My 10 cm Lavender Candle Burns Cleanly but Has Weak Hot Throw — Should I Change Fragrance Concentration Before Increasing Wick Power?

Why a clean candle gets the load change first

A container candle has two inputs that decide throw: how much fragrance is in the wax, and how much heat melts and warms the pool. Wick power is the heat input. Load is the scent input. When a candle has weak throw and a small pool, a ring at the glass or a shallow melt, the heat is short and the wick is the lever. Your candle is the other case: it burns cleanly to the glass. The heat input is already doing what a container candle needs, so the input to examine is the scent.

More wick power in a 10 cm candle that already pools to the glass cannot make the pool wider; the jar sets its surface. On our 0.35 cm wall assumption, CSI's Apothecary jar is about 9.3 cm inside, a pool of 67.93 cm², each wick of the pair serving 33.96 cm². More heat makes that same pool hotter and deeper, which may push out a little more scent, and it also moves the candle towards the failures you don't have yet: taller flames, carbon, soot and more heat in the glass in the lower half. That trade is why many makers find a bigger wick a poor fix for a pool that is already full; the large-pool, weak-throw post sets out the general case.

Load changes the other side. At 6% a 500 g candle carries 30 g of oil; at 8%, 40 g (33% more); at 10%, 50 g (67% more). The pool, the flame and the burn stay close to what they were, so long as the extra oil stays within what the wax holds. More oil does not raise throw in a straight line, and past a point it can sweat out or burn worse (a commonly reported tendency, not CSI data), which is exactly why you ladder it rather than jump to the top. And the surface area your candle has is part of the answer: whether a 10 cm pool can fill the room you test in is the surface-area post.

Five checks before you pour a ladder

The load-first answer rests on the candle really burning correctly and the throw test really being fair. Check both before you buy oil.

In our judgement the last two checks catch a lot of "weak throw" that isn't. Soy candles are commonly judged after a cure of about a week, and many makers re-test at two weeks; the Lavender page states no cure time in the text we captured, and the 25 of 102 CSI oil pages that do say 48–72 hours for soy. And noses adapt fast: a scent you have smelled all afternoon fades for you, not for a visitor. Test in a closed room you know, with fresh air between candles and a second person who hasn't been in the workshop. How room size changes the verdict is the room-size post.

How high: the lower of two ceilings

Every load ladder sits under two stated limits: the wax maker's maximum and the oil page's candle maximum. The lower governs. They are formulation limits from the product pages, not regulatory ones, and the maximum is not the same as the best-performing load.

In CSI 468 (the worked example): the wax page states "Fragrance Load Up to 13%"; the Lavender page states "6-10% for candles". 10% governs. The wax page doesn't say whether 13% is of total or of wax weight; read on wax weight it is 11.50% of total, still above 10%, so the answer is the same on either reading. In CSI 464: the wax page states "Fragrance Load Up to 10%", again without a basis. On CSI's total-weight convention 10% is 11.11% of the wax; read conservatively on wax weight, the ceiling is 9.09% of total. Use 9% as your top rung (45 g of oil in a 500 g candle, 9.89% of the wax), which satisfies both readings. In any other wax: use your wax maker's stated figure; if it states none, stay within the oil page's 10% and test.

Load is always calculated on total candle weight in this series: a 500 g candle at 8% is 40 g of oil and 460 g of wax, not 40 g added to 500 g of wax. Mixing bases quietly shifts every rung of a ladder.

The 6/8/10 ladder on a fixed pair

The worked example assumes your current candle is at 6%, the bottom of the page range, which is common for a candle that throws weakly. If you are already at 8%, your ladder is 8% against 10% (and 6% only as a reference). Pour all six candles the same day from one wax melt: the Apothecary jar's 500 gm size at a 500 g fill (our labelled choice under the page's "~500 g"), CSI 468 poured at the page's "58°C – 60°C", the same pair (2 × Eco C1 in the example) at the same spacing (4.65 cm, about 2.33 cm from the glass along the wick line), same trim, same cure.

Expect the steps to give less than you hope. It is common for 8% to do most of what 10% does, and sometimes 10% scores no better or worse; why that happens is the 8%-beats-10% post. A ladder is how you find the load where your candle stops improving, so you don't pay for oil that doesn't come out of the pool.

Rupees per candle at each load

At the 500 g oil price (₹5.24 a gram) and CSI 468 at the 1 kg price (₹0.65 a gram), with the Apothecary 500 gm jar and two C1:

Each two-point step adds ₹45.90 per candle: 10 g more Lavender in place of 10 g of wax. The 10% candle costs 13% more than the 6% one. That is the price of the scent input, and it is why the rule picks the lowest load that lifts throw. In the worked example, if 8% lifts throw by a point and a half and 10% adds a quarter point more, 8% is the answer and saves ₹45.90 on every candle against 10%.

The ladder bill

The ladder's oil is costed at the 100 g price because that is what we suggest you buy for it. Costs are worked examples and exclude labour, freight, packaging and GST. From nothing, the cash outlay is ₹4,962.40. Three 1 kg bags of CSI 468 (₹1,950.00) cost ₹1,235.00 less cash than the 5 kg, though the 5 kg is cheaper per gram (₹0.64); buy the 5 kg when you pour production.

What to buy, and what to skip

Five items, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 29 September 2026. CSI publishes no throw or wick-performance data, so nothing is ranked on burn results. Oil candles are counted at 30 g, 40 g and 50 g (500 g at 6, 8 and 10%); the standard 150 g candle at 8% uses 12 g.

Frequently asked questions