Starting a Candle Making Business in the UK: Checklist

Turning candle making from a hobby into a business is one of the most popular UK side hustles. The making is the fun part. The part that catches people out is everything that has to happen before you can legally sell a single candle.

This is a practical, plain-English checklist for the compliance side of starting a candle making business in the UK — what you need to register, label, document, and insure. None of it is complicated once you know the order to do it in, but skipping a step can mean an Etsy delisting, a Trading Standards letter, or worse.

This covers Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales). Northern Ireland has some differences. This is not legal advice.

The Short Version

Before you sell candles in the UK, you need to:

1. Register as a business (sole trader is fine to start)
2. Make sure every candle is safe and correctly classified under GB CLP
3. Put a compliant CLP label on every candle and wax melt
4. Keep records of your classifications and safety data sheets
5. Get product liability insurance
6. Follow the consumer and online-selling rules for your sales channel

The rest of this guide works through each step in the order most makers do them.

Step 1: Register Your Business

You don't need a special "candle maker" licence, but you do need to be a registered business.

• Sole trader is the simplest structure and is how most candle businesses start. You register with HMRC as a sole trader and report your income through Self Assessment.
• Limited company offers liability protection but adds admin. Most makers move to a company later, once turnover justifies it.

You must tell HMRC you need to file a Self Assessment return by 5 October following the tax year you started trading (the UK tax year runs 6 April to 5 April). If your turnover exceeds the VAT registration threshold, you must register for VAT — but most starting candle businesses are well below it.

Step 2: Understand Which Safety Rules Apply

Candles and wax melts sit under several overlapping rules:

• General Product Safety Regulations 2005 — your products must be safe for normal use. This applies to every consumer product.
• GB CLP Regulation (retained Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008) — scented candles and wax melts are chemical mixtures, and if they classify as hazardous they need CLP labelling. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is the GB CLP authority.
• BS EN 15493 (safety specification) and BS EN 15494 (product safety labels) — these are the recognised British/European standards for candle safety and fire-warning symbols. They are not legally mandatory in themselves, but meeting them is strong evidence that you've met your General Product Safety duty.

The candle itself isn't automatically "hazardous" — but the fragrance oil you add usually carries hazard classifications, and at typical fragrance loads a scented candle or wax melt often classifies for skin sensitisation or similar. That's what triggers CLP labelling.

Step 3: Classify and Label Every Product

This is the step that takes the most work and is the one Trading Standards is most likely to check.

For each candle or wax melt you sell, you need to:

1. Get the safety data sheet (SDS) from your fragrance oil supplier
2. Work out your fragrance load (the percentage of fragrance oil in the finished product)
3. Apply the GB CLP mixture classification rules to determine the hazard categories
4. Produce a CLP label with the correct pictograms, signal word, hazard (H) and precautionary (P) statements, your supplier details, and the nominal quantity

If you reformulate — a new fragrance oil, a different fragrance percentage, a new wax — you have to repeat the classification. A different formulation can produce a different result.

Our step-by-step CLP labelling guide for candle and wax melt makers walks through the whole process, and the free CLP Label Checker will tell you whether an existing label has all the required elements. For the full picture of what every label needs, see the complete UK CLP labels guide.

Step 4: Keep Your Compliance Records

You must be able to show how you classified each product. Keep:

• The SDS for every fragrance oil and any other declared ingredient
• Your fragrance-load calculations
• Which hazard categories each product falls into and why
• The date you did the classification

This evidence is what protects you if a customer complains or Trading Standards asks. It's also what you reproduce each time you tweak a recipe.

Step 5: Get Insurance

Product liability insurance covers you if a product you sold causes injury or damage. It is not legally required, but:

• Most craft fairs and markets require proof of public and product liability cover before they'll give you a pitch
• Some online marketplaces and stockists ask for it
• Without it, a single claim could end the business

Specialist craft insurers offer policies aimed at candle makers, often bundled with public liability. Shop around — cover suitable for a small candle business is usually inexpensive.

Step 6: Follow the Selling Rules for Your Channel

Where you sell adds its own requirements:

• Online (Etsy, Amazon Handmade, your own website): The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give buyers a 14-day right to cancel most online orders, and you must provide clear pre-contract information (price, delivery, returns, your business details). Marketplaces increasingly check for CLP compliance before allowing listings in regulated categories.
• Craft fairs and markets: You'll usually need proof of insurance and may need to show your products are correctly labelled.
• Wholesale to shops: Stockists often ask for your CLP documentation and SDS before they'll take stock.

For the wider set of rules that apply across craft products, see our guide to the laws on selling homemade crafts in the UK, and for candle-specific detail the legal requirements for selling homemade candles and wax melts.

A Realistic First-90-Days Order

If you're starting from scratch, this is a sensible sequence:

1. Weeks 1–2: Register as a sole trader. Choose your fragrance oils and get the SDS for each.
2. Weeks 2–4: Classify your first product range and create CLP labels. Set up your record-keeping.
3. Weeks 3–4: Arrange product liability insurance.
4. Week 4 onward: Set up your sales channel with the right consumer information, list compliant products, and start selling.

FAQ

Do I need a licence to sell candles in the UK?

No. There is no specific candle-maker licence. You need to be a registered business (sole trader is fine), and your candles must meet product-safety and CLP labelling requirements. Insurance is strongly recommended but not legally required.

Do all candles need a CLP label?

Scented candles and wax melts are chemical mixtures and usually need CLP labelling because the fragrance oils carry hazard classifications. Unscented candles with no hazardous components may not require CLP hazard labelling, but you should still confirm the classification rather than assume.

How much does it cost to start a candle business legally?

The compliance costs are modest: business registration is free, fragrance-oil SDS documents are free from suppliers, and product liability insurance for a small maker is typically inexpensive. The main cost is your time doing the CLP classification — which is why many makers use a tool to generate labels from their formulations rather than doing it by hand each time.

Can I sell candles on Etsy without CLP labels?

Etsy increasingly requires compliance documentation for regulated products and can delist listings without proper CLP labels. If your candles classify as hazardous, you need compliant CLP labelling before listing.

Compliance Doesn't Have to Be the Hard Part

The making is the bit you got into this for. If you'd rather not redo CLP classification by hand every time you add a fragrance or tweak a recipe, you can generate and manage compliant labels from your formulations with CraftCert — see pricing.

Sources

• GOV.UK — Set up as a sole trader
• General Product Safety Regulations 2005
• HSE — The GB CLP Regulation
• Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 — CLP Regulation (retained GB law)
• Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013