Make your own soy candles at home

Candle making is an fun activity to do at home with the family and it saves money when compared with buying candles of a similar quality from stores. This means we can make better quality candles for less and that's good news for experiences, budgets and health.

The main benefits apart from cost are to do with knowing exactly what goes into your candle. At Wickpy, we make candles with soy wax for a healthier, cleaner and longer lasting burn, without the chemicals associated with paraffin wax, and include the same ingredients in our Soy Candle Making Kits with Essential Oils.

To scent a soy candle, we recommend using pure essential oils for a natural aromatherapy candle that helps to eliminate the allergic responses many people experience when burning paraffin candles scented with synthetic fragrance oils.

When you are ready to make your candles, we have a candle making instructions page with help step-by-step guides to making soy candles and a range of soy candle making kits available to buy with pre weighed natural candle supplies.

Before that, you'll need to know how much wax and essential oils you'll need to make your candle.

First, let's cover what candle fill level is and how to measure your container to make a candle.

How to measure candle container volume

Use a digital kitchen measuring scale and follow the steps below to work out the volume of a container.

1. Turn on your digital scale and set the unit to g
2. Place a container on the scale and use the Tare function to set the scale to 0
3. Fill the container with water
4. Take the reading on the scale - it is the fill volume of the container e.g. 100g which equates to 100ml

Next, we need to figure out how much of our candle container we want to be filled with candle wax.

What is 'Fill Level'?

Fill level is how much of the container you want to be filled with candle wax.

Take 10% off from the container volume on your scale to get a fill level that doesn't go right to the top of the jar making our candle more aesthetically pleasing and to avoid wasting wax.

For example, taking 10% from a jar or container with a 100ml volume results in a 90ml fill level.

How to calculate wax

Calculate wax required by multiplying the fill level by 0.8. In our example, 90ml fill level x 0.8 = 72grams of wax required.

How to calculate essential oils for candles

The percent of essential oils to soy wax is a personal choice that benefits from testing. As a guide, aim for 6-10% fragrance load, which can be calculated from the fill level. For example, 6% essential oil with a 90ml fill level is 5.4mls.

Once your fragrance load is calculated, subtract is from the fill level. For example, 90ml fill level x 0.8 = 72 - 5.4 = 6.66g wax required.