How we pick

What we do

1. Compile published manufacturer specifications. Melt points, heating ranges, fragrance addition temperatures, pour temperatures, maximum fragrance loads, wick series diameter ratings, container capacities. Where a supplier publishes a figure, we transcribe it and name the supplier on the page.
2. Cross-reference charts that disagree. Four publishers print wick sizing charts. They do not agree, and the disagreements are systematic rather than random. We put all four side by side with the basis wax stated on every row, rather than picking one and presenting it as fact.
3. Do the arithmetic ourselves and show it. Wax weight from container capacity, fragrance oil weight from load percentage, jars per bag, candles per kit, wasted wax from a tunnel. Every calculation on this site has its formula printed beside it so you can reproduce it or correct it.
4. Read product listings for what they publish, and what they do not. A kit that publishes its wax weight ranks above one that does not, because the published figure is what makes the purchase evaluable. Where a listing omits something material, we say so.
5. Pull live prices. Prices come from a data layer refreshed against the retailer. When that layer has nothing fresh, the page says “check price” and shows no number at all.

What we do not do

• We have not burned these candles. No burn tests, no melt pool measurements, no side-by-side scent comparisons of our own.
• We do not own most of the products we write about. Where we describe how something behaves, it is from published specifications or from arithmetic, and the page says which.
• We do not run a test lab, employ chandlers, or have an expert panel. There is one person writing this site.
• We do not accept free products or paid placement. Nothing here appears because a brand asked.
• We do not publish a numeric score. A score out of ten implies a measurement we did not take. Products are ranked, and the reason for each rank is written out.
• We do not mark up review or rating structured data. Doing so would assert a first-party rating claim we have no basis for.

How we rank

The criteria differ by category and they are stated on each roundup. Across all of them, four things carry the most weight:

1. Does the maker publish the numbers you need? A wax with a documented pour temperature is workable; one without is guesswork. This is why Golden Wax 464 tops the wax rankings and why the one kit that publishes its wax weight tops the kit ranking.
2. Does it fit a real container or a real batch? A wick sized to a diameter you actually own beats a cheaper wick in the wrong size. A 16-jar pack that matches a 5 lb bag of wax beats a 20-jar pack that does not.
3. Does it remove a known failure mode? A kit with a heat source, a seamless tin that cannot weep, a double-ply wooden wick that does not drown in soy.
4. Is it the right scale for the reader of that page? A 20 lb commercial melter is a good product and the wrong recommendation for someone making four candles.

How we handle uncertainty

Where a specification is not published, the page says not published rather than estimating. That phrase appears on many products here, particularly for internal container diameters and kit wax weights, and every instance is deliberate. An estimate presented as a specification is worse than an admitted gap.

Where two publishers disagree, we print both with their names attached rather than averaging them. An average of two published figures is a third figure nobody published.

Where we derive a figure ourselves — the beeswax wick sizes on how to make beeswax candles are the clearest example, being a published soy chart plus a published size-up instruction — the page states that it is a derivation.

How we get paid

Amazon Associates commission on qualifying purchases made through links on this site, at no extra cost to you. That is the only revenue this site has.

It does not influence rank order, and the structural evidence is on the pages: every roundup includes at least one product we recommend against, several pages recommend the cheaper option over the more expensive one, and the equipment pages consistently argue for a pouring pot over a melter that would earn more. Full detail on the affiliate disclosure page.

How often we revisit