A palm wax blend, hand poured in Europe, with a lead-free 100% cotton wick. Unscented, with no fragrance oils of any kind.

The blend is what gives our candles the burn times they have. A 3" x 6" pillar rated at 65 hours is not a marketing number, it is what the wax does.

RAL is the European quality standard for candles, and it is the strictest one in the world. Our European-poured candles are made and tested to RAL-GZ 041.

What it governs is the boring stuff that actually decides whether a candle is any good: wax purity, wick construction, hard limits on soot and afterglow, no lead and no harmful additives, and the rule that the burn time printed on the box is the burn time you get. None of it is self-certified. Candles are pulled off the line and burned in an accredited German laboratory until they go out on their own.

Here is what that looks like in practice. Our 6-hour tealight was tested by DEKRA against RAL-GZ 041. The limit on hourly soot index is 1.0 and ours came in at 0.16. The limit on leftover wax is 12 percent and ours left 3.2. Wick afterglow had to be under 30 seconds and ours was 2.7. The three test candles burned 6:10, 6:05 and 6:25 against a stated six hours.

That margin is why a Stonebriar tealight you buy this year burns like the one you bought three years ago.

Yes. Production is burn tested against the label, and the results have to match the burn time and dimensions printed on the box. Wick centering, surface finish, soot, afterglow, leftover wax and whether the container survives the burn are all checked on candles pulled from the line, not on a golden sample made once and filed away. The lab work is done by DEKRA, an accredited German testing laboratory, rather than by us.

Labeling is held to the same discipline. If the box says 8 hours, the candle burns 8 hours. If it says 1.5" diameter, it fits a standard 1.5" holder. Consistency across runs is the thing restaurants and event planners buy us for, and it is the thing we are least willing to let slip.

They are made to burn clean, and under normal conditions they do. Lead-free cotton wicks and clean wax are most of it.

If you do see smoke or soot, it is almost always one of three things: a draft, a wick that has grown too long, or a holder that is choking the flame. Move the candle out of the airflow, trim the wick back to about a quarter inch, and give it a holder with a little breathing room. That fixes it nearly every time.

Completely. No fragrance oils, no essential oils, nothing added to mask the wax. That is deliberate. Restaurants do not want a candle competing with the food, churches do not want one competing with incense, and a lot of people simply do not want their house to smell like anything.

If you want scent, burn ours next to a diffuser. The candle will not fight it.

Yes, every one of them, across every product we make. 100% cotton, lead-free, and no metal core.

These are the rated burn times, and they are the tested ones.

Notice that burn time is not linear with height. Going from a 3x6 to a 3x8 adds two inches and fifteen hours. Going from a 3x3 to a 3x4 adds one inch and seventeen. If you are buying for a venue and counting hours rather than candles, the 3x6 and 3x8 are where the math works hardest.

Four things, and the first one matters more than the other three combined.

Give it a long first burn. A pillar remembers its first burn. Burn it about one hour for every inch of diameter, so roughly three hours for our 3" pillars, and let the melt pool reach the outer edge before you put it out. Do that once and the candle will burn edge to edge for the rest of its life. Cut the first burn short and it will tunnel down the middle and strand half the wax against the wall.

Trim the wick to a quarter inch every time. Before every burn, not after. A long wick makes a big flame, a big flame eats wax faster and throws soot.

Keep it out of drafts. Vents, fans, open windows, passing foot traffic. A flickering flame burns unevenly and can drip down one side.

Do not burn more than about four hours at a stretch. Let it cool, trim, relight. Long unbroken burns overheat the wax and shorten total hours.

Usually, yes. Level the top first: carefully trim or press down the raised outer wall of wax so the surface is flat again, then give the candle one long burn until the pool reaches the edge. It will reset.

If the wall is too tall to trim safely, wrap foil loosely around the top of the candle with a hole over the flame for one burn. The reflected heat softens the rim and lets the pool spread.

Tapers drip when the flame is bigger than the wax can keep up with, or when air is pushing the flame sideways. Trim the wick to a quarter inch, seat the taper straight and snug in the holder so it is not leaning, and keep it away from air conditioning vents and open doors.

A taper that is leaning will always drip down the low side. Straight and still is most of the fight.

Tealights are the most sensitive to their surroundings of anything we make, because the whole candle is the fuel supply and there is no mass to buffer it.

The usual culprits are a draft, a holder with no airflow at the base, or several tealights crowded close enough to heat one another. Heat feeding back into the cup melts the wax faster than the wick can consume it, and you lose hours. Space them a few inches apart, use a holder that lets air reach the cup, and keep them off a heat source like a warming tray or a sunny windowsill.

More than most people expect. A tight, unvented holder traps heat and shortens the burn. A deep holder that shields the flame from air can make it gutter. Glass that sits flush against the cup does both.

Our tealights measure 1.5" in diameter and fit any standard tealight or votive holder. Pick one that leaves a little space around and under the cup and you will get the rated hours.

The aluminum tealight cups are, and they are one of the easiest things in your house to recycle. Aluminum is recycled indefinitely with no loss of quality. Let the cup cool completely, pop out or wipe away any wax remnant, and put it in with your aluminum. If your program prefers small items bundled, collect a handful inside a larger can before you put it out.

The clear glass on our votives is recyclable too, and honestly it is worth keeping. The glass is a perfectly good votive holder once the candle is spent.

The clear cups are polycarbonate, and here is the honest answer on those: most US curbside programs do not accept small rigid plastics, so putting them in the blue bin mostly just moves the problem. Reuse them if you can. If the cup is what matters to you, buy the aluminum version instead. It is the same candle, the same wax and the same burn time.

Same wax, same wick, same burn time. The difference is what you want the eye to land on.

Aluminum cups are the workhorse. They are opaque, they disappear inside a holder, and they are the easy recycle. Restaurants and churches buy these.

Clear cups are for when the candle is sitting out on its own, floating in water, or resting in glass where a silver rim would read as hardware. Weddings and event tables buy these.

Any standard tealight or votive holder. Our tealights are 1.5" in diameter, which is the industry standard, and either 3/4" or 7/8" tall depending on whether you have the 6 to 7 hour or the 8 hour version. The oversized 9 hour tealights are taller and wider, so check the product page for those dimensions before you buy holders in bulk.

That is almost always summer heat in transit. Wax softens well below the temperature a delivery truck or a porch reaches in July and August, and a candle that has been sitting in that can slump or take on a dimple.

Let them come back to room temperature for a day before you judge them. Most recover completely and burn exactly as they should. If yours do not, send a photo to customerservice@ckkhome.com and we will replace them. We will not ask you to ship anything back.

Cool, dark and flat. Heat softens wax and sunlight will slowly yellow white and ivory. A closet or a cabinet is ideal, a garage in summer is the worst place in the house.

Keep tapers lying flat or standing perfectly upright. Stored leaning against something, they will take a permanent bend and then they will drip when you burn them.

Our candles do not expire. Stored properly they burn the same in five years as they do today.

A workable starting point: two to three tealights per centerpiece, one pillar per table if the pillar is the centerpiece, and a taper pair per six to eight guests on a long table.

Then check the hours. A reception that runs five hours needs candles rated to outlast it with margin, which rules out a 6 to 7 hour tealight lit during setup. For anything running long, the 8 hour or 9 hour tealights, the 12 hour votives, or a 3x6 pillar give you room to breathe.

If you are planning something large, email us. We do this all week and we would rather help you count than have you guess.

Our flameless LED pillars are real wax with a moving flame effect, remote and timer included, in the same 3x3, 3x4, 3x6 and 3x8 sizes and the same white and ivory as the wax pillars. Close enough that they mix on a table without looking mismatched.

For churches and memorials, the LED saint and prayer candles run on an automatic timer, which matters when nobody is there to switch them on and off.

Yes. Both the aluminum and the clear cup tealights float, and the clear cups look better doing it. Float them in a bowl deep enough that the cup is not scraping the bottom, and keep the water below the rim so it cannot wash over into the wax.

No. Unscented is the whole line and it is on purpose.

Orders under $100 ship for a flat $10.00. Orders of $100 or more ship free. We ship within the United States only.

Orders leave our Missouri warehouse within 24 business hours and most arrive in 2 to 5 business days. Full detail on our shipping policy page.

Email customerservice@ckkhome.com with your order number, and a photo if the box or candles arrived damaged. We will send a replacement or issue store credit, whichever you prefer.

In most cases you will not need to ship anything back and there is no return shipping cost to you. You have 30 days from delivery. Full terms are on our return and refund policy page.

Contact that retailer first for anything involving a refund, since they took the payment and we cannot reverse it from our side. Then email us anyway at customerservice@ckkhome.com. If it is a product problem we want to know about it, and we will usually help regardless of where you bought it.

Yes, and it is a real part of our business. We supply restaurants, hotels, spas, churches, event planners and florists.

Wholesale orders start at $200, ship free, and carry wholesale pricing once your account is approved. Email customerservice@ckkhome.com or call (888) 808-4001 to open an account, or read the terms on our wholesale information page.

Tell us what you are using them for when you write. A restaurant burning tealights nightly and a florist buying pillars for a single season want different things, and the answer changes.

Email customerservice@ckkhome.com or call (888) 808-4001, Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm CST. We do not have retail locations. Our candles ship from Missouri and our offices are in Dallas.

Stonebriar Collection
5050 Quorum Drive, Suite 610
Dallas, TX 75254