The IKEA Hemsjo candle

It is now officially the season of Advent. For most of my earliest years, candles at Advent played a big part in the lead up to Christmas. (They still evoke many fond memories at this time of year.) Mainly, they were red taper candles for the Advent wreath -- one new candle would be lit each Sunday, until we had all four burning on the last Sunday before Christmas. (Of course, my sister and I had our Advent calendars too!) But I digress.

The four candles I want to mention come from IKEA in a pack labelled Hemsjo. (The O should have an umlaut above it.) All four cost me a modest £1.75. Each candle is 5.7 centimetres (57 millimetres) in diameter and stands 8 centimetres (80 millimetres) high, including the conical top. They are all unscented and white. An individual candle is rated at 15 hours of (continuous?) burning, so the whole pack should be good for at least 60 hours when lit consecutively. On a price per candle basis, they appear to be the cheapest pillar candle (IKEA calls them block candles) in their range, working out at £0.44 each.

As budget pillar candles, how do they perform? Well, as you might expect from the price, they need a little bit of effort to get the best out of them. I have found that they are definitely not light and forget, as this results in an excessive candle flame and a tendency to burn down too quickly ("funnel"). I would say that they are slightly under-wicked -- but it is safer to have them under- rather than over-wicked. With a little care you should certainly be able to exceed the stated burn time.

Going on the 30 minutes of burning per centimetre of diameter rule-of-thumb, and rounding up, this gives a single lighting duration of near enough three hours. I always trim the wick before starting, and Hemsjo seems to work best when I start with the wick at 3 millimetres (1/8 inch). (From experience, it is a bit of an art to set the starting wick length based on both the thickness of the wick and the diameter of the candle: it is usually somewhere between 3 and 6 millimetres on most household candles!)

Although it looks aesthetically pleasing, the conical top makes initial lighting a little more challenging. Due to the slope, the candle burns down quickly, resulting in a long wick that consumes wax at a faster rate -- and then it starts to funnel! When starting a new candle, I have tried limiting the first burn to one hour, but even this proved to be too long. I shall try 30 minutes next time! (A more drastic solution might be to slice the conical top off?)

The wick is not anchored to the base of the candle in any way. (Some more expensive candles sometimes have a metal tag attached to the end of the wick.) What I have discovered is that further down the wick is markedly off-centre, and eventually it will collapse and drown in the melt pool. This is a good thing (safety again), but it does mean that the last centimetre or so of candle won't be consumed.

Unscented candles normally have no noticeable smell to me, but I have sometimes detected a faint paraffin odour after burning a Hemsjo candle for three hours. I don't find it offensive but I thought I should note it. I suspect it is down to the price: you get what you pay for, and all that...

Otherwise, I think that the IKEA Hemsjo candle is good value, and with a little attention burns reliably and with few surprises. This must be true: I have bought four packs so far and have already started on my second. Now if only they sold them in red for Christmas...

Candles from IKEA

I was recently visiting my "local" branch of IKEA intending to buy a small bookcase, when the idea suddenly popped into my head that I would like a candle in a glass container. I'm not sure where that one came from, as I rarely burn candles apart from the occasional Price's Chef's Candle to reduce strong cooking smells. IKEA certainly has plenty of candles, including a number in glass containers, so I had come to the right place. Needless to say, given the attractive prices, I left with more than just a candle in a glass. (And a bookcase.)

From my earliest memories, candles had been a component of special celebrations -- normally birthdays and Christmas. They were expected on top of birthday cakes and featured prominently during the season of Advent in the excitement of the lead up to Christmas. The warm, soft light and flickering flame held a fascination for me, verging on the transfixing. Part of the wonder of my childhood.

In teenage years, experiments with home-made candles and miniature hot air balloons caused at least one significant wax spillage on the bedroom carpet -- thankfully without fire! Having had at least one close call, I assume I must have learnt my lesson and candles then became something to be enjoyed only at Christmas (and avoided at birthdays) on visits home. (I am happy to watch manned hot air balloons float above me in fine weather, but untethered Chinese Lanterns drifting above the local countryside fill me with concern!)

IKEA prices seemed so reasonable, that it was easy to add more items to the shopping  bag. Apart from the lime-fragrance SOMMAR 2018 candle in glass, I came away with a number of unscented pillar candles (not all shown), and three different packs of tea lights. I could not resist the quirky, stackable chunky glass tea light holder, and grabbed a number of them. (At 37p each, how could I not? They really make a difference with standard tea lights.) It should take me a while to get through this lot!

Most of the candles shown here are made for IKEA in Poland, and all the ones I have tried so far have been good or excellent, and definitely good value for money. (I wouldn't have expected otherwise.) The product labelling shows a number of safety-related pictograms (e.g., Do not leave a burning candle unattended), so it is worth working out what they all mean -- a set of sensible guidelines before lighting. One of them suggests that the wick should be no longer than 1 centimetre (10 mm), but in practice a trim to 4 millimetres before lighting has given me reliable results. (I use a slice of plastic drinking straw as a collar over the wick when trimming with nail clippers to get fairly consistent wick lengths.)

The labelling also shows a burn time in hours, e.g., 4h for a standard GLIMMA unscented tea light. I suspect this is a minimum for continuous burning with a stable flame. I have achieved longer candle life by using shorter burn times, followed by wick trimming before the next session. I suspect that with proper candle care (regular wick trimming and a melt pool covering the entire surface of the candle before extinguishing), it should be possible to extend IKEA's advertised burn times by 20 percent or more.

I have never been a fan of scented candles, and most of IKEA's offerings are sweet-smelling and/or fruity which is not my thing. However, in tea light form I have not found them to be too offensive. (I understand that the size [diameter] of the melt pool influences the strength ["throw"] of the scent.) I am aware that scented candles from other sources can cost big money and are truly luxury items. A case of getting what you pay for, I suppose?

Ironically, what set me down this path has been the least satisfactory. Despite trying a number of different wick lengths and burn times, I was unable to get my SOMMAR 2018 lime-scented candle in glass to form a melt pool all the way across, and it has exhibited classic funnelling. Either the container is too big or the wick too small -- a design or manufacturing fault? (I reject the idea that candles have "memory" -- utter nonsense and a feeble excuse!) Additionally, the lime scent took on a different character once heated by the candle, and lost its freshness; to be replaced by a more sickly, creamy fragrance less to my liking. I don't think I will be buying another one of these, but I might just try a peach SINNLIG in the small glass on my next visit to IKEA...