How to Price Homemade Candles, With a Worked Example

To price a homemade candle, add up what one candle really costs (wax, fragrance, wick, vessel and label, plus your time and a share of overhead), then set a wholesale price that leaves you a margin you've chosen, and a retail price around what a shop would charge. For the 9 oz jar candle below, the materials are $3.99, the full cost $6.41, a wholesale price at a 50% margin $13, and the shop price about $26. The popular shortcut, three times materials, would have said $12 at retail, which is below what a shop would pay you.

The short version

• Cost the materials per candle from what you actually paid. The fragrance and the jar are most of it.
• Add labor at a real hourly rate, your own hours included, and overhead spread over a month's candles.
• Wholesale price = full cost ÷ (1 − your margin). I'd start at a 50% margin.
• Retail around double wholesale, and don't undercut the shops that stock you.
• Re-cost whenever wax or fragrance prices move. TaroStack does that from every order you receive; more below.

Step 1: materials, per candle

From the candle business inventory spreadsheet, a 9 oz jar of Plumeria is 8.33 oz of soy wax and 0.67 oz of fragrance, a fragrance load of 8% of the wax's weight:

A 4 oz tin works out to $2.05: 3.70 oz of wax, 0.30 oz of fragrance, a smaller wick, the tin and its label.

Notice where the money is. The fragrance costs as much as the wax, and the jar costs more than either. Pricing by the pound of wax misses most of what a candle costs.

Step 2: labor, including yours

Time a real pour, start to finish: melting, measuring fragrance, wicking jars, pouring, the second pour if you top up, trimming, labeling and boxing. Say a pour of 24 jars takes 2 hours in all. At $20 an hour that's $40, or $1.67 a jar. Tins go faster: 60 in 2.5 hours is $50, or $0.83 a tin.

If you're tempted to leave this out because you don't pay yourself yet, don't. A price without labor only works while you're willing to work for free, and it can't pay a helper the day you need one.

Step 3: overhead

Add up the monthly costs that aren't in any one candle: market fees, insurance, the website, your shop platform, shipping supplies you don't charge for, and test candles. Divide by how many candles you sell in a month. $300 a month over 400 candles is $0.75 a candle.

Step 4: the full cost

Step 5: from cost to price

Wholesale first, because it's the floor. A shop buying from you will usually mark it up, and you need to make money at the price they pay.

Wholesale price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin)
Jar:  $6.41 ÷ 0.50 = $12.82, so $13
Tin:  $3.63 ÷ 0.50 = $7.26, so $7.50

My suggestion is a 50% margin at wholesale for candles: they're light, they keep, and breakage and unsold scents happen, so a thin margin disappears quickly. That's a starting point, not a rule. If your market won't bear it, it's worth knowing now. The same reasoning for other handmade goods is in how to price handmade items for wholesale.

For retail, a shop that doubles what it pays (keystone, in the trade's word) would sell your jar at $26 and your tin at $15. Selling direct, price at the same $26, so you're not undercutting the shops that stock you. At a market, after a card fee of about 3%, you keep $26 − $0.78 − $6.41 = $18.81 a jar.

Now compare the shortcut. Three times materials is 3 × $3.99 = $11.97, as a retail price, which is less than the $13 a shop would pay you wholesale, and less than twice your full cost. It feels safe because the jar looks expensive next to the wax. It isn't safe.

Step 6: look around, then decide

Check what candles of the same size, wax and vessel sell for near you and online. If yours are far above, ask whether the jar, the scent or the burn time justify it; if they're far below, you're leaving money on the table. Price per ounce of candle is a fair way to compare a 9 oz jar with an 8 oz one. Then set your prices and keep them for a season: changing prices every month confuses the shops that stock you.

A candle cost calculator in Excel

The candle inventory spreadsheet works out each candle's materials cost on its Recipes tab, from what you paid for each supply, and updates when a price changes. Add labor and overhead per candle beside it and the wholesale formula above, and you have a calculator that stays current. It's a plain Excel file, free, with no sign-up. The same method applied to soap, with a calculator of its own, is in the soap making cost calculator.

Where this stops working

The price is right on the day you cost it. Then the next case of wax costs more, a fragrance supplier raises prices, the jars go up after a shipping change, and nobody re-costs, because re-costing means opening the spreadsheet and remembering which supply went into which candle. The margin you chose shrinks quietly, scent by scent, until the end-of-year numbers say the busy season didn't pay as well as it felt.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps the $3.99 true. Each candle is a recipe, per scent and size, with unit conversion: buy wax by the 50 lb case, pour it by the ounce, and TaroStack does the math. Supplies come in at the price you actually paid, and when you record a pour, the wax, fragrance, wicks and jars come off from the lots you used, at their own cost. So the cost of a Plumeria jar follows the bottle of Plumeria it was poured from, and a price rise on fragrance shows up in the candle the week it arrives.

You see it before it hurts. Margins are worked out on what each candle actually cost, and a price-creep report shows which supplier has been nudging prices up, so the day to raise your wholesale price is something you can see, not something you find in December. Labor isn't turned into dollars yet, so that line stays yours to add, but the materials, the part that moves, keeps itself.

Recipes, pours and true cost are on Standard at $99 a month, and the first 30 days are free. Your supplies and recipes import from the candle spreadsheet. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

How much should I sell my homemade candles for?

Start from the full cost: materials, labor and overhead. For a 9 oz soy jar costing $6.41 all in, a 50% wholesale margin gives $13, and a retail price around $26, about double wholesale. Then check what similar candles sell for nearby.

What is the formula for pricing candles?

Wholesale price = full cost per candle ÷ (1 − margin). At a 50% margin, divide by 0.50. Retail is often about twice wholesale. Full cost is materials plus labor per candle plus overhead per candle.

How do I calculate the cost of making a candle?

Price each supply per unit (wax per ounce, fragrance per ounce, each wick, jar and label), multiply by what one candle uses, and add them up. Then add your labor per candle and your monthly overhead divided by the candles you sell a month.

Is three times the cost of materials a good candle price?

Usually not. For the jar here, three times materials is $11.97, which is less than a shop would pay you wholesale at a 50% margin. It leaves out your time and your overhead, and it leaves nothing for a shop's markup.