What causes a candle to smoke?
The most common cause of smoke in a properly formulated candle is an untrimmed wick or drafty conditions. If the wick is too long, the flame cannot consume all of the wax being fed to it. Much like tossing green leaves on a fire, the result is smoke. You should always trim your candle wick to 1/4 inch or less before lighting. If your candle’s flame is tall and begins to smoke, extinguish it, let it cool and trim the wick. Drafts can cause brief puffs of black smoke which is primarily pure carbon. Other factors can include too much scent or too much oil in the candle, excessive amounts of low quality fragrance oil, fragrance which is not designed for candle applications, including some essential oils and soap fragrances, or a wick which is not properly sized for the wax formula. If you have trimmed your wick and removed your candle from drafty conditions and the candle still excessively smokes we suggest you immediately extinguish it and throw it away.
