Ever wondered why your candle produces smoke sometimes, or looks burnt? Did you know that there is more to keeping a candle good than simply lighting it? In this article, How to: trim your wick, we’ll explore the reasons why you should be trimming your candle wicks regularly and the benefits it has.
By the way, in some of our articles we’ll include links to recommended 3rd-party products available on Amazon. We earn a small amount of commission for these.
Why should you trim the wick?
Burning a candle is great, it produces a little light, some heat and most importantly they look and smell great. But the combustion process (the burning part) has requirements in order to be efficient. Inefficient burning leads to the wick being burnt too quickly, the candle not melting or soot and smoke, the latter of which is not healthy for you or your family.
The combustion process your candle performs produces carbon dioxide and water vapour, however if your candle wick is too big or too small instead of producing carbon dioxide you product carbon black, or soot. Soot and the smoke produced as a result of it will stick to your walls, ceilings and will stain your glass jars black. It’s also not particularly nice to breath in either and will often mask the smell of your nice scented candle.
Trimming the wick is also a great way to remove excess soot and burnt wick material, keeping the wick clean is also a must when getting the most out of your candle.
How do you correctly trim the wick?
Trimming a wick can be easily achieved with some candles, by simply using a pair of strong scissors to cut away the excess and burnt parts of the wick. But with glass jar candles, this becomes rather challenging as the candle burns further down the jar. We recommend buying a pair of wick trimming scissors, for example like the best selling wick trimmer on Amazon pictured below.
As a general rule of thumb, you should aim to keep the wick trimmed to 1/4 of an inch, or around 5 to 6mm. If you haven’t got a ruler handy, you can aim for just a bit thicker than a typical USB type-A.
If your candle has a wooden wick, like the ones we sell here at The Antler Candle Company, then you should also try to cut the wick as straight as possible.
You should really aim to try and trim the wick after every 4 hours of burn time, but if you like your candles burning for longer then be sure to let the candle wick cool fully after you’ve blown it out for at least 2 hours before you attempt to trim it.
We also strongly recommend that you use an airtight lid or a device for snuffing the candle out rather than blowing it out. Starving a candle of oxygen is much more effective than blowing it out, as it doesn’t allow the core of a wick to continue to burn for a short while. You can buy a set on Amazon of everything you might need to keep your candle at its finest, like this best selling set.
What if you cut it too short?
If you take a little too much off the top, your wick will sadly struggle to stay lit. Unlike a haircut, you can’t simply wait for it to fix itself, you’ll need to careful remove a little bit of wax from around the wick until the desired wick length is achieved.
We hope this information has been helpful to you in keeping your wick maintained, a happy candle is a happy you.