These Are the Best Winter Candles I Smelled This Year
Winter is peak candle season, with tons of seasonal scents to choose from and an actual reason to light them (darkness! At 4 p.m.! *sobs in front of a SAD lamp*). Since there’s pretty much no limit to the number of winter/holiday candles out there, I yet again made it my personal mission to bring you the best of the best.
I reached out to a variety of candle brands all across the price spectrum, from big retailers to small batch producers. Then, because everyone is different, I invited some friends over to join me for an evening of sniffing a record breaking 106 of them (somehow, more show up every single time I do this). Each candle was grouped into categories by scent notes, and placed in individual paper bags (not lit, don’t worry) so that the smell was concentrated and that my testers weren’t immediately influenced by the packaging.
What you’ll find below are the highest rated candles, plus a few wild cards worth noting.
