Should Every Fragrance in My Candle Collection Use the Same Fragrance Load?

Three load policies, compared

A collection of six to twelve scents can be run three ways. The trade-off is between fit (each oil at the load that suits it) and control (fewer numbers, fewer errors, simpler costing). Neither extreme is right for most small makers.

Why a house load is not lazy

A single number removes a common production error: the right oil at the wrong load, because someone looked at last week's sheet. It lets one person weigh every batch from memory, and it makes a customer's complaint traceable. If every SKU passes a burn test at the house load, you have lost nothing by standardising.

Why a house load is not enough

Oils are not interchangeable. CSI's own pages state ranges from 6–9% to 6–13%, and a house load can fall outside some of them. Dense, sweet oils often behave differently in the melt pool from light citrus ones, so a single wick and a single load will not suit every scent. Pushing every scent up to rescue the weakest one wastes oil on all the others. The full programme for 10 to 20 fragrances, with wick maps, test batches and bulk schedules, is in the deep guide to standardising testing across 10–20 fragrances; this post is only about the load decision.

What CSI's oil pages actually state

We read every candle load stated on CSI's 102 oil pages on 25 September 2026. 48 state a candle load or range in their load wording (some inside marketing text, such as "Extremely strong hot throw in soy wax (8–10%)"); two perfume-grade pages, Lavender Oud and Amber Oud Royal, list only "Candles (Soy/Paraffin/Blends) 10%" in a usage table, a single figure rather than a range; 52 state none. Grouped by shape:

Three readings matter for a house load. 8% and 9% sit inside every stated range, which makes either a defensible default. 10% breaches three pages: Fresh Strawberries, Coffee Vanilla Tobacco and one brand-inspired listing all stop at 9%. 7% falls below the floor of 10 pages that start at 8%, and 6% below the floor of 13. Two pages (Cucumber Green Tea and Peach Melon Berry) phrase their 8–10% "per pound" or "per weight of wax"; we treat that as a percentage of total weight, like the others, and you should record which basis you use.

The wax changes the picture

The oil page is one ceiling; the wax is the other, and the lower one governs. In Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 (up to 10%), every oil tops out at 10% at most, including Cinnamon Vanilla's "up to 13%" and Autumn's 11%. In Luxury Soy Wax Chunks or Premium Coconut Soy Wax CSI 468 (up to 13%), those two oils may go higher, and the wax stops being the limit for most of the range. Other CSI waxes do not state a ceiling in the page text we hold. These are formulation limits, not regulatory ones, and a maximum is not a recommendation. If a SKU's page states no load, ask on WhatsApp before you assign it to a tier.

One scent weak at the house load: load, wick or oil?

This is where a per-SKU exception is born, so get the diagnosis right. The rest of the collection is your control: it proves the wax, jar, process and room can throw. That narrows the suspects to four, in this order.

Only suspects 1 and 3 create a per-SKU load. Suspect 2 creates a per-SKU wick, which belongs on the same card but is a different exception; dense oils are commonly the ones that need it (My Candle Wick Works Perfectly With One Fragrance but Tunnels With Another — Do I Need Different Wicks for Every Scent? walks through one such case). If the weak scent is a replacement candidate, One Fragrance Has Great Hot Throw and Another Is Weak in the Same Wax — What Should I Change? covers that decision in full; the shortlist of SKUs that fail with a formula that works for others is in My Candle Formula Works With Some Fragrances but Fails With Others — Why?.

What each policy does to cost per candle

Even at one house load, oil cost per candle differs by SKU because oil prices differ. At 8% in a 150 g candle (12 g of oil) at the 1 kg price, Fresh Strawberries costs ₹42.48, Cinnamon Vanilla ₹54.66, Autumn ₹65.14 and Wild Berries ₹71.99: a spread of ₹29.51 per candle at the same load. If you sell all four at one retail price, your margin already differs by SKU; loads add to that, not create it.

In this illustration the per-SKU set costs ₹16.50 more per four candles than the house 8%, ₹4,124.10 more across 1,000 candles split evenly. That is the honest shape of a per-SKU policy: it lowers cost where a test shows you can (Fresh Strawberries) and raises it where a test shows you must (Autumn, Cinnamon Vanilla). If the goal is purely to spend less on oil, the method is a descending test per SKU, in How to Find the Minimum Fragrance Load That Still Gives Strong Hot Throw; the arithmetic of a 10%-to-8% cut at scale is in How Much Money Can a Candle Business Save by Reducing Fragrance Load From 10% to 8%?.

The one saving every collection should take

If your house load is 10% today, three SKUs are being poured above their own page's stated maximum: the three oils whose pages stop at 9%. Fresh Strawberries at 10% uses ₹53.10 of oil per candle; its stated 9% uses 13.5 g, so ₹5.31 per candle is being spent above the page's own maximum. Bringing a house load down to 8% or 9% fixes that for every SKU at once, before any testing.

Record keeping: the SKU load card

Every SKU gets one card (a row in a spreadsheet is fine), written before the first production batch and updated only after a test. The pouring sheet then reads from the cards, in grams, so nobody calculates a percentage on the floor.

Precompute the grams per candle for every tier and every jar size you pour, and print them. In a 150 g candle: 7% is 10.5 g, 8% is 12 g, 9% is 13.5 g, 10% is 15 g. The common slip is taking the percentage of the wax instead of the total; a grams table removes it. A full testing SOP, with documents and sign-offs, is the subject of How to Build a Fragrance Oil Testing SOP for a Candle Business.

Moving to a house load with exceptions

For a collection already in production, the change can be made in about three weeks without stopping sales. The test uses the oil you already hold; the only new purchase is a 50 g of any SKU you have run out of.

Worked example for the four picks: one candle each at 8%, plus one alternative each (Fresh Strawberries at 7%, Autumn at 9%, Cinnamon Vanilla at 10%, Wild Berries on the other wick at 8%) is eight candles. With a 50 g of each oil (₹1,054.20 in all) the materials consumed come to ₹1,888.66, excluding labour, freight, packaging and GST. Fresh Strawberries uses 22.5 g of its 50 g for the pair.

Four oils with four different stated ranges

Chosen because their pages state four different candle ranges (6–9%, 7–11%, up to 13% and 8–10%), so together they show every way a single house load can clash with a page. They are not a ranking; CSI has not measured throw for any oil. Candle counts assume 150 g at 8%, which is inside all four stated ranges.

Setting loads before festive production

Diwali falls on 8 November 2026, 44 days after 25 September 2026; Christmas on 25 December 2026. A one-round check at the house load, poured this week and judged at day 14, leaves time for Diwali production at the loads it confirms. Any SKU that needs a retest is safer brought in for Christmas.

Frequently asked questions