The Goal: Find the most elegant and longest-lasting tapered candles for your dining table’s candlesticks. We spoke to candle-makers and seasoned hosts, who guided us away from paraffin wax (it produces soot when burned) and toward beeswax, which is a natural air purifier with a sweet honey smell.
The Verdict: In keeping with their homespun aesthetic, 100 percent beeswax candles are usually made only in their natural yellowish tint rather than an assortment of colors. But Greentree Home’s everyday tapers come in 18 warm and vibrant shades mixed and perfected by owner Jenifer Green, who has a degree in fine arts. The candles are hand-poured in the Catskills into a housemade mold and finished off with a cotton wick, and because beeswax is dense and burns at a higher temperature than other waxes, each candle lasts up to 20 hours, about twice as long as non-beeswax options, and remains nearly dripless.
*This article appears in the December 12, 2016, issue of New York Magazine.
