Dinner is over, the plates are stacked, and the candles have burned low and golden. You lean in and blow, and a sharp, acrid ribbon curls up and hangs over the table, the last thing anyone smells on a lovely evening.

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What Michael Faraday Smelled at Christmas

In his Christmas lectures for young people at London’s Royal Institution, later published as The Chemical History of a Candle (1861), Michael Faraday took on this exact moment. “You have, I know, often smelt the vapour of a blown-out candle,” he told the audience, “and a very bad smell it is.”

That white trail isn’t really smoke from the fire, which is the part most of us never think about. A blown-out wick stays hot for a few seconds and keeps boiling off wax, and the plume is that wax vapor cooling and condensing in the air. Faraday showed it by blowing a candle out gently and holding a lit taper two or three inches above the wick. A “train of fire” ran back down the vapor and relit the candle. (It’s a lovely trick, but not one for the dinner table.) So the smell has nothing to do with your candles being bad. Blowing them out simply sends the last of the hot wax into the room.

The gentler ending takes about three seconds. Lower a snuffer over the flame and hold it there until the wick is fully out. Or use a wick dipper: bend the lit wick into the melted pool, then lift it straight again. That puts it out with almost no plume, and the wick comes up coated and ready for next time.

The Afterglow Pour: 4 Drops Sweet Orange, 3 Drops Amyris, 1 Drop Ylang Ylang

Once the flames are out, let scent carry the warmth instead. Sweet Orange is the candlelight itself, round and glowing. Amyris gives the blend a soft, creamy wood, like a sandalwood-scented candle without the wax, and its heavy, slow-evaporating molecules keep the orange from fading too fast. One drop of Ylang Ylang adds the honeyed floral warmth of beeswax. Stop at one, because a second drop takes over the whole blend.

Add the drops pure and undiluted to your Nebulizing Diffuser®: 4 of Sweet Orange, 3 of Amyris and 1 of Ylang Ylang.
Switch it on as you snuff the candles, on a low, intermittent setting, and let it run through the clearing-up half hour.
Keep the candles for the table and the oils for the air. Each one does its own job well.

For more on what really happens at a burning wick, our candle combustion guide goes deeper.