Soy, coconut, and why we'll never pour paraffin

Most candles on the shelf, including many expensive ones, are made from paraffin. It's cheap, it's easy to work with, and it holds scent well. It's also a petroleum byproduct, and it burns dirtier than the alternatives. We pour our candles from soy and coconut wax instead. Here's the honest case for why, including where each wax has its weaknesses.

What paraffin actually is

Paraffin wax is made from the sludge left over when crude oil is refined into petrol and other products. It's decolourised, deodorised, and turned into the white wax that fills most of the candle market. There's nothing exotic about it. It became the industry standard for one reason: it's the cheapest wax available, and it's forgiving to work with at scale.

That low cost is why so many candles, from supermarket three-packs to some surprisingly pricey designer names, are still paraffin at their core. When a brand charges a premium for a paraffin candle, most of what you're paying for is the label, the glass, and the marketing, not the wax inside.

The downsides of paraffin

When paraffin burns, it produces more soot than plant waxes. You'll have seen it: the black mark that creeps up the inside of the glass, or the smudge on the wall above where a candle sits. That soot is unburned carbon, and it's the visible sign of a less clean burn. Paraffin also releases more volatile organic compounds as it burns than soy or coconut does.

We're careful not to overstate this. Normal candle use isn't going to harm a healthy person, and anyone who tells you a single paraffin candle is dangerous is selling something. But "burns cleaner" is a real, measurable difference, and if you're going to have a flame going in your home for hours at a time, cleaner is simply better. Less soot on your walls, less residue in the air, a tidier burn.

And there's the origin of the thing. Paraffin is a fossil-fuel product. For a candle sold on craft, care, and natural materials, starting from petroleum sludge is a contradiction we're not willing to live with.

Soy wax

Soy wax is made from soybean oil. It's renewable, it's biodegradable, and it burns cleaner and cooler than paraffin, which means less soot and a longer burn from the same amount of wax. It holds fragrance beautifully and releases it gently as it warms. It's the wax we build almost everything on.

The honest trade-offs

Soy isn't perfect, and we'd rather tell you than have you find out. It's softer than paraffin, so it can develop a slightly uneven or frosted surface as it sets, which is a purely cosmetic quirk of a natural wax and nothing to do with quality. It can be more sensitive to temperature during pouring and curing, which is one reason we cure every batch for three weeks rather than rushing it out. And good soy wax costs more than paraffin, which is precisely why the cost-cutting end of the market avoids it.

We think those trade-offs are worth it many times over. A slightly less machine-perfect surface is a fair price for a cleaner, renewable, better-burning candle.

Coconut wax

For some of our candles we blend in coconut wax, or lean on it more heavily. Coconut wax is made from cold-pressed coconut oil, and it's arguably the best-performing natural wax there is. It burns slowly and very cleanly, and it carries and throws fragrance exceptionally well, often better than soy on its own.

The trade-offs

Coconut wax is soft and slow to set, which makes it difficult to use on its own, so it's usually blended, which is exactly what we do. It's also the most expensive of the common waxes, which is why you rarely see it in mass-market candles. When we use it, it's because a particular fragrance works well with it, not because it photographs well.

So why not paraffin, simply put

Because we can make a better candle without it. Soy and coconut burn cleaner, come from plants rather than petroleum, and suit a candle made slowly and by hand. Paraffin's only real advantage is that it's cheap, and "cheap" isn't a value we're building a workshop around.

If you've been buying candles that leave soot on your walls and fade after a few weeks, there's a decent chance you've been burning paraffin, whatever the label charged you for it. Our candles are poured from natural soy and coconut wax, cured properly, and made to burn clean to the end. It costs us more to make them this way. We think you can tell.