Candle work and soot damage, a guide and warning to all

[mirta000]

Hello witches and all that identify as something else!

I have been burning candles as part of my practice for close to 5 years now (3 years in the current room that I'm in) and I am dealing with a very fun problem of I will need to outright paint my ceiling.

Soot damage is very hard to remove, so if candle-work is part of your practice, here are some fun tips –

1. Always trim your wicks! Most places recommend 0.3cm length, but get a feel for what is right for your candles yourself. Bigger candles will need enough wick to evenly burn the wax, smaller candles might need less wick.
2. Always keep close attention to the burn of your candle. If your wick is mushrooming, or the candle is going extremely high, this will have bad wax burn and will produce a lot of soot. Snuff the candle, trim it, relight the candle.
3. Use a snuffer or a candle lid (if yours came with one) to snuff your candle – if you blow it out, the smouldering wick will bring quite a bit of soot directly into your environment. Over time this deposits on your stuff, on your walls and your ceiling.
4. Use an iluma lid, or a shade with jar candles – these accessories are meant to keep the flame still and stops it from overproducing soot.
5. Keep the flame out of drafts. The more even the burn, the less chance of soot.
6. Getting a lantern is a good way to isolate pillar and tea light candles from spewing soot all into the environment and instead focuses the soot spew onto the lantern, which is much easier to clean!
7. Keeping the candle away from places where soot can settle will help you prevent soot damage, as such, don't burn it too close to a wall (30cm, or a foot is a nice distance to keep from walls, or other objects that you want to keep soot free).

Now, I do know that this is a rather unique problem – candle work and burning a candle on my altar is part of my day to day worship, therefore I am the kind of person that soot damage is likely to occur to. If you are using the equivalent of a birthday candle, or a tea light here and there, it may not be worth investing in all the extra tools (a snuffer, a wick trimmer, a lantern, etc) to keep your walls, ceilings and objects soot free.

However I do see people actually lighting 7 day candles and leaving them to go for 7 days straight. Such practices are very likely to leave your place with soot damage. If you don't want to be me and be figuring out to to repaint a ceiling, remember this list of anti-soot safety!

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