Excuse me, do scented candles work?

Have you ever walked past an unlit candle and noticed a gorgeous aroma emanating from it?

If you’re a candle lover, we bet you have. It’s such a pleasant experience and there’s a name for this; It’s called “the throw effect”.

This refers to the distance a candle can distribute its scent – no matter if the wick is burning or not.

Here’s a fact for you, an unlit candle’s scent will always be less strong than a candle that has been lit. This is because when you light the wick the flame starts to melt the wax, which holds all those beautiful scent molecules.

From there the wax is drawn into the wick, which is pulled upward by capillary action. Wax then gets vapourised by the flame releasing that scent into the wide world and transforming your home in the process.

More wax will melt the longer you burn the candle and so the scent will become stronger.

Bigger candles also release more scent as their surface area is bigger. For this reason, they’re recommended for larger spaces. 

That is the basic mechanism behind candles.

It has remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years. In fact, candles are believed to date back to the Ancient Egyptians – more than 5000 years ago. They made rushlights from the core of reeds and soaked this in melted animal fat.

This demonstrates our next point: not all candles are made equal.

Are all scented candles the same?

A candle may “do its thing” and burn away, but this does not necessarily mean it’s doing it well – or healthily.

Before we get into all that let’s go over the types of scented candles that are available.

Their core ingredient is wax, so there are quite a few options out there. Below is a list of the most common.

• Paraffin wax candles
• Scented soy candles
• Beeswax scented candles
• Coconut wax scented candles

Now, we need to make a very important point here: the amount of scent you get from a scented candle varies with the type of wax used. Paraffin is the most common option as it’s cheap and holds scent well.

With that said, it has some pretty nasty health effects (more on that later) and it’s not great for the environment as it’s a petroleum by-product.

For this reason, soy is the second most common candle wax used – and what we use here at Raw Beauty Box. It is a superior candle because it burns clean, is longer lasting, and most importantly, it’s not toxic. You can read more about the benefits here.