Best Christmas Tree Scented Candles
A convincingly aromatic candle can help your artificial tree fake it till it makes it
When you shop through retailer links on our site, we may earn affiliate commissions. 100% of the fees we collect are used to support our nonprofit mission. Learn more.
If you’ve opted for an artificial Christmas tree this year, congrats—no more messy needles to clean up come January. But you might be missing one major aspect of having a real conifer in your home, and that’s the fresh evergreen aroma of pine, fir, or spruce.
That distinctive smell you’re craving is due to chemical compounds in conifers called terpenes, which are abundant in the trees’ resin and made of molecules that smell of pine, citrus, and, in many minds, Christmas spirit.
How We Evaluated the Christmas Tree Scented Candles
We purchased 18 scented candles and conducted a blind sniff test to weed out the candles that smelled nothing like a Christmas tree. The majority did not make the cut, including:
Anthropologie Eirwen, Bath & Body Works Tree Farm, Bulk Apothecary Balsam Fir, Diptyque Sapin/Pine Tree, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Iowa Pine, Sand + Fog Winter Pine, Threshold (Target) Forest Fir, Trapp White Fir, Village Candle Christmas Tree, Williams Sonoma Through The Woods Iced Evergreen, Yankee Candle Tree Farm Festival
Many of these smelled sweet, not green or woody, and like generically perfumed wax. Our panel likened the candles’ scents to soap, car fresheners, cheap lotion, and the lingering effects of visiting a Hollister store.
We put the remaining candles through a more thorough sensory evaluation and comparison, considering factors such as intensity, hedonic tone (how pleasant it is), and the candle’s throw, which is its ability to fill the room with aroma.
Members can read on to see which three candles we’re putting out alongside our artificial Christmas trees this season.