Essential Oil Candles: Why scent candles with essential oils?
Our natural essential oil soy candles and wax melts are 100% naturally fragranced with pure essential oils.
But there’s often a lot of confusion as to what essential oils actually are and why you might choose them instead of artificial fragrance to scent candles and other home fragrance products.
So I thought it might be helpful to give an explanation of both what essential oils are and also my reasons for using them to naturally fragrance our range of Scents of the Wild candles and wax melts.
So, what are essential oils?
Pure essential oils are perhaps most simply described as the natural essence, the fragrant ‘life-force’ of a plant.
They’re extracted from aromatic plant matter - leaves, flowers, needles, bark, roots, seeds, etc., depending on where the essential oils reside within a particular plant - by a variety of methods, including cold expression of the peel (for the citrus fruits) and steam distillation of the flowers/leaves/needles etc.
And why choose pure essential oils instead of artificial fragrance to scent your candles, wax melts, and other home fragrance products?
Firstly, I’m personally just not a fan of strong artificial scents and I try to avoid using artificially scented, synthetic chemical-based products in my home as much as possible…
I think that once you start discovering the magic of natural products (including essential oils), you often never go back!
I’m a believer in using (and consuming) natural products to promote wellbeing, and I think it’s also true that the less you use & surround yourself with artificial scents, the more sensitive you become to them- they can sometimes even become quite repellant!
I was reminded of this very recently when I ordered a ‘naturally scented’ product online and knew by its overpowering fragrance when it arrived that it clearly wasn’t entirely naturally scented at all! Not pleasant…
Vetivert pure essential oil, infused in our essential oil candle Tranquil Earth
(This is why it’s always worth checking whether essential oil candles and other home fragrance products are 100% naturally scented with essential oils or if they contain a combination of essential oils and artificial fragrance.
Many ‘essential oil candles’ on the market in fact contain a mix of natural essential oils and artificial fragrance because it’s cheaper to produce, giving a stronger scent for less).
Some people also find that they have a physical reaction to artificial fragrance, perhaps experiencing headaches or nausea.
However, very often they find that this isn’t the case when it comes to 100% pure essential oil candles, perhaps because of the more gentle, subtle nature of essential oils.
This gentle, subtle nature of essential oils is beautifully described by Mandy Aftel in her book, ‘Essence & Alchemy’. She says:
“Synthetics can approximate the dominant qualities of the natural essences, but… they cannot capture the subtlety or softness of their odors. With all the chemical analysis available, natural substances cannot be pinned down to a formula and replicated in a laboratory. Only nature can create the smell of Jasmine at nightfall.”
- Mandy Aftel, ‘Essence & Alchemy’, p50.
And the second reason for using pure essential oils to naturally fragrance our range of Scents of the Wild soy candles is…
It’s the therapeutic benefits of pure, natural essential oils that sets them worlds apart from artificial fragrance made in a lab.
As well as smelling beautiful, I find it comforting to know that essential oils have been safely & effectively used for thousands of years to help calm and soothe the mind, perfume and cleanse bodies and homes, and generally boost mood and wellbeing.
Having studied professional aromatherapy on and off for 6 or 7 years now and being a huge lover of essential oils (I use them every day!), my aim with Scents of the Wild is to harness both the gorgeous natural scents and also the valuable therapeutic properties of pure, unadulterated essential oils.
I’m passionate about blending pure, high quality essential oils to make unique, 100% natural fragrances for our range of natural essential oil candles that not only smell gorgeous but that help to boost the mood and support emotional wellbeing.
Petitgrain essential oil, one of the oils infused in our essential oil candle ‘Tranquil Earth’
Perhaps these words from one of the world’s leading experts on aromatherapy, Robert Tisserand, sum up this whole natural versus synthetic fragrance thing best…
He says,
“Why natural oils? Why not anything that smells nice whether it is natural or synthetic? The answer is simply that inorganic substances do not contain any ‘life force’; they are not dynamic… Nature has a structure which cannot be duplicated artificially… Everything is made of chemicals, but organic substances like essential oils have a structure which only Mother Nature can put together. They have a life force, an additional impulse which can only be found in living things.”
- Robert Tisserand, The Art of Aromatherapy, p66-67.