Can I Use Crayons to Color Candles?Updated 4 months ago

In order for your candles to achieve the most vibrant colors or pleasing pastels possible, a candle dye or candle colorant must be used. Using other forms of colorant may result in an nonfunctional candle.

Can you use crayons to color candles?

Although, staring at a beautiful stack of wonderfully vibrant crayons, we can understand why there would be an urge to use crayons as a colorant for candles. I mean, let's look at what a crayon is...a stick of colored wax, right? Logically, they should work. However, this is absolutely not the case.

You should never use crayons to color your candles. The reasoning behind this is the actual colorant of the crayon. These colors are achieved with the use of pigments, and pigments unfortunately are not soluble. What this means is that when a crayon is melted, the color of the crayon breaks down into small pigment particles that exist in a dispersed manner among the melted wax. These pigments appear as if they had changed the color of the wax; like candle dyes do because dyes dissolve into the candle wax, but remember the pigments are simply dispersed.

Now, due to the way that a wick works in candles, there must be a melt pool apparent to keep a candle flame going. As the wick continues to burn, the melted wax from the wet pool is pulled through the wick. This is how the fragrance (or hot scent throw) of the candle is released into the air. The problem that coloring with crayons in candles presents is that since the pigments and the wax never combine, the pigments are also pulled up through the wick. But, these pigments will not, unlike the melted wax, flow properly through the wick. These pigments will in fact clog your wick.

The results of a clogged wick prevent your candles from burning properly, inhibit your candles hot scent throw, and will even cause your candles to smoke.

So, in summary no matter how tempting that box of 64 crayons look, never use crayons to color your candles. You will want to stick with dyes specifically formulated for candle making; we offer liquid candle dyes and color block dyes in an array of vibrant colors.