Wax melts are ridiculously popular right now and there is little reason why. These little bursts of aroma can immediately brighten up any room in your home by giving it a nice homey smell. If you’re new to wax melts, one of the first questions that you’ll likely ask yourself at some point is how often do the melts need to be changed?
As a general rule, wax melts should be changed whenever you no longer smell them. How long is this? If you’re using just one cube at a time, that is generally 8 to 12 total burning hours. If you use more than one cube, and you can usually use up to three, you may get a few more hours out of it.
Naturally, this rule depends on other factors as well, including the type of warmer you’re using, whether or not you’re adding fragrance oil to it, and, of course, the type of wax or oil being used. All of these things are important when determining how long your wax melt will last.
What Type of Warmer Are You Using?
The hotter your warmer is, the hotter the melts will get as they’re burning. This also means that the wax melt won’t last as long since it is burning so hot.
A cooler temperature will still melt the wax but since it does so at a slower pace, the wax melt will last a bit longer. If you’re using a potpourri crock, be aware that they may get very hot indeed, which means that your wax melts are not likely going to last for very long.
To help make your wax melts last longer, you might want to set a timer so that your wax doesn’t melt for long periods of time. Some warmers, in fact, come with their own timers and will shut off or even turn on automatically at a certain time.
Many can be set for 3-, 6-, or 9-hour timeframes and can be altered or changed with the push of a button. They can save you a lot of worry because you won’t forget about them and leave them on for too long, saving your melts in the process.
And before we get off the topic of warmers, keep in mind that you should always use a warmer that is made to go with the wax melts made by the same company.
Warmers and melts are made to work together since each company makes their melts with their own oil-to-wax ratio. Not only is the recipe different but each recipe is made to work with the temperature of the warmer.
This is why warmers and melts from a certain company should always be used together.
When you use a warmer and a wax melt made by the same company, that company will tell you how long you can expect your melts to last, making it easier for you to determine how long you can expect the aroma to stick around.
Read our full review on Best Candle Warmers and Best Wax Melts.
Type of Oil Used in the Melts
Wax melts can be made out of many different types of oil. The two main types of oil used in today’s wax melts are fragrance oils and essential oils. Each of them provides some absolutely yummy scents. Here are the main differences between the two:
- Fragrance oils are blends of different scents that can be either natural or synthetic, although they are usually synthetic. They are blended together to make the scent and because most of them are synthetically made, they are non-volatile and therefore last longer than essential oils.
- Essential oils can come from any part of a plant, including its petals, stems, or even its leaves. The essential oils used in wax melts are usually used alone and not blended with a synthetic ingredient so they are a truly all-natural product. However, they also tend to be volatile since they are 100% oil, which means they generally don’t last as long as melts made out of fragrance oils.
The companies that make wax melts usually tell you what their melts are made of, which makes it easy to determine which ones you’d like to buy.
Read more about Fragrance Oil vs Essential Oil, Which is Better？
How to Store Your Wax Melts
Believe it or not, even how you store your wax melts can directly affect how long they will last, not just when they are burning but how long they’ll last you on the shelf. The way you store the melts affects their scent, how long the scent lasts, and even the texture itself.
The best thing that you can do with your wax melts is store them in a cool, dark place. Wax melts should never be exposed to direct sunlight for long periods of time.
If they do, it might affect the fragrance or scent that binds to the wax, which affects both how strong the smell is and how long the scent lasts each time you burn the melts.
One more thing about properly storing your wax melts: every time you store a new package, make sure that they go behind your older melts so that the first melts that you grab are the older ones.
Once the older ones get used up, you can move onto the newer ones and you won’t have to worry about accidentally using wax melts that are just too old to use.
Check Out the Oil-to-Wax Ratio
Finally, the oil-to-wax ratio will affect how long your various wax melts burn once you get them in the warmer. These days, most companies use one ounce of fragrance oil for every pound of wax used. This works out to be roughly a 6% concentration of fragrance oil.
Most often, fragrance oil only binds itself to a certain amount of wax. Naturally, if you find a company that has a higher concentration of fragrance oil, your wax melts will burn longer and last longer on the shelf.
Some well-known brands that offer wax melts with a minimum of 6% fragrance oil concentration include companies such as Yankee Candle, Goose Creek, and Happy Wax, to name a few.
How Long Do Wax Melts Last?
Warming scent devices that use wax melts can make your home smell fantastic, and if you’re curious about how long wax melts last, most will last 6-12 hours. In reality, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how long a wax melt will last because there are numerous factors affecting it.
All wax melts are different, but as a general rule, the length of time they last is dependent on factors such as:
- The overall quality of the melts
- The size of the melts
- The number of melts you’re using
- The heating setting
- The brand
In fact, even the scent can affect how long your wax melts will last because in many cases, wax melts that are darker in color (such as mulberry or black cherry) tend to burn longer than melts with lighter colors (such as vanilla or peach).
It’s also a good idea to learn how long each melt will last. For instance, if one wax melt is made to last four hours, then using three melts increases that time to 12 hours.
Most good brands of wax melts let you know how long each of the melts lasts, so you can use that number to determine how many wax melts to use each time. When you do this, you can get a better idea of how long the scent will last.
Some Final Thoughts
A lot of different things can affect how long the scent in your wax melts will last and therefore how often you should change the melts. If you’re curious about how to change the melts, it is really quite simple. You can change out your wax melts in one of two ways.
First, if the wax has hardened in the warmer, simply turn the warmer on for roughly 10 to 15 minutes. Once it’s melted, place one end of a ribbon in the melted wax, then wait until the wax gets hard again. When it does, just pull on the ribbon and remove the piece of hardened wax.
You can also use cotton balls to soak up the melted wax. When the wax is completely melted, add several cotton balls to the warmer. For best results, add one cotton ball for every cube of wax melt that is in the warmer. After a while, all you have to do is remove the cotton balls and throw them away.
If you play your cards right, you can easily make your wax melts last a lot longer. Now that you know how to buy the melts and what to look for when you’re shopping for them, you should be able to more easily find melts that will last long enough for you to truly appreciate them.
Read more: Can You Reuse Wax Melts