My 200 g Candle Lasts Far Fewer Hours Than Expected and Has a Large Flame — Could an Oversized Wick Be Consuming Wax Too Aggressively?

The burn-hour arithmetic, done properly

Start with the one equation that matters: burn hours = grams that burn ÷ grams burned per hour. The grams are the wax and the fragrance together: your 200 g at 8% is 16 g of oil and 184 g of wax, and both leave the jar as the candle burns. So the number on your scale is the honest measure; you never need to separate the two.

The worked example in this post uses two consumption rates, both labelled examples rather than CSI figures (CSI publishes no consumption data for any wick or wax): 8 g an hour for a large-flame candle and 5 g an hour for the same candle on a calmer wick. Divide 200 g by each and you get 25 and 40 hours. That is a 37.5% shortfall from nothing more than 60% more wax per hour.

Correction one: the floor never burns

Those 25 and 40 hours assume the candle burns to the last gram. It shouldn't. A common rule of thumb is to finish with about 1 cm of wax in the bottom, so the flame stays clear of the glass base and the wick tab. In a worked example, call that floor 20 g (weigh yours: put a finished candle's leftover on the scale). Only 180 g burns, so the real figures are 22.5 hours at 8 g/h and 36 hours at 5 g/h. The diagram's dotted tails are the hours that exist only on paper.

Correction two: grams per hour is not constant

A straight line is a simplification. Consumption commonly rises lower in the jar as heat builds in the glass above the pool, and it can be lower on the first burn while the pool is still forming. That is why a figure from one evening on the top third does not predict the candle's life. If your candle's consumption jumps in the final third, the late-burn posts own that problem: start with the final third burning faster than the first and wax used faster during later burns.

How to measure grams per hour cleanly (tare, timing, session length, rounding) is 6910's method; this post assumes you have the numbers and asks what they mean for your 200 g candle and your label.

What your customer actually notices

Customers don't see grams per hour. They see that a candle bought for a month was finished in a fortnight. In the worked example, with a 3-hour evening, 180 g gives 7.5 evenings at 8 g/h and 12 evenings at 5 g/h. Lit three evenings a week, that is about 2.5 weeks against 4.

They also notice what comes with fast consumption, and these signs matter more than the hours: a flame that looks big for the jar, a deep pool early in each burn, soot on the rim, a jar that seems hot (which they will judge by touch, and you must not), and scent that is strong on night one and fades as the candle empties quickly. A short life is often the complaint; the large flame is the cause, and the cause is the safety question.

The material cost is identical: ₹93.36 of wax, ₹62.77 of Jasmine at its 1 kg price, ₹9.44 for the wick. What changes is how many hours the customer gets for it. That is the commercial argument for fixing the wick, and it costs you nothing per candle; stepping from C2 to C1 even saves ₹3.54 a wick.

Six reasons a 200 g candle runs out early, ranked

The order is our judgement for a short life with a large flame, and it is also the cheapest order to rule things out.

Cause 2 deserves its own sentence because it is common and free: if your "200 g" candles weigh 185 g, the wick isn't the problem; the fill is. Cause 3 is the one customers do: many care instructions suggest burning for no more than about four hours at a time, and long burns let heat build in the jar. If short life appears only in customer homes, the four-hours-or-longer post is the next read. And if the flame is large even after a correct trim in still air, 6904 is the confirmation test for an oversized wick.

The burn-life test: six candles, weighed every session

This test does two jobs at once: it decides whether the wick is the cause, and it gives you a measured burn life for the rung you approve. Candle: your 200 g at 8% (16 g oil + 184 g wax, load as a percentage of total weight) in your own jar. A note on jars: CSI's 200 ml jars will not hold 200 g of wax, because wax is lighter than water, and none of their pages states a gram fill. Test in the jar you sell.

Two 1 kg bags (₹1,014.80) would also work but cost more for wax you don't need. If you use your own wax and scale, the whole test is ₹118.00 or ₹94.40 in wicks.

Turning measured hours into an honest label claim

A burn-time claim is a promise about the weakest candle a customer might buy, so build it from your weakest result. Our in-house rule, labelled as such: claim the shortest full-life time among the approved candles, rounded down, and state the conditions it was measured under.

Worked example: three approved candles on the calmer rung run 35.2, 36.5 and 37.8 hours to the floor. The spread is 2.6 hours, which is normal variation between candles, not an error. The claim is the lowest, rounded down to the nearest five: about 35 hours, "when burned in sessions of up to 4 hours with the wick trimmed to 5–6 mm". Not 40 (the arithmetic), not 36.5 (the average-looking one), and not a figure from the strong wick you rejected.

Those three page claims are ours, so this is worth saying plainly against our own interest: the Cotton Braided page's "maximizing burn time", the Eco page's "Long-lasting Performance" and the wooden-wick page's "Long burning" describe the product category in general terms. None of them is a burn time for your 200 g candle, and none should appear on your label as one.

When the rung changes, the claim changes. A candle re-wicked from C2 to C1 needs its own three full-life candles before a new number goes on the label, and the old figure comes off. The same applies when you change jar: two 200 g jars of different shapes can need completely different wick systems, so a burn time never transfers between jars.

The CSI wick buy list and the production step

"One rung down" at CSI means Cotton Braided → C2, C2 → C1, or a C2 pair → a C1 pair. There is no sized, tabbed wick between C1 and C2 or between C2 and Cotton Braided, no smaller sized, tabbed wick than C1, and one wooden-wick listing with no widths. The braided rolls and the loose Eco wick are cut-to-length constructions, not half-sizes. If your test lands between rungs, the strong one burns too fast and the small one tunnels, ask us on WhatsApp; we would rather tell you we don't stock the step than sell you the wrong wick.

Argued against our own interest: you may need no new wicks at all. If your candles weigh 185 g instead of 200 g, or the short life only happens in 7-hour customer burns, the fix is a scale and a care line. And because C1, C2 and Cotton Braided cost the same per wick at every pack, a bigger pack gives you stock, not savings.

The step to production quantity

After a rung passes on three full-life candles: production wicks = candles × wicks per candle × (1 + a defect allowance). Worked example, labelled: 150 single-wick candles a month with a 3% allowance is 155 wicks. If C1 passed, buy 100 + 50 + 20 = 170 C1 for ₹1,003.00; with the 10-pack out of stock, the 20-pack is the smallest top-up. If C2 passed, 100 + 50 + 10 = 160 C2 cost ₹1,510.40. Reorder point = daily use × your lead time + safety stock; CSI publishes no lead times, so ask on WhatsApp before you set yours. The full purchase-quantity formula is the wholesale wick quantity post.

What to buy, and what to skip

Five items chosen on page statements, price and stock on 7 October 2026. CSI has no burn-rate or burn-time data for any wick, so nothing here is ranked on performance, and each card says when not to buy.

Skip for now: any 500- or 1,000-pack before approval; a new wax "that burns slower" while the wick is unresolved (one variable at a time); Performance Wooden Wicks as a fix for fast burning, since there is no narrower wooden width to step to; and printed burn-time labels until three candles have reached the floor.

Outside this series: why a wick that is right at the top can be too strong lower down, the two-hour test that overheats near the bottom; and what to record when the consumption rate is part of a wick change, the full retest list after a wick change.

Frequently asked questions