CVA Products Podcast

Clean Candles, Cleaner Air: A Practical Guide To Healthier Soy Candles

• Trang Nguyen • Episode 5

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How Do Soy Candles Support A Healthier Home Environment?

The soft glow of a candle shouldn’t come with a scratchy throat. We dig into the surprising truth behind wax choices, wick design, and fragrance load so your cozy ritual supports cleaner air instead of filling your space with soot and irritants. Trang Nguyen, maker behind CVA Products, compares paraffin, soy, beeswax, and coconut, unpacking why a label that says “soy blend” doesn’t always mean what you think and how allergies and asthma can flare when the wrong materials meet an overloaded scent.

We walk through practical, shopper-ready tips: how to tell if a candle is truly 100 percent soy, why beeswax burns long and clean, and when coconut works for performance but not for households with coconut sensitivities. You’ll hear why soot isn’t just a wax problem but also a wick problem, how cotton and engineered wood wicks behave differently, and the simple burn habits that set memory, prevent tunneling, and keep smoke to a minimum. Along the way we demystify fragrance: supplier-recommended percentages for soy (often 10 to 12 percent), the risks of cranking up the load to chase a stronger scent, and an easy market test for spotting candles that are too overpowering before you even pick up a jar.

If you care about air quality, have kids or teens with sensitivities, or just want a calm home without chemical fog, this guide arms you with questions to ask and labels to decode. Learn to choose materials that fit your values, avoid triggers that sneak up over time, and make every burn session slower, cleaner, and more enjoyable. Subscribe for more clean living tips, share this episode with a friend who loves candles, and leave a review to tell us your best clean-burn trick.

To learn more about CVA Products visit:
https://www.CVAProducts.com
CVA Products
121 Olive Street
Keller, TX 76248
817-915-1347

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the TBA Products Podcast, where Texas Get finally gets a gentle care of the Dicking Force. Hosted by Cry Wynn, founder of TVA Products in Keller, Texas, a handmade skincare brand born from love, necessity, and delicious food. Whether you're a busy mom, a well-mithed family, or someone tired of playing ingredient roulette, this podcast is for you. From almond goat milk soap to balls that tackle everything from diaper rash to dad's dry elbow. Our products are clean, kind, and kid approved. Whether it's toddlers, teens, or your own grown-up skin drama, we've got you covered.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, they smell amazing, but soy candles do more than set the mood. Let's explore how they contribute to cleaner air and calmer spaces. Welcome back, everyone. I am Millie M, co-host and producer back in the studio with Trang Wen, founder of C VA Products. How's it going? Grey, how are you? I am doing well. Let's talk about something cozy and clean. How do soy candles support a healthier home environment?

SPEAKER_02:

There are candles you can make with different types of wax. Okay. The one that you can find like in a retail store, regular retail store, they usually call petroleum um wax. That's basically it's petroleum and it's not uh healthy. Um, and then we have candle that made with soy. And then we have candle that can make with bee wax. And then we have candle can make with coconut wax, and then you can do a uh a blend soy blend. So when I do soy blend, maybe a soy with either petroleum or soy blend with coconut. Um, you have to ask because when on the label, it would say soy blend, and you just don't know what they blending. So only the maker will tell you what they blend in. Or okay, so for me, I only do soy because it's vegan, and most of my customers are allergic to coconut, so I try not to use coconut, so I can't use soy blend, even though coconut is good. The best candle is bee wax, but bee wax is very natural, uh, but it's very expensive because bee is super expensive and is uh is burned very long time too. Um and it's very very clean. When you burn them, you don't see any suiting like a flex smoke. If you know if you burn regular candle, I burned when I was young, I burned a lot of uh body. So I burn a lot of the candle, and when I burn them, I noticed like there's a flex, like suiting. Um, when you burn them, you can see a lot of flaxing, and I don't even know what they are. So they cause soot. And when you burn them, you see the flaxene, they're really bad for you because you inhale them into your lung, and this can cause a lot of things like um lung cancer down the road, especially uh that and also the wax itself is petroleum, it's even worse. And then on top of that, is if it's like ferment oil, it can also trigger your allergy and your asthma. So, like for instance, right now my daughter and I have my daughter have asthma, but we also have allergy. So when we burn a regular candle, we either sneeze or we cough constantly. And when it happens, I know it's the sounds in the candle that triggers, I have to stop in order to pick up, you know, breathing. With soy, when you burn soy, soy is burned very slow. Uh, it doesn't burn fast because it likes to burn in the cool temperatures. And so I'd say a four-ounce jar, really tiny jar, you can burn about 21 hours. And in order for the sun to come out correctly, you have to burn at least three to four hours. Unlike the regular candle, I'm talking about a regular that you want to store, you burn it, the sun comes out right away. Soy is uh because it's made from, you know, it's very vegan, and so it takes time for it to burn for the sun to come out, and then um every time when you burn like with a small one, the wick is very small. And so you don't normally the safety guard you have to trim the wig, but because if the candle is so small, they can fall out. You should, I wouldn't recommend you trim them that much because when you trim them, there's not much wick left to burn. And also um the wax itself is not the major the causing the suit, uh the suit when you burn them. It's the wick also, the wig. So there are different types of wick in the markets. The cleanest one um most people using it, you can do um is either cotton wick or bamboo stick, like the one that they stick it down. Um, I think that's most candlemakers nowadays using that. I am not uh part of that. Um I haven't changed with that one yet. Because I I mean the the time um um the rumors like okay when you burn the um the wooden stick, you can hear the attacking attacking in the sounds. I I I don't care that much, but I like it. Yeah. Um but it's um it had to be compatible though. So not every wax will be compatible with the the wig itself. So as a candle maker, sometimes you have to test it and test it and get the cable wrong too. Um so I always stick with it on wig, which is I think it's super clean and flopsy, and you see it and come from me and it's wrong not really because like the light is scent. So when you grow a candle, when you buy a candle, um you don't want to buy people with strong scents, but my tip is when you buy a candle, try not to get a strong, too much strong scent to empower trend because when you when you smell a sniffer candle when the can the smell is too strong, this two thing, well there's at least one thing I know is going wrong is the amount of um essential, like the amount of scent that they put inside when they mix it with the candle, it could be too much. And the guideline is that when you're making uh the candle, um there are certain percentages that you're supposed to be mixing in the candle based on the amount. So let's say for instance, um, if you're doing a four-ounce uh candle, you can do the maximum with soy. Every wax is a little bit different. For soy you can do up to 10 or 12 percent. The manufacturers always provide the information to you. So if you're using, some people were using because of like shots and they could use them 20% or 30% to make the sand a bit stronger when you burn the house that smell good. But they don't know the downside of it, the the bad side of it is that when you put it over the amount that was recommended by the supplier, it can turn into um you inhale too much chemical inside your body.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

Those fragrances can be triggering as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Side term is okay in the long term, you will notice like your allergies start to develop and you'll be sneezing something somehow along the line, but it's not you don't see it right away, but it takes a couple years because some of my customers did come back and told me that they burn candles for like a really long time in order to see the side effects really kick into them.

SPEAKER_01:

That definitely makes sense. So if a person is looking for a cleaner candle, they start by looking for something soy, make sure they know what the soy blend is, um know what the wick is made out of, and make sure that it's not too overly fragrant. Would you say those are correct that you would give to someone?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, so um the label itself is sometimes not really clear enough. Um when I go and buy a candle or even look around. Um, I usually see them they say soy, but I'm gonna ask, is it really 100% soy or is it soy blend? And then the next thing I would ask is they say, okay, uh fragment with fragrance scents. So I always ask because some people do call essential oil fragrance, but you don't know unless you've asked. So I don't buy fragrant oil. Although fragrant oil, they some would be safe and some would be unsafe. It depends on where they got their supply from. Um, but sometimes they don't know that and it's kind of like too much to leave some some makers, they probably know if you ask them too many questions, they're not all like that. So um I always ask them, okay, when you say fragment, are you using me like is it really fragment oil or is that essential oil? Or are you blending? You blend them, you can call fragment oil because it's um it's a blend, it's not pure either side. And then I also started asking questions, like, okay, how much are you using in this? But if normally I can tell if a new person they won't be able to know if I walk by a candle booth and I can smell the candle without stuffing inside the booth. Right. You know that it's overly fragrant. And it's like, okay, I don't like when it's too overpowered because then it's gonna get me, I couldn't be breathing. So that's me having an issue. But that's also something you can put in the back of your mind, you walk by, and you you're electric if you don't get allergy and you can smell it outside of your booth, and that candle is too overpowering, you might want to get something a little bit lighter, um, that it'll be easier for you.

SPEAKER_01:

Great advice. Thank you so much. Or they can just make sure that they call you or go onto your website and get your candles, which we know um are made with all the best ingredients. That was very enlightening, and we'll see you next time for more clean living tips. I see you next time.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for tuning in to the TVA Products Podcast, where we believe further days start with gentler skin. Ready to simplify your family's skincare routine? Visit TVAproducts.com. Text us at 817-915-1247 or stop five at 121 hours together, Texas.