by Cynthia | March 12, 2025

How We Test Wax Melts

Our systematic method to test wax melts for our reviews.

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Ah, the wonderful world of wax melts. While Candlefind started out over a love of wicked candles, we noticed that wax melts started becoming a big thing and we certainly couldn’t resist. Now that we have been around over 20 years, we do melt just as many wax melts as we burn candles. But how do we review them? We get asked this question from our readers a lot and…to be honest…we really didn’t have a consistent or reproducible method until recently. We thought we’d share that process here with you so you can know how to take our information and use it to help you when shopping!

What are wax melts?

Simply put, wax melts are candles without a wick. The fragrance is held within the wax and released into the air as the wax is warmed and melted. We have already done a whole feature on what wax melts are, so be sure to head there if you need more information.

Of course, the world of wax melts is a lot more complex than that! There are all different shapes, sizes, and containers. What’s more, there are several ways to even melt the wax. All of this can make a huge difference in how your wax melts fragrance your home.

Types of Wax Melters

The three major types of wax melters are tealight burners (a tealight is used to melt the wax in the bowl above), electric hotplate melters (the melter is plugged into the wall and a heating element starts to warm the wax), and bulb melters (there is a light bulb that heats up the wax above). There are also some proprietary systems like the Yankee Candle Scenterpiece which is designed specifically for their Easy MeltCups.

Most wax melt fans have multiple melters across the spectrum. Many find that they favor one type or the other, or that one type of wax performs better in a specific type of melter. That is part of the fun of wax melting! We go into more depth into wax melters in our wax melt tutorial.

How We Test Wax Melts

Measure the melt

As the majority of the wax melts we test are clamshell wax melts, we have opted to go through our testing process with 1 clamshell square per test. This means approximately 0.4-0.5 ounces of wax at a time. While we are not precise, we do try to maintain the same amount of wax per test, whether we are using a clamshell, a scent shot, or a decorative wax melt. There are some exceptions to this rule, as we’ll note below. We do have a kitchen scale that we use to make sure our wax melt weights are fairly even.

Melt in 3 Melters

Of course the magic with wax melts happens when you melt the wax in a wax warmer. There are a lot of different wax warmers out there, but the most common fall into the category of either a tealight, bulb, or electric hotplate burner. We test each wax melt in each of these types of melters to be able to tell if there is a difference. Also we want to tell you what you might expect, depending on the wax melter of your choice!

Tealight: We first test our wax melt in a one-piece tealight burner, using these 4-hour tealights. We test the wax melt through one burn of a tealight, which is 4 hours. While the fragrance may still be lasting (or not), we do not run it through another tealight. When we are burning for pleasure, we enjoy using these reliable 6-hour tealight candles.

Electric: We next test the same amount of the wax melt in our electric hotplate melter. The melter that we use is 24W. We do the test in the same area that we used our tealight burner for a period of 4 hours.

Bulb: We finish up our testing using the same amount of wax in our bulb melter. We use a 25W bulb as that was what was issued with this melter. We test in the same area as the other two melters and we run the test for four hours.

How do we test different types of melts:

We do understand that many people use 2-3 cubes of a clamshell or reuse the wax long after the four hour mark. However, by keeping our wax amount small, it gives us an opportunity to fairly compare one wax against another, including those lovely samples we sometimes get!

Clamshells

As mentioned earlier, clamshell wax melts are the majority of the types of wax melts we test. We use 1 cube for each test, which comes out to be approximately 0.4-0.5 ounces of wax per test. This means we generally go through half a 6-cavity clamshell wax melt per rounds of test before we write our review. The other half of the clamshell we either enjoy as normal or we place it up for sale on either Mercari or Poshmark.

Wax Melt Cups

Wax melt cups are a bit trickier for us to test. We do try to cut up a cup into thirds and test about 0.5 ounces of wax per test. Depending on the size of the cup, we may need 2 of each scent in order to get the 3 equal amounts for testing.

Wax Brittle

Wax brittle is much easier for us to work with, as it already comes in various sizes. We simply break off what we need to get to ~ 0.5 ounces of wax and begin our testing!

Squeezable/Scoopable

Squeezable and scoopable wax is a bit harder for us to make sure we get the right amount for testing. We do place the wax into a cup on our scale and actually get about 0.6 ounces out into the cup. We figure we will be losing a little once we move the wax over to our melters.

Bars/Shapes/Loaves

We have a crinkle vegetable cutter that we use to chop up things like loaves, pies, and decorative melts. Again, we carve out approximately 0.5 ounces of wax for each of our 3 melters. We end up with a lot of leftover wax for the larger sizes, but that’s ok with us! We end up with a melting party or these leftovers go up for surplus sale.

Proprietary Wax Melt Types

There are some melts like the Yankee Candle Easy MeltCups that we just melt as purchased. These melts are predesigned to be melted within their melting system, and there really is no way around that. When we talk about strength or throw with these types of melts, we are comparing them to each other as opposed to other types of melts.

Do we use specific melters?

Although we have various melters from different brands, we use the same tealight, electric hotplate, and bulb melters for the majority of our tests. The tealight burner is from Mainstays while the hotplate and bulb burners are Better Homes & Gardens. We do use a Yankee Candle Scenterpiece melter for the Yankee Candle Easy MeltCups.

We do know that some brands, like Scentsy, advise to melt their wax only in their Scentsy burners. Even though we do have Scentsy warmers, we do not use them during this testing process, even for our Scentsy wax. We just want to be able to provide our readers with an idea of how the wax will perform even if they do not have a Scentsy melter. We also want to compare one brand to another, and the best way to do that is by using the same melters for each.

That sums up our testing process! We know that this testing method does not speak to the longevity of wax melts and, for that, you’ll need to do your own in home testing. We think that is best as there are so many variables that end up coming into play. However, our method should give you a good idea about scent notes, scent throw, and scent strength based off using the bare minimum of wax. Hopefully this gives you some insight to our process and our dedication to our reporting to you!

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About the Author

Cynthia

Hi, I’m Cynthia, the current owner & Candle Lover in Chief here at Candlefind. I have a sincere passion for candles, being mesmerized from the moment I saw my first flickering flame. I love luxury candles (who wouldn’t?) and unique scent combinations. When I’m not scenting, I love reading and playing with my wild & crazy pup, Holly Berry.

About the Author

Cynthia

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