If your candles are smoking or tunnelling, you need to stop doing these 4 things

While I'm the first to admit we don't need candles (we can thank electricity for that), their aesthetic and delicious scents keep us coming back. Candles are, arguably, frivolous endeavours—they're wants not needs. However, when it comes to luxury candles, it's easy to feel like you're burning your money away.

Alas, we keep buying them because they make us feel good. But, to help soften the blow and help you get the most out of your expensive candles (although there are some great affordable candles out there, too), allow me to shine a light (pun intended) on all the candle-preserving hacks you need to know. Every time your candle tunnels or kicks up plumes of black smoke, you're wasting quality burning time—but there are some easy ways to prevent this. It is, according to experts, down to how you care for your candles.

I reached out to a number of experts to find out how to look after your candles, and there are some simple mistakes it seems we're all guilty of making. Here's what to stop right now to keep your candles smelling stronger for longer.

1. Blowing them out too quickly

Candles can be so special, so precious, that you might not want to burn them too much, only lighting them for a few minutes at a time. But I'm sorry to say this attempt to preserve your candles actually has the opposite effect, as blowing them out too early can result in something called 'tunnelling'. “Tunnelling is where only the central part of the wax melts,” explains Paul Firmin, Co-Founder of Earl of East. “It creates a shorter burn time,” he adds. This is something that many an unassuming TikToker has fallen prey to, leading to an abundance of candle foil hack videos in my #fyp. Truthfully, these videos make me want to scream, because it’s so easy to avoid tunnelling in the first place. 

“When burning your candle for the first time, allow the wax to melt all the way to the edge of the vessel. This will usually take between 30 minutes to an hour. Doing this will ensure an even burn throughout the candle and will avoid tunnelling,” confirms Paul.

Having said that, how long it takes for your candle wax to melt all the way to the edge will depend on the brand and type of wax. In fact, some candle brands advise waiting up to four hours for the wax to fully melt on the first burn—just be sure to check the advice related to your specific candle.

If you have made the mistake of creating a wax tunnel, and you’re now watching your candle flicker while a lot of expensive wax sits stuck to the sides of its vessel, do not under any circumstances scrape the wax away from the edges and dump it into the middle of the candle. This will cause your wick to go under the wax (known as 'flooding the wick'), and it won’t relight. Instead, this is where you resort to TikTok's foil hack—take some regular tin foil and wrap it around the vessel of a tunnelled candle and bend the top of the foil over, leaving a gap for the smoke to escape. Leave it like this until the wax has fully melted up to the edges. Your candle should burn evenly from now on.

2. Relighting a burnt wick

If you watched Beckham on Netflix, then you may remember David talking about his favourite night-time activity: “When everyone’s in bed, I then go around cleaning the candles [...] I clip the candle wicks.” Big-up Becks, because trimming the wick is actually quite important if you want your candles to last. 

"Before each burn it’s important to remove any unnecessary burnt wick, trimming the wick to about 5mm above the wax top,” says Paul. “This will ensure that the candle doesn’t give off any black smoke and will avoid the wick turning in on itself, causing what is known as mushrooming. Mushrooming creates a larger flame, which at best will burn through your candle much faster than it should, but at worst can overheat the container.”

There are some really gorgeous wick-trimmers on the market. If you fancy being really spendy, then Loewe’s Brass-Leather Wick Trimmer is really quite gorgeous, but if you’re after a treat that’s a little kinder on your current account, then opt for the Diptyque Wick Trimmer, which is equally as mesmerising and exciting to use, and will last for what feels like forever.

3. Blowing them out

If you thought candle snuffers are pointless, think again. “Use a candle snuffer to extinguish your candle neatly, if you can,” advises Paul. “Blowing your candle out can cause hot wax to splatter against the container and make a mess."

This feels like a great time to tell you about an ever-so-slightly traumatic childhood memory of mine that resurfaces every time I need to blow a candle out. I was probably around 14 years old. My mum and dad had just spent the past few hours arguing over which sofa and rug to buy for our new flat. They settled on a few cream numbers—opting for a cream and black theme in the living room. The rug was soft and fluffy, like an endless sea of untouched snow, edged in careful black stitching. Later, one night before we all went to bed, my mum asked me to blow out a candle. It was a bright red number—one of those ones from IKEA that smells like a fruity pudding. I blew the candle with gusto, excited in the way that only kids are when it comes to simple tasks like pressing lift buttons and, well, blowing out candles. Red wax went everywhere: on the white walls, on the brand-new cream leather sofa, on the perfect snowy rug. It looked like a murder scene. What happened next can only be described as a full teenage meltdown—I burst into tears and ran into my room wondering why on earth I couldn’t do anything right. 

The moral of the story? Use a candle-snuffer.

4. Letting them burn for too long

While leaving your candles to burn to the edges on the first light is very important, it's equally as important to not let them burn for too long. Paul, ever the voice of reason, says: “Never burn the candle for longer than four hours at a time, regardless of the wax type. Burning for longer than this can overheat the vessel, and the wax will burn through much faster than it should.”

Oh, how I wish I knew Paul a few months ago, when I left a candle burning for so long that it overheated and then quite literally exploded, throwing glass everywhere and nearly giving my dog a heart attack in the process. Poor boy.

It’s for this reason that one of my go-to candle brands, MALIN+GOETZ, suggests burning for just three hours at a time. They also say to “discontinue use when ½ an inch (13mm) of wax remains”, which is a little more cautious than Diptyque’s recommended 5mm. Either way, leaving a little wax will prevent overheating and any dangerous explosions, à la me. 

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