I Switched from Liquid Candle Dye to Dye Chips — Should I Re-Establish Dosage and Burn Performance Rather than Converting the Amount Directly?

Why there is no safe liquid-to-chip conversion factor

The question most makers ask when they change dye form is not "should I test" but "what is the conversion". It is a reasonable question with an uncomfortable answer: there is no conversion you can trust, and CSI does not publish one for its own liquids and chips. A liquid dye is colourant carried in a liquid; a dye chip is colourant carried in wax. How much colour each carries per gram is set by whoever made it, is not printed on most labels, and is not in CSI's data for either form. Any factor you find online converts one unknown into another unknown, usually for someone else's brands.

The pack-weight row is the practical killer. CSI's Candle Dye Liquid Blue is listed at 15 g, 50 g and 100 g. Its Blue Dye Chips are listed at ₹250.00, with no pack or chip weight in the data. So even a maker who wanted to compare rupees per gram of dye cannot do it from the listings. The only way to put the two forms on a common scale is the one this page uses: weigh what you add and judge the result by eye against the candle you already approved.

Why burn performance needs re-establishing too

Colour is the obvious half of the question. The less obvious half is that you have changed what the dye brings with it. With a liquid, a small amount of liquid carrier went into every candle; with chips, that carrier is gone and a small amount of the chip's wax base arrives instead. In general candle-making practice, neither is likely to make a large difference at typical doses — but "not likely" is a guess, and the only way to replace it with a result is a side-by-side burn against the liquid-dye candle. The dye brand post covers the same carrier logic for a like-for-like swap.

The more common burn risk with chips is procedural, not chemical. A chip that has not fully melted into the batch leaves concentrated colour in parts of the candle. Makers commonly report specks, streaks or a darker band, and a wick that passes through a pocket of undissolved colourant is being fed something your approved candle never gave it. That is why the burn stage on this page is paired with a cut-and-inspect step: one candle from the matched step is cut or melted out after cure and checked for specks before any are burned.

The retest matrix for liquid-to-chip

Stage 1: the shade ladder

The ladder is centred on the dose printed on the chip's product page — whatever it states — because that is the only published starting point. CSI's own data does not give a chip dose, and we do not invent one. Around that centre, pour five single candles at 0.5×, 0.75×, 1×, 1.5× and 2× of it. Each is 180 g finished — 14.4 g of Blue Ocean and 165.6 g of Natural Soy Pearl Wax at 8%. The 200 ml Salsa jar's fill weight is not published; 180 g is an illustrative fill, so weigh your own fill first and use that number throughout.

Why one candle per step here, when the burn stage uses three? Because colour is not a repeatability question at this stage — you are locating a shade, and one candle per step shows it. The repetition comes in Stage 2, where the matched step is poured twice more and burned beside three liquid-dye controls. If the product page gives no dose at all, build the ladder by halving and doubling from a small weighed shaving, and record the grams at every step.

Stage 2: the burn comparison and scoring

Once a step matches, pour two more candles at that dose so you have three, and burn them beside the three liquid-dye controls: three cycles of about 3–4 hours with full cool-down, then one chip candle through to the end of usable wax. All of these are labelled working practices; a maker producing thousands of this SKU may reasonably run more. CSI publishes no numeric flame-height or jar-temperature limit, so every line passes on "no worse than the liquid control", within your jar supplier's guidance and the fire-safety standard you work to (ASTM F2417 is a commonly cited US example).

The first line on this sheet is the one unique to chips. A clean pool on the first burn tells you the chip dissolved; a pool with drifting specks tells you it did not, whatever the cut test suggested. If you see specks, stop burning that group, fix the dissolving step and repour — a burn result from a badly mixed candle is not evidence about the chip.

The priced two-stage kit

Five ladder candles, two extra at the matched dose and three liquid controls make 10 candles of 180 g: with a 5% pour-loss allowance (a working assumption) that is 1,890 g of finished candle, or 1,738.8 g of wax and 151.2 g of oil at 8%. Wax and oil prices are CSI live pricing pulled 24 September 2026; jar, chip and wick prices come from the same catalogue pull and Blog 760's verified figures, with wick packs rechecked on 25 September 2026.

Blue Ocean is bought as 100 g + 50 g + 15 g (₹835.22) because 150 g falls 1.2 g short; the alternatives are 2 × 100 g at ₹990.00 or 4 × 50 g at ₹988.00. Natural Soy Pearl Wax is listed from 1 kg, so two 1 kg bags (₹900.00) leave 261.2 g spare. The Salsa jars work out at ₹40.12 each in a pack of five. If you have no liquid dye left for the controls and your approved liquid was CSI's, add Candle Dye Liquid Blue 15 g at ₹236.00, bringing the kit to ₹2,740.42.

The decision rule and the record

Once the chip is approved, the conversion factor finally exists — for your liquid, your chip, your wax and your jar. Write it down as grams of chip per kilo of finished mix beside the grams of liquid it replaced. It is a record of this change, not a rule for the next one, and it goes into the specification described in the formula-record post with the chip's order date. The change-control form holds the rest.

If the switch to chips also changed the shade you are aiming for — a deeper blue this season, say — you have two changes, form and dose, and the two-changes post explains how to keep them apart. For decorative colour that sits on the surface rather than in the wax, read the mica post. And for a view of where a dye-form change sits among other jar, additive and process changes, the significance checklist places it in the confirm-and-record tier, with an escalation route if the dose climbs.

Frequently asked questions