I'm Producing 500 Double-Wick Candles — How Many Pre-Tabbed Wicks Should I Purchase Including Extras for Testing and Damaged Wicks?

Candle-level and wick-level allowances

On a single-wick run, the difference between a candle-level and a wick-level allowance does not matter: one candle, one wick. With two wicks per candle it matters a lot. Some losses happen to a whole candle, and a whole candle holds two wicks. Others happen to a single wick while you are setting it, and the other wick in that jar is fine. Treating them the same way either under-orders (adding 5% of 500 candles) or over-orders (adding 10% of 1,000 wicks).

Compare that with two shortcuts. Adding a single-wick habit of 50 extras gives 1,050, which is 16 wicks short of the split count: enough to leave eight candles unwicked at the end of the run. Adding a flat 10% to be safe gives 1,100, which buys 34 wicks you do not need. Neither is a disaster in rupees. The split is simply the one you can explain to yourself on the next run, line by line, and trim where your own tally shows you over-provided.

The remelt line deserves a closer look on double-wick candles. A wide candle with two flames is more likely to show a surface fault than a narrow single-wick one, simply because there is more top to go wrong, and a crooked wick on either side spoils the look. When you remelt, you recover the wax but lose both wicks and both stickers. 1.5% is our working figure; measure yours. The single-wick allowance guide explains each of the five lines in detail.

Matched pairs and spacing

Two wicks in one candle only burn evenly if they are the same wick, set the same way. Three practical rules follow, and each affects what you buy.

Rounding 1,066 wicks to packs

Each CSI wick type comes in its own set of pack sizes. The cheapest cover for 1,066 lands on 1,070 in all three types, but the packs that get you there differ:

The wick type moves the bill by up to ₹6,527.00 on this run, and the per-candle wick cost from ₹11.80 to ₹24.00. That is why the choice comes from the burn test, not the price list. A double-wick candle often uses a smaller wick than a single-wick candle of the same diameter would need, because two flames share the work; whether that means Thin C1, Thick C2 or Cotton Braided in your jar is something only a test can show. Testing three wick sizes across five fragrances shows how to structure that test without buying hundreds of wicks.

The wax and oil for 500 double-wick candles

Double-wick candles are usually larger than single-wick ones. CSI lists no double-wick jar and publishes no fill for one, so we use an illustrative 400 g finished candle, the same size this series uses for large jars. Replace it with your own weighed fill (converting jar volume to grams shows how). At 8%, each candle is 32 g of oil and 368 g of wax.

Fallen Leaves is one of the oils with a real kilo saving (10.0% below the 100 g per gram), which matters at 16 kg. Sixteen 1 kg bottles of one oil are unlikely to be sitting in stock together on any given day, so confirm on WhatsApp before you set a production date, or split the run across two scents and round each separately. Natural Soy Pearl has no fragrance ceiling in our data; check its product page, or use Luxury Soy Wax Chunks (up to 13%) if you want a published maximum. Per candle, wax, oil, two wicks and two stickers come to about ₹309.06 before the jar, excluding labour, packaging, freight and GST.

Before you order

Double-wick runs go wrong in predictable places. A five-minute check before ordering avoids most of them.

Repeat runs: trimming the allowance

The 66-wick allowance is sized for a first run: a new jar, a wick you have only just proven, and a team that has not set two wicks per jar five hundred times before. The second run of the same candle is a different job. The test line disappears, setting faults usually fall as the jig and routine settle, and your own tally from the first run replaces our working rates. Here is how the count moves, with every figure still a labelled assumption until you replace it with your own tally.

Across the three cases the wick bill moves by ₹354.00 on a 500-candle double-wick run. The wick allowance is never where a double-wick run loses money; the wick choice is. What the table does show is that a tally sheet on the first run earns its keep: count every wick that does not end up in a sold candle, note why, and the second order can be built from your own rates instead of ours. Keep the stickers in the same tally, since they follow the wicks one for one. Wastage on larger orders shows how the same habit protects the margin on wax and fragrance, where the rupees are much larger.

If your run is triple-wick rather than double, the same split applies with a factor of three on every candle-level line, and development and QC samples start to matter more. 1,000 triple-wick candles works through that case, and a multi-size requirement sheet shows how to combine a double-wick line with single-wick products on one order.

Frequently asked questions