists every oil where the kilo really saves.

The real levers on cost per candle

Pack size is one lever. At 500 candles a month, two others are bigger: which wax, and which oil. The table shows what each wax costs inside one candle.

Moving from Luxury Soy Wax Chunks to CSI 464 takes ₹16.85 off every candle, ₹8,427.20 a month at 500 candles. That is several times what all the pack-size moves on oil save. It is a formulation change, though: CSI 464 is rated up to 10% fragrance load against the Chunks' 13%, and a new wax needs new burn tests in your jar before a customer sees it. The oil lever is bigger still. At 16 g a candle, British Rose from the kilo costs ₹49.09 and Lavender ₹83.54; a premium oil can cost several times that. I'm Making 1,000 Candles a Month — Which Raw Materials Should Now be Purchased Wholesale Rather than in Small Packs? looks at which lines move to wholesale quotes at 1,000 candles.

The month's shopping list

Here is the 500-candle month priced line by line with right-sized packs, next to the same month bought in small packs. Wax is Luxury Soy Wax Chunks, the series default; the CSI 464 line shows the effect of switching.

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