To use an oil burner with wax melts, set one melt in the dish on top, light a standard tealight in the space beneath, and leave the lid or roof off while it burns. To clean it, let the wax cool and set hard, then press it out in one piece and wipe the dish with kitchen roll.
That is the whole of it. What follows is the detail that keeps a burner quietly filling a room for years rather than ending up sticky, smoky and at the back of a cupboard.
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How a wax melt burner works
An oil burner, a wax melt burner and a wax warmer are the same object under three names: a small shelter for a tealight with a shallow dish above it. The flame warms the dish, the dish warms the wax, and the wax gives up its fragrance without ever being burned. Nothing is consumed except the tealight. The melt simply loses its scent over time and is replaced.
Ours are made in glazed ceramic or hand-carved sandstone. Ceramic warms quickly and is easiest to keep clean. Sandstone takes a little longer to heat, then holds that heat, so the fragrance settles in gradually and stays even across an evening rather than peaking in the first half hour.
Using it for the first time
Put the burner on a flat, heat-proof surface, away from a draught and out of reach of children and pets. A windowsill with the window shut is fine. A windowsill with the window open is not, because a draught pulls the flame sideways and blackens the inside.
Place one wax melt in the dish. One is enough. The dish on our smaller ceramic burners is sized for a single melt, and even the larger oval pebbles are happiest with one at a time. Two melts make more mess, not more scent.
Light a standard four-hour tealight and slide it into the opening beneath. Do not use a maxi tealight or anything taller than the space is built for. If your burner has a lid, a roof or a top that lifts away, leave it off while the tealight is lit.
Within ten to fifteen minutes the wax will be a clear pool and the room will begin to smell of it. Let the tealight burn out, or snuff it when you have had enough. Never leave a lit tealight unattended, and never move a burner while it is warm.
Standard four-hour tealights are the thing to buy in bulk. A box of two hundred sees most people through a winter.
How long a wax melt lasts
Each of our soy wax melts gives around fifteen hours of fragrance in a standard burner. That is not fifteen hours in one go. It is three or four evenings, because the wax sets again when it cools and can be re-melted until the scent has gone. There is no need to change it after each use.
You will know a melt is finished when the wax pools clear but the room stays quiet. At that point the wax is spent and it is time to clean the dish and start again. A box of eight, at fifteen hours each, is roughly 120 hours of fragrance. Used most evenings, that is the better part of a season.
How to clean an oil burner
The easiest method is the cold one. Let the burner cool completely and the wax set hard. Press gently on one edge of the disc and it will usually pop out whole, ready for the bin. A short spell in the freezer helps if it is stubborn, because soy wax shrinks slightly as it chills and lets go of the glaze.
If a thin film remains, light the tealight for two or three minutes until the residue softens, blow the tealight out, and wipe the dish with a piece of kitchen roll. Do not pour liquid wax down the sink. It sets in the pipe.
For a glazed ceramic burner, warm soapy water and a soft cloth take care of anything left. Dry it before the next use. For sandstone, keep water to a minimum and let it wipe clean instead. Natural stone is porous and will absorb whatever it sits in.
Soot inside the tealight opening is usually a sign of a draught or a tealight that was too big. A damp cloth lifts it from ceramic. On stone, a dry cloth is enough.
A few things worth knowing
Change the scent by cleaning the dish first. A new melt poured over the ghost of the old one smells of neither. If you want to use fragrance oil rather than a melt, add a few drops let down with a little water, and never let the dish run dry over a lit flame.
Keep the burner clear of anything above it. Heat rises, and a shelf close over a lit tealight will warm more than you expect.
Keep opened melts in something with a seal. A clip-top jar holds a box or two and stops the scents drifting into each other in the drawer.
What we would choose
For a first burner, or one for a bathroom shelf, the Classic Ceramic Oil Burner in matt black at £9.95 is small, unfussy and easy to keep clean. For a mantelpiece or hall table, the Large Oval Pebble Oil Burner in speckled off-white at £12.95 has the height to let the tealight glow properly and a wide dish that takes a full melt comfortably.
If you would rather have stone, the Carved Sandstone Oil Burner, Classic at £21.95 is the plainest of our hand-carved range and holds its heat beautifully. To start from nothing, the Ceramic Wax Melter with four soy wax melts at £19.95 brings the burner and the first four melts together, so there is nothing else to buy. And when you are ready to choose a scent, Windermere at £14.95 for a box of eight is the clean, lemon-first one we would reach for on an ordinary weeknight.
The full range of shapes is in oil burners and melters, and all twelve scents are in wax melts. UK standard delivery is free.