Hello again aspiring candle aficionados! Today we tackle another important best burning practice: Keeping your candle wick appropriately trimmed.
Who knew candles required so much knowledge and maintenance?! It’s really a simple task, but it’s an important practice to keep your candles burning properly.
Why Do You Need to Trim Your Wick?
The primary reason to keep wicks properly trimmed is to prevent sooting.
Sooting is the black smoke you may have seen billowing off of a candle whose wick is too long. Over time burning a candle that is billowing black smoke can potentially cause your walls and ceiling to slowly darken and after a few years you’ll find yourselves checking out a painting blogs instead of candle blogs!
A secondary reason to keep wicks trimmed is that a longer wick causes a candle to burn at a faster rate than under ideal wick length conditions since the flame is bigger and burning through wax at a faster rate. However it’s not at such a speed where it’s really noticeable. The wick may also "mushroom" as in the photo above, and this should be cut down to the correct length prior to lighting.
Wick Trimming Tools
If you’ve got an easily accessible wick, such as a tealight, then just go ahead and use a pair of scissors.
For the larger jar candles that have a lot of the wax burned down and the wick is way down the jar, a specialised wick trimmer definitely comes in handy. They have a long reach and are designed with a flat cutting area that will capture the cut wick for easy trimming.
Our new, solid, high quality wick trimming scissors can be found HERE
Go on - make life easier!