Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Scented Soy Large Candle Holiday Iowa Pine -- 7.2 oz

Among all of the hustle and bustle that tends to come with the holiday season, it’s important to cherish your down time and prioritize habits that can help enhance it. A study from Scientia Pharmaceutica says that “the sense of smell plays an important role in the physiological effects of mood, stress and working capacity.” Since smell can have a great impact on your disposition, burning candles can enhance your downtime by reducing stress and improving mood – all while livening up your decor as well. Here are seven benefits of burning candles at home:

1. Create a cozy ambiance

 Whether you’re hosting Christmas dinner with family or having a self-care day alone at home, candles always help create a cozy, relaxed, calm ambience. The warm glow from a candle’s flickering flame instantly makes any atmosphere more inviting. Consider lighting unscented candlesticks on your dinner table or a lavender scented candle on your bedside table.

2. Add tasteful decor

There are several ways to tastefully place candles around your home since they come in many different forms. Unscented, tapered candles make great additions to your dining or entryway table, and single-wick or three-wick scented candles can spruce up the decor in your bedroom, living room, or work space throughout the day. You can even purchase decorative holders to tie the candles in with the rest of your decor.

3. Help you focus

Since lighting candles can help you focus, consider burning them while you’re working from home, tackling chores, or praying. Candles with essential oils such as rosemary, vetiver, jasmine and lavender are popular choices for this.

4. Reduce stress

Candles with essential oils can have aromatherapeutic benefits such as helping reduce stress. A 2019 study demonstrated that inhaling lavender can reduce anxiety, so a natural lavender scented candle may help lower your stress levels. When you’re engaged in high-stress activities such as working or exercising, consider having a eucalyptus or lemon candle burning from now on.

5. Improve mood

Especially around the holidays, candles can help improve your mood. Since people in colder climates tend to spend more time indoors during this time of the year, it can be easy to feel the effects of winter blues. If it’s too cold to leave your home and smell real Christmas trees, a pine scented candle might help lift your spirits!

6. Facilitate memories

Our sense of smell is very closely intertwined with our ability to recall memories. For example, if you wore a certain perfume during your nuptials and you wear that same scent later on in life, smelling this fragrance again could trigger memories from your wedding day. This article from The Harvard Gazette explains that scent, emotion and memory are inextricably intertwined, and as such, scented candles can help resurface fond, positive memories. Try to think back on the happiest moments of your life and remember what they smell like. If you love baking vanilla cupcakes with your kids, you can burn a vanilla scented candle whenever you want to reminisce on these memories and try to remember them in more vivid detail.

7. Create a routine

Candles can be used to create a routine, and you can tailor this around any activity you’d like. You can light a sandalwood candle each time you take a long, warm bath after work to help you relax. You can light candlesticks whenever you make a homemade meal or spend an anniversary at home. You can even light a votive candle each time you pray to help increase your focus. These are just a few examples of how burning candles can be beneficial for your routine. There is a lot of joy that can be found in incorporating candles into your routine according to the mood and atmosphere you’d like to set for that specific time of day. Have fun with it, and be safe.