How to Price Candles
Candles look cheap to make until you add up the jar, wick, label, box and the hours of pouring and curing. Here is what to count, a worked example, and the mistakes that cost candle makers the most.
What goes into the cost of one candle
- Wax by weight: fill weight minus fragrance. An 8 oz candle at 8% fragrance load uses about 210 g of wax and 17 g of fragrance oil.
- Fragrance oil: usually the most expensive material per gram. Cost it at your real fragrance load.
- Wick, jar, lid, label and box: count every piece, including warning labels.
- Safety labelling: if you sell scented candles in the UK or EU, they usually need hazard (CLP) labels for the fragrance. Count the label and any testing in your cost. Our sister shop The Label Kit has editable candle and CLP warning labels.
- Your time: pouring, wicking, topping up, labelling and packing, divided over the batch.
- Overheads: test burns, failed pours, tools and fees, spread over everything you make in a month.
Worked example: an 8 oz soy candle
Materials come to $5.33. Five minutes of work per candle plus its share of overheads brings the cost to $7.60. The 2 × 2 rule gives $15.19 wholesale and $30.38 retail. Sold on Etsy at $26, after fees you keep $15.48, a 59.6% margin.
Candle pricing mistakes
- Costing fragrance at a lower load than you actually pour.
- Forgetting test burns and failed batches. They are real material.
- Pricing wholesale at your retail price minus a little. Shops need to double it.
- Leaving out the curing time: stock you can't sell for a week or two still ties up cash.
The spreadsheet for candle makers
The Candle Cost & Pricing Calculator keeps a material library, recipes for up to 12 candles, a wax and fragrance-load helper and a full price list with wholesale, retail and Etsy prices (Excel and Google Sheets).
Work out your own price
Try your numbers in the free handmade pricing calculator, one product at a time. The general method is on How to Price Handmade Products.
Example figures use $20 an hour for your time, $120 a month of overheads spread over 200 items, the 2 × 2 wholesale/retail rule, and Etsy-style fees of about 9.5% + $0.45. Your supplier prices will differ.