When you’re shopping for candles, the shelves are often filled with seemingly similar products. Intentional and psychology-backed candle branding separates your product from everyone else’s and communicates your unique story to potential customers.
But what is candle branding, and how do you craft yours? Here’s everything you need to know, broken down by a brand strategist & website designer.
What Is Candle Branding?
Candle branding is everything that defines your business identity in the marketplace. This includes:
- Visual elements (logo, packaging design, color palette, and other brand assets)
- Your brand narrative and origin story
- Core values and mission
- Brand voice and communication style
- Deep understanding of your target audience
Many candle businesses focus exclusively on visual components, creating attractive labels or containers without developing the substance behind them.
Effective candle branding is beautiful, no doubt about it, but it also has thoughtful alignment between your visual identity and your brand’s underlying purpose.
Simply put: Your visual elements should be meaningful representations of your brand story, not just random nice-looking colors and graphics you got on Canva.
Learn more about building your brand strategy.
Why Candle Branding and Packaging Matter
It’s no secret that the candle market is saturated. According to the National Candle Association, more than 10,000 different candle scents currently compete for consumer attention just in the US.
Without strategic branding, your products risk becoming invisible – not because they’re not high-quality, but simply because there are so many other options out there.
Candle branding gives you the framework to distinctively position your candles.
When done right, branding turns your candles from commodities into experiences with emotional significance. Your customers start investing in not just the candle itself, but also the atmosphere, memories, and feelings your brand promises to deliver.
How Do You Brand Candles?
1. Define Your Brand Identity
The first step is to establish the foundational aspects of your brand. Your brand identity is the blueprint that all of your branding decisions should follow.
Define these brand components:
- Mission statement: What your candle business aims to accomplish
- Core values: The principles that guide your business decisions
- Brand story: The authentic narrative behind your company’s origin
- Voice and tone: How your brand communicates with customers
- Unique selling proposition: What makes your candles different
- Brand personality: The human characteristics your brand embodies
- Long-term vision: Where you see your candle business heading
Many founders fall into the trap of creating generic mission statements and values that sound nice but lack substance. Instead of settling for statements that could apply to any brand, dig deeper into what truly drives YOUR business. Being specific = authentic differentiation.
This is why many business owners decide to work with a brand strategist like Bethany Works®! We’ll challenge vague statements and help extract what makes your approach genuinely unique.
2. Research Your Target Audience
To effectively market your candle brand, you need to have an in-depth understanding of who you’re marketing to. This might sound basic, but many business owners identify demographics like their audience’s age and income and think that’s enough – it’s not.
You need to dive into psychographics – the values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle choices that drive consumer behavior – to build candle branding that resonates with your audience on a deeper level.
Consumers increasingly make purchasing decisions based on personal values rather than just product features. For example, recent research shows that:
- 62% of Gen Z consumers want to buy from brands that value sustainability
- 73% will pay more for products from sustainable brands
- Three-quarters of consumers say inclusion and diversity influence their purchase decisions
Especially when marketing to younger generations, it’s essential to understand who your consumers are as PEOPLE, not just data points. What causes do they support? How do they spend their free time? What do they value in their homes?
Understanding your target audience is how you build psychology-backed branding that builds genuine relationships with your target audience instead of merely an aesthetic one.
RESULTS THAT SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES
Download our case studies + client experiences to review the impact of our website design and brand strategy services have beyond the stunning deliverables you’ll find in our portfolio.
3. Design Your Candle Branding
Once you have a firm understanding of both your brand AND your target audience, it’s time to develop visual elements that meaningfully express your brand’s essence.
You’ll typically need these essential branding assets:
- Logo design: The primary visual identifier for your candle brand
- Color palette: 3-5 colors that evoke your brand’s emotional qualities
- Typography system: Consistent fonts for headings and body text
- Packaging design: Labels, boxes, and containers that reflect your brand
- Product photography style: Consistent visual approach to showcasing your products
- Website design: Online presence that aligns with your brand identity
- Social media templates: Cohesive visual framework for digital content
- Brand style guide: Documentation of all visual standards and usage rules
Learn more about our design services and how we can help you unearth your brand®.
Candle Branding Ideas
Southwest Wanderlust is a vacation rental brand, and they have a signature scent. To create this candle branding, we leaned into the organic natural textures of Southwest Wanderlust, especially the stone, tiles, and warm woods.
The Flower Pot
The Flower Pot is a luxurious brand of vacation rentals with a signature scent. For their label, we created an elegant and sophisticated aesthetic using a neutral color palette of white, amber/brown, and gold against a muted gray background. It conveys an upscale yet artisanal feel.
Want to build an unmistakable brand and are not sure where to start? Take this Brand Personality Quiz!
FAQs
How Do You Name a Candle Brand?
There’s no one best way to name your candle brand. The first thing you should do is identify your unique market position and brand personality. You can name your brand after the sensory experience they provide, your core values, your origin story – there are so many opportunities to let your creativity shine. Avoid names that sound similar to existing candle brands or use generic terms like “flame” or “wick” without a distinguishing element.
When you work with Bethany Works®, we can assist with naming!
What Makes a Candle Company Luxury?
Exceptional quality of your materials and presentation is the natural foundation, but you also need to communicate the luxurious nature of your candles through your branding. Luxury candle brands use refined typography, sophisticated color palettes, and high-quality packaging materials. They also use specific and evocative language to describe scent profiles.
How to Stand Out in the Candle Business?
The most effective way to stand out as a candle business is to embrace what makes your brand uniquely you and connect it with your target audience’s psychology and values. Don’t try to imitate what successful brands are doing. Instead, amplify your proprietary brand perspective and express it through an authentic brand strategy. There’s no one else who shares your story, and that’s your biggest asset.
Unearth Your Candle Branding with Bethany Works®
Bethany Works® designs candle branding that positions you in front of your target audience and speaks directly to their subconscious preferences and relevant emotional needs.
Take a look at our Portfolio or learn more about our design services!
