I'm Producing 1,000 Scented Tealights — How Much Fragrance Oil Should I Order?

The grams: fill × load × 1,000

Load is oil as a percentage of the finished weight. A 12 g tealight at 8% is 0.96 g of oil and 11.04 g of wax. Tealight cups vary in size, and CSI does not list a tealight cup, so we use two illustrative fills — 12 g and 15 g — and show 6%, 8% and 10% for each. Treat 8% as the working figure. With CSI 464, 10% is the wax maker's stated maximum; with Luxury Soy Wax Chunks the maximum is 13%. Those are formulation limits, not regulatory ones.

Two things follow. First, fill weight matters as much as load: moving from a 12 g to a 15 g cup adds 240 g of oil at 8%, the same as raising the 12 g tealight from 8% to 10%. Weigh a filled cup before you commit. Second, small candles do not need a higher load to be "worth it". A tealight has a small pool and a short burn, and it is commonly bought in quantity for ambience rather than to fill a room. We have not published throw measurements for any oil, so test at 8% before you decide to go higher. How Much Fragrance Oil Should I Use in Tealight Candles? covers the tealight load question in depth.

Turning grams into an order

CSI sells oils in 15 g, 50 g, 100 g, 500 g and 1 kg, and not every oil in every size. The cheapest way to cover a quantity is not always the obvious one, because for most oils the per-gram price barely changes above 100 g, while for a few the kilo is much cheaper. The table below takes each scenario, adds a 3% allowance, and finds the cheapest combination of in-stock packs for five value oils. Where two combinations cost within half a percent of each other, it picks the one with fewer bottles.

For the 12 g run, every oil lands on a single 1 kg: 1,000 g covers 960 g with a 4.2% allowance. For the 15 g run the order depends on the oil. Most need the kilo plus 250 g in smaller packs. Citronella is the exception: its 500 g is priced so low that 1 kg + 500 g costs less than 1 kg + 2 × 100 g + 50 g. The per-tealight oil cost ranges from under ₹3 for the value oils to over ₹5 for Lavender at 12 g.

The oil where the kilo really pays

Across CSI's catalogue, 52 of the 91 oils that list both a 100 g and a 1 kg are within 1% of the same price per gram. Only 24 show a saving of 5% or more at the kilo. Citronella is the extreme case: ₹7.67 a gram at 100 g, ₹2.95 at 500 g and ₹2.89 at 1 kg. Ten 100 g bottles would cost ₹7,670.00; the 1 kg costs ₹2,891.00 — ₹4,779.00 less for the same oil. Citronella tealights are a common outdoor and monsoon product, which makes this more than a curiosity for a tealight maker.

Four scents instead of one

Many tealight sellers offer a mixed box. Splitting 1,000 tealights into four scents of 250 changes the order: each scent needs 240 g of oil at 12 g and 8%, and 250 g is an awkward quantity — too much for two 100 g bottles, well short of a 500 g. With a 3% allowance the cheapest in-stock packs are:

The mixed box costs ₹4,491.80 in oil against ₹2,832.00 for 1,000 tealights in Citrus Lemon alone. Some of that is the scents themselves (Lavender costs more than Citrus Lemon), and some is the pack step. For a flat-priced oil like Lavender, 250 g in small packs costs close to the kilo rate (₹5.40 against ₹5.22 a gram). For value oils with a real kilo break it does not: Citrus Lemon works out at ₹3.08 a gram in small packs against ₹2.83 at 1 kg, British Rose ₹3.59 against ₹3.07. And for Citronella the pack step forces a 500 g that leaves 250 g spare. That spare is not wasted — it is the start of your next run — but it is cash tied up. For a deeper look at splitting a large order across scents, see I'm Making 500 Candles for Corporate Gifting — Should I Offer One Fragrance or Multiple Fragrances?.

Wax — and the parts we don't list

A tealight in a cup is a small container candle, so a container soy is the natural wax. Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 is rated up to 10% and costs ₹507.40 a kilo at 1, 5 and 10 kg. Luxury Soy Wax Chunks are rated up to 13% at ₹599.00 a kilo. For 1,000 × 12 g at 8% you need 11,040 g of wax; with a 3% allowance the cheapest CSI 464 packs are 1 × 10 kg + 1 × 1 kg + 1 × 500 g at ₹5,841.40, against ₹6,897.00 for the same weight of Chunks. At 15 g the CSI 464 need rises to 1 × 10 kg + 4 × 1 kg + 1 × 500 g, ₹7,363.60.

Now the gaps. CSI does not list tealight cups, and does not list tealight wicks — the pre-tabbed short wicks made for tealight cups. The Eco and Cotton Braided wicks on our store are sold for container candles, and wick sizing is not published in our data, so whether any of them suits your cup is a burn-test question, not something we will assert. Ask on WhatsApp whether CSI can supply cups and wicks for your run. If you would rather make votives, CSI does list votive glass jars in black (₹35.40 each; the orange version is out of stock) — Best Fragrance Oils for Votive Candles covers votives.

The full order

Those totals cover oil and wax only. Cups, wicks, labour, packaging, freight and GST are all extra, and the cups and wicks in particular can be a large share of a tealight's cost — which is exactly why we will not guess them. Add a weighing scale (₹354.00) if you do not have one; at under a gram of oil per tealight, weighing each round matters.

For the other small formats and questions around them: Best Fragrance Oils for Scented Tealight Candles for scent choice, Where to Buy Fragrance Oils for Commercial Tealight and Votive Production for sourcing tealight and votive supplies, and I Want to Make Soy Candles, Wax Melts and Mould Candles — Can I Use the Same Fragrance Oils for All Three? if you plan to sell tealights alongside jar candles and melts from the same oils.

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