Our Pure Collection — Lavender, Eucalyptus, and Pure Honey — is made with beeswax and pure essential oils, or beeswax alone. These are our most ingredient-minimal candles. The right choice for anyone who wants absolute simplicity in what they burn: fragrance-sensitive households, those who are pregnant, parents burning candles near infants, or anyone who simply wants the shortest possible ingredient list.

Our Artisan Collection — currently Vanilla Latte and growing — uses beeswax paired with phthalate-free fragrance oils or a mix of essential and fragrance oils. These are scent profiles that essential oils alone cannot achieve. They are not the same as essential oil only candles, and we don't present them as such. What they are is clean, rigorously sourced, and made with the same care and the same refusal to cut corners as everything else in this studio.

Every product page clearly labels which collection a candle belongs to. We will always tell you which is which — before you buy.

Phthalates are a class of chemical compounds used in fragrance manufacturing to help scent bind to surfaces and extend its longevity. Some phthalates — particularly DEHP and DBP — are associated with endocrine disruption and are restricted or banned in cosmetics across the EU and in several U.S. state regulations.

"Phthalate-free" means the fragrance oil was manufactured without any phthalate compounds. Our Artisan Collection fragrance oils go beyond that baseline: they are also manufactured without carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxins, or organ toxins — a standard that covers the full formulation, not just one class of concern.

We chose our fragrance oil supplier based on their internal regulatory standards, their transparency with full Safety Data Sheet documentation, and their compliance with IFRA guidelines — the International Fragrance Association's comprehensive safety standards for fragrance compounds.

Yes. They are different from our Pure Collection candles — the ingredient profile is more complex — and we think it's important to be precise about that rather than making a blanket equivalence.

For the vast majority of customers, our Artisan Collection candles are a genuinely clean, safe, and thoughtfully made product. For customers with significant fragrance sensitivities, chemical sensitivities, or who are burning candles in nurseries or during pregnancy, we recommend our Pure Collection.

We make this distinction because you deserve to make an informed choice — not because one collection is superior to the other, but because different households have different needs and we want our ingredient transparency to actually be useful.

Because honesty sometimes means acknowledging what essential oils can't do.

Vanilla is the clearest example. True vanilla absolute — the extract of the vanilla orchid — is a resinous, semi-solid material that doesn't function reliably as a candle fragrance. Using an "essential oil" labeled vanilla in a candle would mean using something that either isn't pure vanilla or isn't performing the way a candle scent should. We won't do that.

The alternative is a fragrance oil — a synthetically produced compound that can achieve the scent profile accurately and safely when it is made to the right standards. We spent significant time finding an oil that meets those standards: phthalate-free, IFRA-compliant, manufactured without the categories of toxins that concern us, and something we would burn in our own home without hesitation.

We think that's the more honest path than using an "essential oil" that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. And we'll always tell you when a candle uses one.