Buy Fragrance Oils for Tealight Candle Making

The bottle ladder: tealights per pack

CSI sells fragrance oil in up to five sizes: 15 g, 50 g, 100 g, 500 g and 1 kg. Turning those into tealights is the first thing to do before you buy, because it tells you how long a bottle lasts. We use an illustrative 12 g tealight at an 8% load throughout — 0.96 g of oil and 11.04 g of wax — and a 15 g tealight as the larger case. Neither is a published cup size; weigh your own cup's fill and redo the division. The table uses British Rose, which is in stock at every size and falls in price at every step.

Two readings matter. The count column tells you the bottle to buy: a maker pouring a hundred tealights a month empties a 100 g bottle in about a month, while a festive run of a thousand needs a kilo. The last column tells you what the size costs you per piece. For British Rose it falls from ₹6.04 to ₹2.95, because this is one of the 24 oils in the collection with a real 1 kg saving (10.3% against the 100 g). Most oils are not like this, and the next section shows what that means.

Allow for loss. Some wax and oil stays in the jug, some tealights fail and some go to test burns. Plan 3–5% extra as a working assumption, so a 100 g bottle is better counted as about 99 to 101 saleable tealights than 104.2. For exact grams at 6% and 10% as well as 8%, see how much fragrance oil to use in tealights.

What the small bottle costs you per tealight

The 15 g tester is the right size for a test and the wrong size for production, and the reason shows up per piece. Across the 55 oils that list both a 15 g and a 100 g, the 15 g carries a median 23.1% premium per gram. The spread is wide, from −0.6% to +123.8%, so it is worth checking the oil you actually want. Here is what the premium looks like inside a tealight for oils suited to a value line:

Per tealight the premium is a couple of rupees at most. That sounds trivial until you multiply it: ₹2.76 on each British Rose tealight is ₹1,378.24 across five hundred. Notice the exception, too. Eucalyptus Spearmint is the cheapest 15 g in the collection at ₹68.44, and its 15 g costs only ₹0.30 more per tealight than its 50 g. If you need a small quantity of a fresh profile, that tester is close to production pricing.

A 300-a-month order, priced two ways

Take a maker pouring 300 tealights a month at 12 g, a hundred each of three value scents: British Rose, Eucalyptus Spearmint and Mango Coconut. Each scent needs 96 g of oil a month, or about 100.8 g with a 5% allowance. The wax is 3,312 g, about 3,478 g with the allowance. There are two sensible ways to buy the oil:

Option A is ₹1,196.20 a month. Option B is ₹5,227.00 once, and at about 100.8 g a month each 500 g lasts roughly 5.0 months. Five months of Option A costs ₹5,981.00, so Option B saves ₹754.00 over the same period — almost all of it from Mango Coconut, whose 500 g is 20.7% cheaper per gram than its 100 g. British Rose and Eucalyptus Spearmint save a little; for many other oils the saving would be close to nothing.

Wax is simpler. Luxury Soy Wax Chunks are ₹599.00 a kilo at every size from 1 kg to 10 kg, so a 5 kg bag at ₹2,995.00 covers 453 tealights at 11.04 g — more than a month here — without costing more per kilo. CSI 464 is ₹2,537.00 for 5 kg at ₹507.40 a kilo, with a lower 10% ceiling that is still comfortably above 8%. Either way, the first month's order is ₹4,191.20 with Chunks or ₹3,733.20 with CSI 464, oil and wax only. Cups and wicks are extra and, on the pull date, not from CSI.

Which wax to put in the same basket

The wax is the larger share of a tealight by weight, and CSI lists several that can go in a small container. The table prices 11.04 g of each — the wax in a 12 g tealight at 8% — and states the fragrance ceiling only where one is published. Where none is in our data, check the wax's product page or ask on WhatsApp for the maker's stated maximum, and treat 6–10% as a starting range for tests, not a specification.

Between the dearest and cheapest wax the difference is ₹3.27 a tealight, which is about the same as the difference between a value oil and a premium one. Choose the wax for how it burns in your cup, not for the paise. If you want the published ceiling to plan around, the two soy container waxes are the ones with a number: 13% for the Chunks and 10% for CSI 464. How Much Fragrance Oil Should I Use in Tealight Candles? works the load maths against both, and fragrance oils for paraffin covers paraffin in its own right.

Value oils that suit tealight pricing

Tealights are usually sold in multipacks, so the oil that fits a tealight line is often the oil that fits a low price per piece. Three oils show the three ways a value oil can behave on CSI's price list: one that falls at every size, one that is cheapest at the smallest size, and one whose saving only appears at 500 g.

Other value oils worth a look for tealights include Cucumber Green Tea (₹3.53 a gram at 50 g and 100 g), Orchard Pear (₹3.80 at 100 g) and Royal Apricot (₹3.66 at 50 g). For the family-by-family shortlist, including woods and Indian florals, go back to best fragrance oils for scented tealights; for how to test which of these actually carries in a small candle, see Strong Fragrance Oils for Small Tealight Candles.

Before you check out

If your small-candle line runs to votives as well, the buying logic shifts, because the container is listed and priced: buying oils for votive making builds the full bill and Best Fragrance Oils for Votive Candles pairs oils to each jar. If you are sizing one specific order, I'm Producing 1,000 Scented Tealights — How Much Fragrance Oil Should I Order? answers the thousand-tealight case directly. And if the same scents will go into wax melts, buying fragrance oils for wax melts covers how that changes the bottle size.

Once you are past a few hundred tealights a month, the questions change from bottle size to supply: lead times, batch consistency, invoicing and whether the same oil will be there next season. Bulk fragrance oils for scented tealight production works through 1,000 to 10,000 pieces, and Where to Buy Fragrance Oils for Commercial Tealight and Votive Production covers sourcing wax, oil, cups and wicks for commercial runs.

Frequently asked questions