How to Trim and Care for your Pillar Candles

Candle care is essential in preserving the quality of your candlelight experience, whilst maximising the quantity of your candles’ burn time.

 

Candle care is essential in preserving the quality of your candlelight experience, whilst maximising the quantity of your candles’ burn time. Here are some key candle care tips and tricks from our leading candle artisan on how to care for your favourite pillar candles and carefully curated displays.

Trim the wick

A common question we receive from customers is “When should I trim my candle wick”? Fortunately, the answer is as simple as the technique.

Before lighting your pillar candle each time, use a candle wick trimmer to cut the wick to 6mm, revealing a clean, unblemished wick. Be mindful to remove any debris, which can disturb the burning of the candle.

The benefit of a shorter wick is that it produces a cleaner, brighter flame with an even burn, which allows the candle's burning process to remain in balance. A wick that is too long can cause a flame to grow and flare, potentially producing soot or causing mushrooming, whereby a mushroom-like shape forms at the top of the wick, obscuring and disturbing the flame.

Avoid draughts

Unprotected pillar candles burn best in still air. If too much, or too little air reaches the candle, it will disturb the flame and may cause flickering, smoking or sometimes dripping.

To avoid this, always light your candles in a well-ventilated room, away from draughts, vents or strong air currents. If a draught cannot be avoided, try protecting the flame with our range of Glass Cylinder Vases, specifically designed to safely encase our range of pillar candles. This will also allow you to enjoy your pillar candlelight outdoors for hours on end.

We’ve also made it easy to enjoy and protect your favourite Dinner and Taper candles indoors and out with our collection of matching Cylinder Sleeves.

Candle Displays

When curating your candle display, it is important to mind the gap, styling candles at least 10cm apart to avoid melting, dripping and warping due to heat from neighbouring candles.

We strongly advise using a specifically designed pillar candle holder to safely manage and maintain your candle display. The holder should be heat resistant, sturdy and have a wide accommodating base, large enough to contain any drips or melted wax.

Our pillar candle plates have been specially designed to meet these essential requirements, making them the ideal accessory for creating safe and stylish displays all year round.

Extinguishing

A candle snuffer is the perfect tool to extinguish candles. Simply lower over a flame until it extinguishes.

We highly recommend candle snuffers as they effectively reduce smoke and soot whilst ensuring the wick remains upright. Candles can then be easily re-lit, preserving burn quality and lifetime reliability.

Storage

Candles are sensitive to temperature and light. Prevent your pillar candles from fading, cracking or melting by storing them upright in a cool, dry place, away from direct sunlight, dust and fluorescent light.

Armed with these simple tips and artisanal tricks, your favourite pillar candles and stylish displays will last longer and burn brighter. Hueseeka is proud to produce 100% cotton, lead-free wicks to provide the calmest and cleanest flame experience possible.