What Does 6% Fragrance Load Mean in Candle Making?

What 6% is, and what it is 6% of

Throughout this series, and in CSI's guide to making candles smell strong without exceeding the safe fragrance load, load is a share of the finished candle: a 200 g candle at 6% weighs 200 g on the label and holds 12 g of oil and 188 g of wax. That is the convention for your recipe card, because it is the weight the customer holds and the weight your costing uses.

Some pages phrase the same idea as a share of wax weight — the Luxury Soy Wax Chunks page says "8% to 13% of total wax weight". The gap is small but real: 6% of 188 g of wax is 11.28 g, which is 5.66% of the resulting 199.28 g candle. To land on a true 6% of the finished candle from a wax weight, use oil = wax × 6 ÷ 94 — 63.83 g per kilogram of wax. Pick one basis and never mix the two inside a batch.

The two bottle columns change a shopping list. At 6% a single 100 g bottle scents eight 200 g candles, thirteen 120 g jars or twenty-three votives — two or three more per bottle than at 8%. A hundred 200 g candles need 1,200 g of oil instead of 1,600 g.

Which waxes put 6% on the table

A load is only available if your wax page and your oil page both reach it. Most load talk is about ceilings, because that is where the risk of an unstable candle sits; 6% raises the opposite question, because a published range has a bottom as well as a top. These are formulation figures from the maker of each material, not regulatory limits, and CSI never recommends pouring above the lower of the two.

The two errors also cost different amounts. An over-ceiling batch can be unsellable — the failure modes are in what happens if you put too much fragrance oil in a candle. An under-band batch is usually sellable and merely disappointing: a far cheaper mistake, and an easier one to test your way out of.

The oils whose pages invite 6%

Of CSI's 107 fragrance-oil pages, 33 name 6%, in two opposite ways: 20 state a candle range of "6-10%", making 6% the deliberate low end, and 14 pair "Up to 10% for soy wax" with "Up to 6% for paraffin wax", making it a ceiling for one wax family. Another 26 — mostly perfume-grade listings — state "Recommended load - candles 7-10% (start at 7%)", putting 6% below their own starting figure, and 26 state no candle percentage at all.

Read the last two rows together. Lemongrass and Lime states "6-10% for candles", so 6% is explicitly on offer. Zesty Lemon is also a bright citrus, but its page names 8% as the figure to start at and declines to publish a flash point, pointing to the SDS instead. Same scent family, different answers — which is why the load conversation starts on the product page. Jasmine is the other kind of candidate for a low load: an indolic floral at ₹3,923 a kilogram, stated "Up to 10% for soy wax" with "Flashpoint 185°C" and 0% vanillin, where the 10% jar often gets called heavy and the 6% jar expensive.

What 6% costs, and what it saves

Dropping from 8% to 6% removes 4 g of oil from a 200 g candle and adds 4 g of wax back, so the saving is never the full price of the oil you skipped. On CSI 464 at ₹507.40 a kilogram those 4 g of wax cost ₹2.03 a candle, ₹202.96 per hundred. All figures are CSI live pricing, September 2026, at 1 kg oil pricing.

Two conclusions, pointing opposite ways. On a cheap oil the decision barely matters: Citronella's whole 6%-versus-8% question is worth ₹953.44 per hundred candles — less than the ₹1,392.40 of materials the test consumes. On a dear oil it is the margin: on Neroli, ₹2,459.12 per hundred, or ₹88,528.32 a year at 300 candles a month, resting on four grams your customer may not detect. The test costs the same either way while the saving scales.

Vessel, room and scent family: when 6% is the right engineering choice

What a lit candle releases is governed by its melt pool, and pool area grows with the square of the diameter. The Amber Shiny Glass Jar with Black Lid states a 120 gm fill and 6 cm diameter — about 28.3 cm² of surface, against 38.5 cm² for a 7 cm jar, over a third more. A small jar in a small room does far less work than a wide three-wick vessel in an open-plan room, and one load does not fit both.

One more reason a 6% candle reads as adequate: you stop noticing your own candle. Perception of a constant smell falls away within minutes, which is why judging from the sofa produces a verdict of "weak" and a reach for more oil. Leave the room for ten minutes and come back before writing anything down — see why more fragrance oil doesn't always mean stronger candles.

Proving 6% is enough: the six-jar restraint test

This is narrower than a three-load comparison, and that is the point: one question — can anyone tell my 6% candle from my 8% candle? — on one oil, one wax, one vessel. Six jars, one wick size, one melt temperature, one cure window. If the answer is no, the cheaper load is the better load and you can say why.

How much oil to buy at 6%

A low load changes the shopping list: each candle uses less oil, so the bottle you had in mind covers a longer run. Work from the candle count, then add a planning allowance.

The arithmetic is one line: oil = candle weight × 0.06 × number of candles. A hundred 200 g candles need 1,200 g of oil and 18,800 g of wax; two hundred 120 g jars need 1,440 g and 22,560 g. Add a 3–5% planning allowance for wax left in the pot, a jar re-poured and a top-up on a sunken surface — at 4% that hundred-candle run becomes 1,248 g of oil and 19,552 g of wax. Then buy the pack that covers it and check the price per kilogram, because listed per-kilogram prices fall as the pack grows: Eucalyptus Spearmint is ₹4,562.67 a kilogram at 15 g, ₹4,248 at 50 g, ₹3,540 at 100 g, ₹3,304 at 500 g and ₹3,068 at 1 kg. CSI lists fragrance oils up to 1 kg — there is no 5 kg or 10 kg fragrance pack — so a larger requirement is several 1 kg bottles or a conversation, and the listed 1 kg price is the ceiling for your costing. Bulk pricing, GST invoicing and MSDS or IFRA documentation are handled on WhatsApp; no quote is published here because none exists until it is asked for.

One caveat: those figures assume every gram reaches a jar, and the last few grams cling to the bottle and the pot. That is why the candles-per-bottle column is rounded down — eight 200 g candles from a 100 g bottle leaves 4 g in hand, enough for a top-up and not a ninth candle.

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