How to test HT?

[MimiB]

Hi everyone! 

Wondering how you test your hot throw? 

What size room should the scent fill to be considered great HT? 

Thank you 😉

[Forrest]

That is a tough question. First let me say that room size may not be as important as air flow, so that way of measuring HT would be different for each house. I do have a suggestion, if you were to go buy a good commercial candle, maybe a Yankee Candle or one at Bath and Body Works, and burn it in a room of your house, that would give you something to compare your candles to.

[BusyBee]

Yes!  This is very complicated subject.  Creating a great HT producing scented candle and designing a candle that can fill a room are two totally different matters. 

 

I test strength of HT of my candles by smelling it from the top (Don't burn your nose hairs while doing this!), and burning it 1 1/2 feet away from me on my working desk.  After that, whether my candle can fill a room or not is matter of air flow of the room or a house.  My goal is to design a candle that can throw HT about 1 to 2 feet into the air by using cooler flame wick, so HT can spread through out the room in most people's sitting position as much as possible.  But air flow of many rooms might not cooperative with this theory to well.  If hotter flame wick, which produces hotter air current, is used and HT is thrown higher, then there is great chance that HT might escape to other rooms instead filling scent within that room.  But that candle would work well in party rooms where many people are standing up.  Who would have ever thought that we would be looking into to air flow of the house caused by mechanical ventilation, AC, heater & natural air flow of a house to design a great HT candle?  As long as a candle is producing HT, the scent is moved by air currents to somewhere in the house before finally escaping out of the house.

 

Then there is part where you have to understand how your scented candle is going to be used by your targeted market customers which is more complicated than above in high-end candle market.  I was surprised to find that some scented container candles never get burned and thrown away, but customer will keep on buying them.  Better CT candle is what this type of customer is looking for, and they don't even care for HT.  Is your candle designed for placed in foyer, hallway, guest bathroom, other bathrooms, living room, family room, den, dining room, or bedrooms, etc?  If you can figure all this out, then you can create the great candle.

 

I say comparing your candle with other candles would be the best way to test HT too.

[ErronB]

For a small jar, I just leave it in a small room and close the door for an hour or so then see if I can smell it when I walk back in. For a multi-wick candle I better be able to at least smell it in any size room, ideally from multiple rooms away (in a regular house, not a mansion, lol)

 

If I want a really strong throw I just use a wax melt, i prefer the way the scents smell compared to a flame. 

 

Sometimes I like the smell of Target's candles, but whenever I burn them the hot throw is pathetic. But people still buy them all the time, baffles me.