If you’re anything like us, candles are your kryptonite.
The room-filling scent, the gentle flickering glow, the artful line-up on the coffee table. When we’re looking for a quick pick-me-up, lighting a good candle ticks all the boxes.
The trouble is, good candles are often expensive candles and designer renditions routinely upwards of the £50 mark. While we’d happy to receive one as a gift (hint hint), forking out for scented votives on the regular, no matter how heavenly, will do absolutely no favours for our finances.
High-quality wax and refined fragrance combos are what make luxury candles so expensive. Coupled with aesthetically pleasing holders and an impressive marketing campaign, these costs wind up being passed onto us, the customers.
While more affordable versions may be lacking in some of these areas, they still offer the same ceremonial feeling when lighting them and the relaxing sensorial experience that follows.
If you’re trying to create a candlelight display, a cheaper option is to mix similarly scented budget candles in amongst one or two of the premium ones to amplify both the effect and the fragrance without burning a hole in your wallet. Why not try this for dinner parties, birthdays or romantic nights in?
If you want to save luxury candles for best but you’re unable to forgo your candle-burning obsession, we’ve drawn up an edit of the best sub-£30 burners to buy now and light without feeling guilty.
Packed with dopamine-surging fragrance and housed in stunning vessels that we’re sure you’ll want to reuse after the last of the wax has disappeared, they promise to give you the mood-boosting lift you’re looking for without breaking the bank.
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Beauty Pie Pomegranate & Baies Rose Luxury Scented Candle
Beauty Pie has built a rock-solid rep amongst beauty editors and bloggers for offering high-quality beauty at a snip of luxury label RRPs. As well as lotions and potions for face and body, this concept extends to wellbeing products like fragranced candles too.
Slap a label from an established scent house on the red glass holder, and this floral candle would go for £64 or more. But at Beauty Pie, you can scoop it for as little as £20.
Made in one of the world's scent capitals, Grasse, France, and with a burn time of up to 60 hours, this room-filling fragrance will help to create the calming vibes you need to unwind.
Buy now £20.00, Beauty Pie
M&S Seashells 3 Wick Scented Candle
If in doubt, the scent of lemon and fresh laundry is a winner. Whether you’re planning to give as a gift or seeking an inexpensive treat for yourself, M&S’s collection of scented candles offers both quality and reasonable prices, as you would expect from a retailer of this standing. The silver-coloured lid is a nice touch and will stop extinguished candle smoke from infiltrating the rest of your home.
Buy now £12.75, Ocado
Apothecary Large Scented Candle Fresh Start 215g
Burning scented candles can be an excellent way to engage your senses and help shift your mood, whether you’re looking to wind down or increase concentration. Filled with zingy notes, this Fresh Start candle is the perfect thing to light when you want your space to feel fresh and focused.
Buy now £8.00, Boots
Serenity Revive Orange Blossom, Jasmine & Saffron Ceramic Candle
Once it’s out of the packaging, it’s hard to tell a designer candle from a high street version. What matters is the scent it gives, and Dunelm’s sweet floral mix is a hard one to forget. Encased in a pretty glazed ceramic jar with a lid it can easily be repurposed as a storage box once the wax has melted away. Available in 120g or 430g sizes.
Buy now £12.00, Dunelm
Yankee Candle Clean Cotton Original Large Jar Candle
From Massachusetts, USA, Yankee Candle is one of the biggest names in the home fragrance space with dozens of potent scents to choose from. There’s nothing subtle about these formulations; each whiff offers a powerful hit that correlates to the label. For this reason, some of the floral and sweet scents can be headachey after a while, but go for the clean cotton option instead to revel in the warm, happy scents of fresh laundry.
Buy now £26.00, Dunelm
The Museum by Night Juniper, Saffron and Coffee Soy Blend Candle
Dunelm’s collaboration with the Natural History Museum is one of its most elegant in recent times, offering elevated homewares at wallet-friendly prices. Candles housed in detailed etched votives are in the mix, and this one is made for bewitching nights with notes of juniper, saffron and coffee in the soy blend. You’ll get plenty of bang for your buck too; this one burns for up to 40 hours.
Buy now £5.00, Dunelm
John Lewis White Tea & Bergamot Scented Candle, 200g
With lighter evenings comes a need for lighter, fresher fragrances with which to fill our homes. Enter trusty John Lewis, who has this delicate white tea and bergamot delight poured into a transparent ribbed glass holder, maximising the glow. Expect 40 hours of glorious burn time.
Buy now £6.75, John Lewis
Aldi Hotel Collection Pomegranate Scented Candle 335g
Budget supermarket Aldi has ruffled more than a few feathers with its dupes of pricier beauty and homewares, including candles which resemble a well-established London fragrance. Still for those priced out of the more expensive stuff, the Aldi version offers a low-cost alternative that offers a decent level of scent. Bonus: the lid can also be used as a candle base.
Buy now £3.15, Aldi
& Other Stories Sicilian Sunrise Scented Candle
When it's grey and gloomy outside, we could all do with feeling transported. & Other Stories manages this masterfully with its line of globally-inspired candles, including Sicilian Sunrise. With top notes of lemon and grapefruit giving way to sweet jasmine, pear and pineapple, there’s an instant feeling of being on holiday - even if you’re miles away from your next trip.
Buy now £23.00, & Other Stories
H&M Summer Rain candle
H&M is the dependable high street name to hit if you’re scouting for budget-friendly homewares. The Swedish chain counts scented candles in its offering, usually housed in collectable votives and holders that you’ll make the effort to clean out and use again. Aside from the scent - summer rain, since you ask - this blue, green and grey Murano-style holder makes it a keeper.
Buy now £14.99, H&M
IKEA Likhet fresh linen scented candle in glass
We’ve got a thing for fresh laundry scents - can you tell? IKEA has this 100 hour-burn scented candle for a price that’s hard to refuse. Calming and energising, it’s an ideal scent to start or end your day.
Buy now £3.00, IKEA
George at Asda Pink Almond Macaron Glass Tinned Candle
If your candle purchase is as much about the holder as it is about the scent poured within, a playful design like this may be just the ticket to giving your home a mini lift. Modelled on France’s famous pastry, the macaron (although we think it looks rather like a fruit jelly), it smells as good as it looks.
Buy now £3.00, Asda
Zara (200G) Zen Infusion Scented Candle
Made with vegetable wax and inspired by the desert breeze, Zara’s candle proves that you don’t have to drop triple figures to find decent home fragrance on the high street.
Buy now £19.99, Zara
