Candles with crystals inside

Candles With Crystals Inside: What They Are and How They Work

I pour candles with crystals inside for a living, and the questions I get asked are almost never the ones I expected. People do not ask what the crystal means. They ask whether it melts, how to burn the candle properly, and how to get the crystals out at the end.

So here are the answers, from somebody who makes them rather than somebody writing about them.

What crystal infused candles actually are

A candle with crystals inside is a poured candle with crystal chips set into the wax. Not one large crystal buried in the middle, which would be a genuine hazard, but small tumbled chips worked into the surface while the wax is still setting.

They are visible when you take the lid off a new candle. On the first burn, they sink into the melt pool, and as the wax cools and resets, they are held inside it, under the surface. After that, they come and go. Some burns, the melt pool reaches them, and you see them again. Other burns, you do not. By the last burn, they are sitting in the final centimetre of wax at the bottom of the jar.

The crystal is chosen to match the fragrance rather than scattered at random. Amethyst goes into Luna with lavender and tonka bean, because both are asked for at the end of the day. Smoky Quartz goes into Yara with lemongrass and lime, because both are about clearing the air. The pairing is the point. A candle with a crystal thrown in for decoration is a different product.

Do the crystals melt

No. Soy wax melts at around 50 degrees, and the melt pool of a burning candle sits a little above that. The quartz family, which is most of what goes into candles, forms at hundreds of degrees and is entirely unbothered by a wick.

What the crystals do is move. They sink on the first burn, set into the wax as it cools, and surface again whenever the melt pool runs deep enough to reach them. Nothing is lost, and nothing is damaged. They are simply travelling down the jar with the wax.

How to burn a crystal candle properly

One rule matters more than all the others, and it is the one people break.

Burn it long enough for the melt pool to reach the edge of the jar. Wax has a memory. If the first burn only melts a small circle in the middle, every burn after it follows that same circle, and you end up with a tunnel down the centre and a ring of hard wax stuck to the glass that never burns at all. Depending on the room, expect two to four hours for the pool to reach the sides. A twenty-minute burn is worse than not lighting it.

Once the pool has reached the sides, four hours is enough. Past that, the wick grows, the flame gets too big, and you are back to trimming it anyway. Put the candle out, let the wax set, and light it again later.

Trim the wick to about five millimetres before every burn. A long wick makes a tall flame, soot on the glass, and a candle that burns through far faster than it should.

And the ordinary rules still apply. Level surface, nothing flammable above it, never left burning in a room you have walked out of.

How to get the crystals out at the end

This is the question I get most, and there are two ways, both easy.

Boiling water. Fill the jar with boiling water and leave it. The last of the wax loosens, floats to the top, and sets into a disc as the water cools. Lift the disc out and the crystal chips come away with it.

Pour the water into the garden, never down the sink. Wax sets hard in a drain, and the next thing you are doing is calling a plumber.

The freezer. An hour or two in the freezer makes the wax contract and pull away from the glass, and it usually lifts out in one piece with a butter knife.

Either way, wipe the chips with warm water, and they are yours. People keep them in a pocket, a drawer, a car console, beside a bed.

The jar washes out with hot water and dish soap and makes a perfectly good holder for hairpins, paper clips or a very small plant.

Choosing one

If you are buying a crystal candle for the first time, choose on fragrance rather than on the crystal. You will live with the scent for forty-five hours, and the fragrance is what makes you light it again.

Then let the crystal be the reason you choose between two you liked equally. There is no wrong pairing, and nobody is grading you on it.

My range runs to eight fragrances, each with its matching crystal chips set into the wax. If you want to know more about a particular crystal before you choose, I have written about what each one traditionally means, including a full piece on Amethyst and one on Moonstone.

If you would rather not read anything at all, the candle finder quiz asks five questions and tells you which fragrance and which crystal match where you are at the moment. It takes about a minute.

Every candle is hand-poured in small batches in my studio in Melbourne, one fragrance at a time.