How Much Wax Do I Need to Make 100 Candles?

Wax for 100 candles, by candle size and fragrance load

A "200g candle at 8%" is 200g of finished candle, of which 8% — 16g — is fragrance oil and the other 92% — 184g — is wax. So the wax in one candle is the candle weight × (1 − load), and the wax for 100 is that × 100. The table runs the calculation for five common sizes and the three loads that matter on CSI waxes: 8% as a sensible starting point, 10% as the load Luxury Soy Wax Chunks' page recommends and CSI 464's page states as its ceiling, and 13% as the ceiling stated for Chunks and CSI 468.

Look down the load columns and one thing is obvious: moving from 8% to 13% on a 200g candle saves exactly 1 kg of wax across 100 candles. That is not a reason to pour at 13%. On Luxury Soy Wax Chunks at 10 kg pricing, the wax in one candle falls from ₹110.38 to ₹104.38 — six rupees — while the oil rises from 16g to 26g. Even on an inexpensive oil like British Rose at ₹3,068 a kilo, that adds ₹30.68 of fragrance. Choose the load for the throw your burn test proves, not to economise on wax. For the fragrance side of the same run, see fragrance oil for 100 wedding-favour candles.

Why "size ÷ 10" works for 100 candles

Look at the last column of the table again: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 kg. It isn't a coincidence. For 100 candles, the kilos of finished candle are always the candle size in grams ÷ 10 — 100 × 200g is 20 kg. The wax inside is 92% of that at 8%. So buying the full finished weight in wax gives you 8.7% more wax than the candles contain (1 ÷ 0.92 = 1.087), and that margin is your allowance. At 10% the margin is 11.1%; at 13% it is 14.9%.

The allowance itself is a planning figure, not a measured loss rate. Wax clings to the melter wall and the pouring jug, a few jars need topping up after a sinkhole, and the odd candle is re-melted. A careful maker with a pouring pitcher might lose less than 3%; a first run from a double boiler might lose more. That is why the rule is useful: buying size ÷ 10 absorbs anything up to 8.7% at 8% without a second order, and if your losses turn out small you have about four candles' wax left for test jars.

Packs and cost for 100 candles, wax by wax

Now the kilos become an order. The table shows the fewest listed packs that make up "size ÷ 10" kilos of each CSI soy wax, and what they cost. Most CSI soy waxes are flat-priced per kilo from 1 kg upwards, so the cost is close to kilos × the per-kilo price; the exceptions are noted underneath.

Across the container waxes, 20 kg for a 100 × 200g run ranges from ₹7,984 to ₹12,740 — a ₹4,756 spread, or ₹43.76 of wax per candle. That gap is real, but compare it with the jar and the oil before you let it pick your wax: a wax with a published load and stated temperatures is easier to get right the first time, and a candle that has to be re-poured costs more than the difference. Where the product page states no load (Eco Soy CSI 400, Natural Soy Pearl Wax), test a cured jar at 8% before committing 20 kg.

Round up, or buy tight? The 200g case

A 100 × 200g run with a 4% allowance needs 19.14 kg. The "size ÷ 10" purchase is 20 kg. But waxes that also come in 500g and 1 kg packs can stop at 19.5 kg, which still covers the allowance with 364g beyond it. Whether that's worth doing depends on how many packs you're willing to open and whether the extra half-kilo would have been used anyway.

The tight route saves the price of half a kilo — ₹247.40 to ₹318 — and costs you five or six extra packs, a margin of 364g instead of 864g, and about one spare candle's wax instead of four. Choose it only when you are certain the extra wax would go unused: a one-off gift order, a wax you won't reorder. If there will be a second run in the same wax, round up; the 500g you "save" is exactly the wax your test jars and top-ups will want next time. On Eco Soy CSI 400 and Natural Soy Pearl Wax, which have no 500g pack, there's nothing to gain at all.

Your candle size is a weight you measure

Every table on this page starts from "candle size". For a pillar that is the mould; for a container candle it is how much the jar actually holds at your fill line. Several CSI jars state that in grams — the Amber Shiny Glass Jar with Black Lid (120 gm), the Clear Glass Jar with Golden Lid (150g fill), the Apothecary Glass Candle Jar (500 gm and 700 gm sizes), the Borosilicate Glass Jar 600 gram ("ideal for 500–600g wax fill"). Many more state millilitres: the 200ml Salsa jars and the matte glass jars ("fill weight of 200 ml"). A millilitre figure is a volume, and wax is lighter than water, so treat it as a starting point for the scale, not a candle size.

Weighing one jar also protects the other half of the recipe. Fragrance load is a percentage of the real candle weight, so a 180g fill at 8% takes 14.4g of oil, not 16g. Weigh the oil per batch against the real wax weight in the melter and every candle comes out at the load you tested. More on per-candle weights for beginners: how much wax does one candle actually need.

Four waxes for a 100-candle run

Each card shows every pack the wax is listed in, the price per kilo, and how many 200g candles at 8% each pack makes — so you can check the "size ÷ 10" purchase against the pack ladder directly.

After the run: the wax you didn't use, and your real allowance

The allowance on this page is a guess made before the run. The run itself tells you the real number, and it takes five minutes to capture. Before melting, note the kilos you bought. After the last candle is poured, weigh whatever wax is left — in bags, in the melter once it has set, in the jug. Then:

The 1.1 kg in the example is illustrative, not a typical figure — use your own. If your measured loss comes in under 3%, you can plan the next run tighter; if it comes in over 5%, the fix is usually in the process — a pouring pitcher instead of a saucepan lip, scraping the melter, fewer top-up pours — rather than a bigger order. Leftover wax is not waste. Soy wax that was weighed, melted cleanly and never had fragrance added can go into the next run's first melter load; wax that already has fragrance in it belongs in test jars of the same scent. If a candle fails, the guide on re-melting a failed candle covers what can be recovered.

Once wax is sorted, the rest of the 100-candle list — oil, wicks, jars, stickers and labels — is costed in two builds in raw materials required to make 100 candles. If your next run is five times bigger, the same method at 500 candles, with the pack combinations that change, is in how much wax do I need to make 500 candles.

Frequently asked questions