Candle Burn Time Calculator

A candle's burn time is fundamentally a fuel-consumption problem — wax weight divided by how fast it's consumed — but the 'how fast' half of that equation is far more variable than most product labels suggest, and understanding why helps both in choosing candles and in getting the most out of the ones you already have.

Wax type is the biggest single factor. Paraffin, the most common and least expensive wax, tends to burn hotter and somewhat faster than soy wax, which burns cooler and more slowly, extending burn time for a given weight — one reason soy candles are often marketed as longer-lasting even at a similar size. Beeswax sits at yet another point on that spectrum, generally burning slowest of the common options. None of this is fixed, though — wick size interacts with wax type significantly, since a larger wick burns hotter and faster regardless of the wax surrounding it, which is why two candles with the same wax type but different wick sizes can have meaningfully different burn rates.

Beyond the product itself, how a candle is burned changes its effective lifespan substantially. Wick trimming is the single most controllable factor — an untrimmed wick grows longer with each burn, producing a larger flame that consumes wax faster and produces more soot, while a wick trimmed to about a quarter inch before each burn burns more slowly and cleanly. The first burn matters disproportionately too: if a new candle is extinguished before its entire top surface has melted into liquid wax, it creates a narrow tunnel down the center, and every subsequent burn will re-melt only that same narrow channel, leaving unused wax stranded on the sides for the rest of the candle's life — a genuinely wasteful outcome that's easy to avoid simply by letting the first burn run long enough (often an hour or more, depending on diameter) to melt evenly across the full surface.

For comparing value between products, the most useful number isn't price per candle but price per hour of burn time — a candle that costs more upfront but burns twice as long, whether from more wax or a slower-burning wax type, is often the better deal even though it doesn't look that way at the shelf.