How the candle wax calculator works
Candle jars are sold by the liquid volume they hold, but wax is bought and poured by weight — and the two are not interchangeable. Because solid wax is lighter than water, a jar rated at 8 fl oz does not need 8 oz of wax to fill it. This calculator converts your container size into a real wax weight using a density factor for your chosen wax, then layers fragrance oil on top using the load percentage you set. Everything is plain arithmetic that runs instantly in your browser.
The fragrance figure follows the industry convention of being a percentage of the wax weight, not the finished pour. That is the same basis your wax supplier and IFRA usage limits assume, so the amounts you get here drop straight into a real recipe.
A worked example
Suppose you are filling six 8 fl oz jars with soy wax (factor 0.90) at an 8%
fragrance load. Per jar that is 8 × 0.90 = 7.2 oz of wax. Across six jars
you need 7.2 × 6 = 43.2 oz of wax. Fragrance oil is
43.2 × 0.08 = 3.46 oz, giving a total pour weight of about
46.66 oz. Switch the output to grams and the calculator multiplies by 28.35,
so that batch becomes roughly 1224 g of wax and 98 g of fragrance.
Density factors and fragrance limits
| Wax type | Typical factor | Common fragrance load |
|---|---|---|
| Soy | 0.90 | 6–10% |
| Paraffin | 0.88 | 6–10% |
| Beeswax | 0.96 | 6–8% |
| Coconut blend | 0.86 | 8–12% |
Factors vary slightly between brands, so treat these as solid starting points and use the custom option when your supplier publishes an exact value. On fragrance, pushing past roughly 10–12% is where problems appear: oil sweats out of the wax, sinkholes form as the candle cools, and the flame can soot. Staying near 8% keeps the scent strong and the burn clean.