How to price handmade candles
Cost it honestly first — materials, labor, overhead — then mark up. Most sellers skip the first part and undercharge.
The most common pricing mistake is to total the wax, jar, wick and fragrance, double it, and call that the price. That covers materials and nothing else — not your time, not the burner you bought, not the Etsy fees. Price that way long enough and a "profitable" candle is quietly losing money. Here is the method that doesn't.
Step 1 — total your cost of goods (COGS)
Add up everything that physically goes into one candle, including the parts people forget:
- Wax — cost per lb × lbs used (use your actual fill, not the bag).
- Fragrance oil — cost per oz × oz used (this is often the priciest ingredient per candle).
- Wick, vessel, lid — per unit.
- Dye, warning label, packaging, dust cover.
Divide bulk costs down to the single candle. A $25 bag of wax that pours ten candles is $2.50 of wax each — that per-unit number is what you mark up, not the bag price.
Step 2 — pay yourself for labor
Pick an hourly rate and estimate the minutes a candle actually takes — melting, pouring, wicking, curing handling, labeling, cleanup. If a candle takes 12 minutes of your time at $20/hr, that's $4 of labor. Leaving labor out is the single biggest reason handmade prices come out too low: the work feels free because it's yours, but it isn't.
Step 3 — fold in overhead
Overhead is the cost of being in business that isn't tied to one candle: equipment wear, electricity, rent or studio space, insurance, and the marketplace's cut. A simple approach is to add a flat percentage (often ~10–20%) on top of materials + labor to cover it. Marketplace and payment fees alone can be 10%+, so don't treat them as an afterthought.
Materials + labor + overhead is what the candle costs you. Selling at that number means zero profit. The markup in Step 4 is where your margin — and your ability to discount, restock, and survive a slow month — comes from.
Step 4 — mark up to wholesale and retail
The craft-industry convention is keystone markup: double the cost at each step.
| Level | Rule of thumb |
|---|---|
| Wholesale | ≈ COGS × 2 |
| Retail (direct) | ≈ wholesale × 2 (≈ COGS × 3–4) |
Wholesale is the price a shop pays you to resell; retail is what you charge a customer directly. The reason retail is roughly double wholesale is that the shop needs its own keystone margin — so if you ever want to sell into stores, your retail price has to leave that room, or you'll undercut your own wholesale accounts.
A worked example
An 8 oz soy candle:
- Materials (wax + FO + wick + jar + lid + label): $4.50
- Labor (12 min @ $20/hr): $4.00
- Overhead (15% of $8.50): $1.28
- COGS ≈ $9.78
Wholesale ≈ $19.50, retail ≈ $29–$39. If you'd used the naive "double the materials" method, you would have priced this candle around $9 — below what it costs to make.
Gear this guide uses
Two per-candle costs sellers forget to count — the warning label and the scale your COGS depends on.
- Every candle needs a candle warning label — a real per-unit cost that belongs in your COGS.
- Accurate material costs start with weighing your actual fill on a digital scale, not estimating from the bag.
Some links below are affiliate links — if you buy through them, Moon Dog may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point to gear we'd actually use.
Sources
Pricing is a business decision shaped by your market, brand, and costs; these are conventions to start from, not a guarantee of what a candle will sell for.