My Client Wants 60% Lavender and 40% Vanilla Candles Across a 2,000-Piece Order — How Do I Calculate Separate Fragrance Quantities?

Two readings of "60/40"

"60% lavender and 40% vanilla" can mean two different products. Most often it means a count split: 1,200 candles that are lavender and 800 that are vanilla, perhaps for two tables at a wedding or two tiers of a corporate gift. Sometimes it means a blend: 2,000 identical candles, each scented with a 60:40 mix of the two oils. The quantities of oil you buy come out the same either way, which surprises people, but almost everything else about the job is different.

The totals match because 60% of the candles at 14.4 g each is the same oil as 60% of 14.4 g in every candle. What differs is the product the client receives and the work you do. A blend must be tested as a blend: two oils that each smell good in your wax can behave differently together, and the load applies to the combined blend, not to each oil. Component grams are the total oil × each share, so a 14.4 g load splits into 8.64 g and 5.76 g. If the order is a blend, mix the full 28.80 kg (plus allowances) in one vessel before pouring, so every candle carries the same ratio. The 70:30 lavender-vanilla blend calculation and scaling a small test blend go further into blend maths. The rest of this page assumes a count split, which is the more common request.

Each scent gets its own line

Once the split is agreed, treat each scent as its own small order that happens to share wax, jars and wicks with the other. The load is a share of the finished weight, the same rule used across this series: 180 g × 8% = 14.4 g of oil; 180 − 14.4 = 165.6 g of wax. Every line below follows from those two figures.

Test candles are per scent because each scent needs its own evidence. Ten lavender candles tell you nothing about how the vanilla behaves in the same jar and wick, and vanilla-type oils are the ones most commonly associated with discolouration in wax over time, which is a reason to watch the vanilla test candles for a few weeks. We do not publish colour-change data for any individual oil; a controlled test, one oil at a time, is the only way to know. Ten per scent is a working assumption. A Client Wants 1,000 Candles but Expects 20 Samples Before Final Production — Should the Sample Raw Materials be Included in My Procurement Calculation? covers what to do when the client asks for formal pre-production samples on top of your own tests.

Changeovers and pour sequence

When you move from lavender to vanilla, the melter, jugs and funnel hold a film of lavender-scented wax. Pouring vanilla straight through it puts a trace of lavender into the first vanilla candles. So makers clean down, or pour the first portion of the new scent into a waste container, and that material is lost. How much depends on your equipment; we have used 500 g of fragranced wax per changeover as a labelled working assumption. Weigh your own on the first switch.

One changeover is a small loss; twelve is 6 kg of candle material and 480 g of oil. The fix costs nothing: pour one scent to completion, clean down once, then pour the other. If the client needs early deliveries of both scents, pour a first tranche of each and accept two or three changeovers, but plan them. On this page's order, one changeover is built in: 500 g of material, assigned half to each scent's oil line to be safe, which is 20 g of oil each.

Rounding each oil separately

The gross oil need, with tests, loss and the changeover, is 17.97 kg of lavender and 12.03 kg of vanilla. Together that is 30.00 kg, a suspiciously round number that invites an order of 30 one-kilo bottles, perhaps 18 lavender and 12 vanilla. That order leaves the vanilla 34 g short, because the two oils cannot cover for each other. Rounded separately, lavender needs 18 × 1 kg (33 g spare) and vanilla needs 12 × 1 kg + 1 × 500 g (466 g spare): 30.5 kg in all. Separate rounding is not about buying more; it is about making sure neither scent runs out on the last tray.

The White Matte Glass Jar is listed only as a pack of 5 at ₹354.00, and its fill weight is not published. A 180 g fill is this page's example; weigh a test pour to your fill line before you commit 2,000 jars to it, and see My Jar Holds 180 g of Water — How Do I Estimate the Wax Fill Weight Before Buying Wax for 500 Jars? for the water-to-wax method. The Thick C2 wick is priced as an example only; wick size per jar is not published, so the burn test on your first 10 candles per scent decides. At 2,045 jars, the order is far beyond a handful of retail packs, so ask on WhatsApp whether it can be quoted as a single consignment.

If the client moves the split

Clients change splits. A wedding family decides vanilla is more popular; a corporate buyer adds a department that prefers lavender. Because the wax is shared, a shift only moves oil between the two lines, and because vanilla costs more per gram, it also moves money. Every 100 candles that move from lavender to vanilla move 1,440 g of oil and add ₹3,492.00 to the oil bill.

Two practical rules follow. First, if the split is still being discussed, order the wax and jars now, since they are the same whatever the split, and hold the oil order until the split is signed off. That is the shared-versus-specific distinction that My Client May Increase a 1,000-Candle Order by 20% at the Last Minute — Should I Buy Additional Raw Materials Now or Wait for Confirmation? works through in detail for a quantity change. Second, if you must order oil before the split is final, order each scent to the higher of the plausible splits. Here, if the split could be anywhere from 60/40 to 50/50, order vanilla for 1,000 candles and lavender for 1,200. You will have about 2.88 kg of oil left over, but you will not be short of either scent.

If the order grows beyond two scents, the method is the same but the bookkeeping grows faster than the order. Three sizes and four scents is twelve lines, and the risk becomes counting the same wax twice. My Corporate Order Uses Three Candle Sizes and Four Fragrances — How Do I Create a Raw-Material Requirement Sheet Without Double-Counting Wax or Fragrance? sets out a matrix that keeps every line counted once. If this order shares a month with others, I Have Three Bulk Orders Happening in the Same Month — How Do I Combine Their Wax Requirements While Keeping Fragrance Oils and Packaging Quantities Separate? pools the wax across all of them while keeping each client's oils apart. And the 200 lavender, 200 rose, 100 oud split works a three-scent wedding order at 8%.

Frequently asked questions