Wax in Light Burners

Wax Melt Warmer

Light Wax Burners from companies like Scentsy® or Yankee Candle® seem to be all the rage right now. It seems almost everyone I know has one. One question our Technical Support Team gets on a regular basis is “Can I just add a pipette of my favorite fragrance oil to my wax burner?”

The safe answer is no and here is why. We don’t know how much material there is in your wax melter and we don’t want to be adding excessive amounts of fragrance willy-nilly. For a wax melter, we want our fragrance load to start at 1% or 2%. There are several benefits to starting at these usage rates.

Let’s pretend you have a wax melter that you had on and you just added a couple good squirts of your favorite fragrance oil. You get distracted on the other side of the house doing laundry, reading a book or whatever else is calling your name. Before you know it, you are starting to smell that fragrance like it is being continuously sprayed in a cloud around your head. You will reach for your drink and swear you can taste the fragrance. You rush back to your wax melter and turn it off but it won’t stop sending billowing clouds of scent into the house. Your wax melter gets banished to the patio while all of the windows are frantically thrown open so the house can be aired out and the occupants may breathe. Your whole neighborhood smells like a perfume bomb went off. People will be able to smell their way home from work! Yikes. Once the eye-watering intensity has worn off, you will complain that you can NOT smell your favorite scent. This is what we call olfactory fatigue. Olfactory fatigue is when you have been smelling something for a prolonged period of time and the scent “weakens”. This is actually your nose saying that a particular odor is ordinary and normal. When you are able to take a break from an odor, your sensitivity to the odor will return.

One second advantage is that using your wax melter becomes more economical. Because we are not scenting the neighborhood we actually get to enjoy a cost savings. We are able to enjoy the fragrance of choice and keep our pocket books plump and happy.

Q. So how do I know I am using 1% -2% of fragrance oil in my wax melter?

One good way to to measure how much wax fits into your melter. I like to use wax beads. (Beeswax is my favorite.) I fill my shallow dish with the beeswax beads all the way to the rim. Don’t create a heaping pile. Just level them out in the dish. When the wax starts to melt, it will fill in all of the spaces in-between the beads. Weigh how much material there is in the dish. For most melters, this is about an ounce. However each light burner has a different capacity. Now, this is where we will need to do a little bit of math. It will be quick and painless, I promise. Multiply the weight of what fits in your melter by .01 (1%) or .02 (2%). This is the amount of fragrance you will add to your wax melter.

Let’s pretend that I have a light burner that holds 1.3 oz of beeswax beads. I will be choosing the fragrance Dirty Mimosa and I want a more intense smell. I will be using 2% fragrance in my melter. So lets multiply 1.3 x 0.02. Answers anyone? The answer is 0.026 ounces (or 0.74 grams) of Dirty Mimosa Fragrance Oil.

If you need help with the math or want other questions answered, just leave a comment below. We are here to help! Tomorrow we will talk about using essential oils in a wax melter. See you then!