Safety is as important as smelling divine. Follow these simple rules for a safe and unobscured candle burn. As a plus, your Helessence candles will last longer.
1. Never leave a candle unattended.
Always burn a candle within sight. We know, it's kinda soothing and romantic to leave a candle burning beside your bedtable, and happily falling asleep by its flickering flame, but you ought to distinguish it.
2. Keep the candle away from anything that can catch fire
Especially curtains, which have the bad habit of being attracted to flames more than moths. Other seemingly benign objects that love fire are books, tissue papers, bedding, and your hair.
3. Keep burning candles out of the reach of children and pets
As cat owners, we can assure you that rarely, if not ever, are they interested in messing with a burning candle (cuz, you know.... instincts) but we cannot guarantee the same with lesser beings like dogs and babies.
4. Trim candlewicks to ¼ inch (half a cm) each time before burning
Did you notice the height of the wicks when you received your Helessence candles? There's a reason for this and it's that long or crooked wicks can cause uneven burning and dripping.
5. Be sure your candle is placed on a stable, heat-resistant surface
Trying to get an unusual angle when shooting for an Instagram photo? Experiment with the camera, not the candle. Also, by "heat-resistant" we mean anything that won't amplify the heat that a candle naturally produces while lit.
6. Keep the wax pool free of debris at all times
Wick trimmings, burned matches, charred pieces of photos of your ex are bad for safety, aesthetics, and psychological reasons respectively.
7. Keep burning candles away from drafts or vents
Also ceiling fans, or any air currents. This will help prevent rapid, uneven burning, and avoid flame flare-ups and sooting. Drafts can also blow nearby lightweight items into the flame where they could catch fire (see no.2)
8. Never burn a candle all the way to the bottom
If you want to keep our gorgeous glass votives after they run out of wax in one piece then you should extinguish the flame when it reaches too close to the container. About half an inch (1 cm) should be fine.
9. Never burn a candle for more than 4 hours at a time
This includes all candles, not just ours. The 4-hour rule ensures that the wicks won't absorb too much wax and won't produce a super flame, your wax pool will stay in reasonable levels of depth, and that the vessel won't crack.
10. Never use a candle as a night light
This was the no.1 reason for fire back in the days. We now have flashlights for that. Or our phones.
11. Place burning candles at least 3 inches (8 cm) apart from one another
It's cool and kinda rustic to make a huge arrangement of all sorts of candles lit next to each other, but not practical at all. In a few hours, they will melt one another, or worse, create their own drafts. Which is not cool.
12. Never extinguish candles with water
Do we really need to explain this one?
