There's one candle habit that matters more than any other, and it has nothing to do with which scent you pick: trimming the wick before you light it.
An untrimmed wick burns unevenly. It mushrooms at the tip, pulls too much wax up at once, and the flame gets taller and smokier with every burn. Eventually the candle "tunnels" — burning a narrow well down the middle of the jar while wax sits untouched at the edges, permanently, no matter how long you burn it after that.
The fix depends on your wick type, and this is one place where our two candle lines genuinely differ.
Cotton wicks (our 9oz jar line): trim to about 1/4 inch before every burn. Use scissors, nail clippers, or the wick trimmer that comes with our gift sets — whatever gets a clean, straight cut close to the wax.
Wooden wicks (our Frosted Glass line): trim to about 1/8 inch — shorter than you'd think. A wooden wick that's too long won't light evenly and is more likely to produce soot.
Whichever wick you have, the first burn matters most. Let the wax pool reach the full edge of the jar before you blow it out — even if that takes a couple of hours. This "memory burn" sets the pattern the candle will follow for the rest of its life. A short first burn is the single most common cause of tunneling, and there's no fixing it once the wax has set that way.
After that: follow the burn-time guidance in your specific candle's description (most of ours cap out between 3 and 4 hours per sitting), always burn on a heat-safe surface within sight, and stop once about 1/2 inch of wax remains in the jar.
Five seconds with a trimmer, every time, is the difference between a candle that burns clean for 50+ hours and one that tunnels by the third light.