Wood vs Cotton Wicks

Cotton wicks are a braid that bends over in the flame and burns a steady pool. Wood wicks are a thin strip of wood that crackles and throws a wider, often louder, flame. Neither is morally superior. They suit different jars and different waxes.

We use cotton in our soy-coconut landscape candles. Wood looks lovely on Instagram and is fussy in a narrow glass.

Cotton

Predictable. Easy to trim. Works in smaller jars. In soy-coconut — which is softer than paraffin — a cotton wick of the right size will reach the glass without roaring. Failures we see: wick too small (tunnel), wick too big (soot, mushrooming, hot jar).

Cotton also “mushrooms”. Trim it. That is not a defect, it is carbon.

Wood

The crackle is real. So is the maintenance. You need a clean edge every time or it will not light. It likes a wide vessel so the extra heat has somewhere to go. In a small tumbler it can tunnel or smoke. Wood also hates draughts even more than cotton — the flame leans and you get a burnt notch on one side.

Some wood wicks are sandwich (wood plus a booster). They are easier to light and easier to overheat. Treat them like a bigger cotton wick, not like a campfire.

Scent throw

Throw comes from melt-pool size and wax temperature, not from the romance of the wick. A wood wick in a wide tin will often throw harder because the pool is bigger. The same wick in a narrow glass can throw less than cotton because the pool is a messy oval. Judge the pool, not the material. Hot and cold throw is the longer version of that.

What we pour

Cotton, soy-coconut, landscape scents. If you want the hill in a jar, that is Cairngorms or Nevis, not a crackling gimmick.