Tea Lights vs Electric Burners

One of our customers messaged me to say that the wax melts I had sent her were not as good as the first one's she had bought a couple of months previously. As I had not changed the mix nor suppliers for the wax or oils I wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on. This lady had not been the first to make this comment and it just seemed odd that some people couldn't smell my scents as much as others. During a conversation with my husband he commented: "Are they using Electric Melters or Tea Lights?" I didn't have an answer so I asked the lady and she said that she normally uses tea lights but had bought a new Electric Burner and that's what she was using now. So this got us thinking.

We set up four burners, two Tea Light Burners from our range and two Electric Burners that use a Halogen lamp to melt the wax, one of these had three settings. We put the same melts in each and recorded the temperature of the wax pool once it had fully melted and here are the results:

Pearlescent Glass Tea Light Burner - 255ºF / 124ºC

Dalmatian Glass Tea Light Burner - 240ºF / 116ºC

Electric Burner (Large Green Crock/Glass) - 157ºF / 69ºC

Dimmable Electric - Level 1 - 139ºF / 60ºC
Dimmable Electric - Level 2 - 178ºF / 81ºC
Dimmable Electric - Level 3 - 195ºF / 91ºC

As you can see the temperature of the wax pool in the Tea Light Burners was considerably higher than the Electric Burners so, as the temperature of the pool is key to the 'throw' of the scent, this was the answer as to why the lady had less fragrance from her second melts purchase. She subsequently switched to a Tea Light burner and commented that she could now smell the new melts "just as much as before".

Obviously we were pleased to have got to the bottom of the problem but this has highlighted to us how important your choice of burner can be to the fragrance coming off your melts and we hope it helps you too.