Candle Tunneling: How to Fix & Prevent Under-burning Candles

Candle Tunneling: How to Fix & Prevent Under-burning Candles

An under-burning candle occurs when there’s excess wax being left on the walls of your candle, typically when your candles are only lit for a short period and the wax does not get enough time to melt evenly. The recommended burn time increment when first lighting a candle is 3 hours. On your initial burn, allow the candle to “burn” until the wax pool reaches the outer edge before you blow it out. This will allow the candle to set a “memory” of how far it melts the wax every time you use it. The burning time depends on how wide your candle is, so if you don’t have a lot of time to enjoy the scent and warmth of your candle, consider choosing a narrower one. Candle tunneling happens when a severely underburned candle creates a deeper hole that goes down the center of your candle while leaving a wall of hard wax around the outer corner of your burn pool. When tunneling occurs, it can cause your candle to die out as it gets drowned by the melting wax.  How to fix the tunneling candle?
  1. Burn candle longer
  2. Place the candle in a draft-free area to ensure that it will burn evenly.
  3. Don’t trim wicks
  4. Blowdry the edges 
  5. Use a spoon or paper towel to wipe and scoop the excess wax around the edges. For the excess wax, you can choose to throw it away to expose a bit more of your candle’s wick, or you can spread it on top of your candle as evenly as you can.
Seventh Avenue Apothecary is a majority female and family-owned business creating artisan-made candles using American-grown soybeans sourced in the United States and hand-poured in a historic building in Ybor City. Our Signature Collection includes glass and tin candles, room sprays, aroma oils, and wax melt chips with over 60+ different unique fragrances.  Best-selling scents include White Tea + Fig, Minted Grapefruit + Sage, Ocean Mist + Moss, and Tobacco + Vanilla Bourbon. This year we celebrated 10 years of business and hope to grow further to help people whenever possible. Shop our Soy Wax Candles.
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