Scented Candles and Interior Air Quality

February 29, 2008

Today, many homeowners use a variety of products to add fragrance to their homes. Unfortunately, many of these products have been found to contribute to poor indoor air quality and some have been found to be absolutely unsafe. Worse, many of these products, although they’re quite expensive, are actually quite ineffective in producing lasting fragrance in the home.

If you use perfumed room sprays, for example, you may be spraying formaldehyde as well as other known carcinogens around your home. Not all the dangerous chemicals found in these products are always listed on the labels, as recent media reports have shown. These spray products are constantly being recalled. Plus, many customers complain that although the linen sprays and room sprays promise long-lasting results, in many cases the results are very short term.

If you want to add fragrance to your home without affecting your indoor air quality and threatening the health of yourself and your family, scented candles are a much better option. Of course, low-quality scented candles and generic type of scented candles can be just as dangerous as room sprays. Cheap candles sold en masse at the local discount store can contain lead and other harmful toxins. However, high-quality wax candles, soy candles, and all natural candles are perfectly safe to use inside a home and still provide hours of lasting fragrance.

Scented candles today not only come in a rainbow of colors and an intoxicating array of scents, but they provide a higher quality of scent than sprays, potpourri, and other means of adding scents to your home. For one thing, candles that are of a high quality make use of layered scents. That is, the perfume in the candle is layered slowly and the candles are poured slowly, meaning that the fragrance lasts as long as the candle burns. Many of these candles have high quality perfumes that the rival the finest perfumes in the world. In fact, many of these candles do not even have to be lit to give off their wonderful fragrance. Many of these candles can be placed in cupboards, closets, and drawers to give off their intoxicating scent. The scent will only continue when the candles are actually lit and put to use.

Scented candles are also a more effective way of dispersing fragrance throughout your home because they are an active way of dispersing fragrance. You’ve probably noticed that when you spray a room spray around your home, at first the fragrance is definitely present. This is because you have actively sprayed the fragrance, which makes it more potent than a potpourri which simply sits in a corner gathering dust. Unfortunately, you cannot reasonably keep spraying forever. A candle does the work for you, continuing to burn and therefore continuing to gently waft fragrance throughout your home.

Obviously, candles have much to offer. Not only do they provide wonderful fragrance that lasts for much longer than other forms of scents, but they can also help improve your home air quality. In fact, if you have poor indoor air quality and have odors caused by furnace omissions, dust, grime, and other problems, scented candles can help dispel the odor while you work on fixing the underlying problem.

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