Should I still buy real, scented candles?

Scented candles are part of our DNA here at The Seasonal Touch. We love them.
Next week I’ll be hitting a trade show and shopping for autumn/winter stock. Creating the scents of the season will be right up there on my priority list!
Trust me, I’ll be checking out a lot of candles.
But if you’re like me, you’ve probably noticed a huge variety of battery operated candles now available. Big, small, coloured, plain, tea lights, realistic wavering flames, remote controlled, automatic timers — the possibilities are endless.
Have you, like me, been wondering if there’s still a point to buying real, scented candles? What does your real wax, scented candle give you that the battery ones can’t?
What it is about lighting a scented candle that lifts your spirits and your mood?
This article will take a look at real, scented candles. It’ll explore the general costs along with a look at how they can affect our wellbeing. This article is not really intended as a comparison between real and battery operated. I’ll save that for another day!
But hopefully, by the end, you’ll be able to decide if you still have room in your life for one or two of the real deal or not.
How much do we spend on scented candles?
Did you know that we brits spend around £90million every year on scented candles? Not each, obviously, although my other half would probably have you think, judging by my stash, that I was contributing my fair share to that amount.
There are clearly those who are contributing a lot more than me though!
I had a quick look at the Liberty of London website just to see what the big bucks would get me.
At 17cm x 15cm, and claiming a 240 hour burn time, their Giardino Segreto scented candle is larger than average but at £470.00 I think I’d rather take a mini break to Italy so I can experience it’s inspirational mystical garden for myself!
What’s the average cost of a scented candle?

A quick look at the John Lewis website tells me that of the 330 different candles they sell (yes you read correctly — 330!!), 285 of them are £50 or less with the majority of those in the £15 — £30 price range. Admittedly they don’t stock the mighty Jo Malone — a scented candle phenomenon if ever there was one — but it seems the John Lewis demographic is likely to splurge a little but not too much.
Compare this with the likes of the Harrods online store which currently stocks 122 different candles. Only 19 of them retail at less than £50 while the majority is between £115 — £530.
Don’t get me wrong. I love a bit of luxury in my life but not even I could justify that one.
£530 for a ….(add your own expletive)….. candle!!!
Can a candle give you a luxury lifestyle?
For many, the purchase of a luxury branded, scented candle offers the chance to own a little piece of luxury lifestyle for themselves. Their home may not look like it might appear in the next edition of Elle Decor but it can sure smell like it could! Well for an average of 70 hours at least.
Exactly how much luxury you’re willing to buy and burn is entirely up to you. There is, it would appear, a scented candle to match every budget.
I believe our love affair with candles has much less to do with aspirations and much more to do with emotions.
Can scented candles trigger emotions?
Our sense of smell is the one sense, more than any other, that’s likely to trigger memories. With memory comes emotion.
The smell is one thing, the memory another but how does it make you feel?
I’m always trying to get that ‘on holiday’ feeling back. It’s the holy grail isn’t it? Relaxed, calm, nothing more to decide than pool or beach.
I’ll pre-empt my attempts at recreation by making a souvenir purchase of the candles or diffuser the hotel have been using. That or I’ll treat myself to some new perfume in the duty free on the way out and then forevermore the memories of that trip will flood back that trip when I use that same perfume again.
What scent triggers those feelings for you?
Does your fave lavender candle remind you of carefree childhood holidays in Provence?
Does your most requested birthday treat candle take you right back to the romance of that little Paris bolt hole. That tucked away, chic retreat where you and your other half never wanted to leave?
How can a scent can evoke such strong feelings?
Hold tight. Here comes the science bit. Stick with me though. It’s actually quite fascinating!
So complicated was the process to unravel the connection between smell and memory that the brain boxes who worked it out — researchers Ricard Axel and Linda Buck — were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2004 for their work.
Smells are actually detected by receptor cells in your nose and sent to a part of your brain known as the olfactory bulb (with me so far?).

As it turns out the olfactory bulb actually runs from your nose to the base of your brain and it’s top job is to make sense of what you’re smelling (straight forward enough — right?).
Here’s the good bit!
It turns out that your olfactory bulb also has direct links to both your amygdala (the bit in your brain responsible for all those emotions) and the hippocampus (the memory centre).
Et Voila! That’s why the mere whiff of that perfume you loved! loved! loved! on your first holiday to Ibiza still has you dancing on the table and craving another Cuba Libre. No? Just me then.
There’s one thing I know for sure.
My love of winter scented, cinnamon candles is because it takes me right back to my dear cousin’s kitchen on the other side of the Atlantic.
I had struggled a bit after the birth of number two. It was a dark November in more ways than one. One whiff of that warming cinnamon scent and I’m right back in her kitchen at Thanksgiving, baby on hip, getting sound advice from my ‘been there, done that, got several T- shirts’ mentor.
I felt warm, safe and listened to. I not only felt hugged by human arms but also by those warming, spicy scents burning in a little pot on the stove top.
That baby is now 23 and a lot of life has been lived since then. One thing’s for sure though. As soon as the boxes of autumn and winter candles arrives here at The Seasonal Touch I’m ripping them open, ready for my first fix of the season. In a nano second I’m back amid those feelings of safety, warmth, security and of being heard.
I wonder what name Yankee Candles would come up with for that one?
What scents evoke the strongest memories for you?
What’s your favourite scented candle?
Please share! We’d love to hear from you.
