The Best-Smelling Candles for Every Kind of Mood
The best candles 2021 has to offer pull double-duty. Not only will they make hibernating inside during the worst of the winter feel like a bona fide retreat, they'll also bless your space with the same type of intangible mood for much less dough than some vintage Scandinavian furniture. These days, a fantastic-smelling candle is apt to be as handsome as it is fragrant—choose the right one and it'll look equally swell perched on a coffee table piled high with impressive design tomes as it will nestled in an especially feng shui-ed corner of your living room.
To help you pick you crib's new signature scent, we went deep on the very best candles 2021 has to offer, from big-name candle brands you know and love to indie operations cranking out small-batch soy wax that could go whiff for whiff with their most luxurious competitors. (They happen to make for pretty perfect, hassle-free holiday gifts, too.) No matter which way your olfactory tastes skew, one of these will have your quarters smelling like a den of sensual pleasures—even if you have two roommates. Here's 21 of our favorites you can buy right now.
All products featured on GQ are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
- 1/21
D.S. & Durga "Tuberose Myrrhder" candle
Since 2015, Brooklyn-based perfumery D.S. & Durga has been honing its craft, selling highly specific fragrances that've made devoted fans out of some the most discerning aesthetes in the world. The brand specializes in scents that promise an at-home sensory adventure as vivid as any IRL trip, and its punnily-named Tuberose Myrrhder candle is no exception. Released earlier this year, its made with tuberose extract—a plant with a sweet, slightly tropical smell—and over 60 ingredients the brand harmonized to land on exactly the right formulation. Accented by heady notes of Ethiopian myrrh, cacao, currant, and Madagascar vanilla, it's a candle designed to transport you to the far-flung locale of your choice—no matter how long it's been since you left the house.
- 2/21
Cire Trudon classic candle
When it comes to sheer pedigree, Cire Trudon is tough to beat. Founded in 15th century France, the brand rose to fame as the official candle provider for the royal court of Louis XIV, eventually evolving into one of the largest wax factories in the entire kingdom. Revived in the mid-aughts by creative polymath Ramdane Touhami, it's emerged as a reliable source for some of the most deeply luxurious candles in the world, each encased in glass vessels fit for a monarch. The brand's most classic scent features notes of bergamot, honey, and cinnamon, and if the only thing you remember from your trip to Versailles is how damn good the place smelled it's the candle for you. Vive la France!
- 3/21
Boy Smells "Kush" candle
Over the last few years, Boy Smells' candles have become a mainstay of cooler-than-thou environments: The young L.A. brand has made a name for itself hawking unique-smelling candles wrapped in the type of immediately identifiable packaging that happens to look great on the 'gram. A certain degree of ubiquity (even in all the right places) does not always a quality product make, but the brand's beeswax-blended Kush candle more than lives up to the hype. It mixes notes of white musk, amber and—you guessed it—weed in a formula that'll have your place smelling like a newly-annointed hot spot in the cultural capital of your choice.
- 4/21
Diptyque "Baies" candle
Let this serve as a PSA to any newfangled candle upstarts hawking an intoxicating scent made by experts in the field: Diptyque walked so all of you could run. The legendary Parisian fragrance operation has been churning out quality candles since the early '60s, and after all these years ol' faithful still has plenty of pep in its stride. The brand's Baies candle—an aromatic blend of blackcurrant berries and flowery accents—might be the most famous in its extensive repertoire, and if you're on the hunt for a foolproof scented candle you'll never get tired of sniffing it's hard to top this one.
- 5/21
Ralph Lauren single-wick holiday candle
It doesn't matter how many times you've blasted "Deck The Halls" at ear-shattering decibels—the holiday season hasn't officially started until it smells like Christmas. We've called Ralph Lauren's classic candle the Bentley of its genre in the past, and we're sticking by the honorific today. The reigning king of all things Americana uses a warm mix of evergreen, red currant, and juniper berry to get those holiday juices flowing in earnest, and then wraps it all in the type of sleek translucent glass holder (and even handsomer tartan box) you'd expect from a preeminent master of the lifestyle brand. Light it up now to kick off the holiday season with finesse.
- 6/21
Maude burn no. 1 massage candle
Maude's cult-loved candle kills two birds with one very sultry stone. It'll help set the mood via warm notes of amber, cedar leaf, and lemongrass, and then when things are heating up (literally and metaphorically) its oil base means it can be poured or massaged directly onto the skin. Let the candle burn for ten minutes or so to allow a sufficient amount of oil to form, gently blow out the flame, and voila: your evening at home is about to get a whole lot more interesting.
- 9/21
Malin+Goetz dark rum candle
Ahoy there, matey. Looking for a candle infused with the unmistakable scent of the bay rum favored by famously boozed-up sailors of yore? You're in luck: Malin+Goetz makes it. The brand's dark rum candle incorporates hints of plum, bergamot, and creamy milk to sweeten the otherwise spicy fragrance—an alluring blend that manages to balance its namesake's warmth with a welcome dose of freshness. (Treasure map very much sold separately.)
- 10/21
Byredo "Bibliotheque" candle
So the closest thing you've got to a study is a single, overstuffed bookcase piled high with the kind of useless miscellanea Marie Kondo has nightmares about. Fret not. Byredo's signature scent will help your home smell like the type of place that's hiding a mahogany-lined library brimming with rare first editions thanks to touches of peach, plum, vanille, and a strong undercurrent of patchouli.
- 14/21
Bath & Body Works White Barn marshmallow fireside candle
Writing for this very magazine in 2017, Caity Weaver penned the definitive ode to Bath & Body Works' surprisingly subtle candle. (A taste: "As you recline, swaddled in its cozy scent, allow your mind to sift through the various permutations of mental image its riddlesome name is attempting to summon: A comfortably wealthy marshmallow settling down by the magnificent fireplace of its drafty mansion; a hearth crafted entirely of poofy marshmallows in a suburban home otherwise composed of standard building materials; a sticky, blackened lump, plummeting heartbreakingly to earth in the glow of a friendly campfire after stretching past its maximum tensile capacity and melting off the stick on which it had been recently impaled.") What was true then is true now: the beguilingly-named mass-market candle smells as evocative as it sounds.
- 15/21
Charlot Roman hot spring candle
L.A.-based Charlot Roman is obsessed with the transportive power of film. Each of the brand's locally-made candles are directly inspired by a cinematic classic, in this case Federico Fellini's early '60s epic 8 ½, shot almost entirely in an idyllic retreat outside of Rome. With hits of Italian citrus and fresh eucalyptus, it'll saturate your space with the main character energy of Marcello Mastroianni every time you light it up.
- 17/21
Wary Meyers mediterranean fig candle
Wary Meyers' candle might be poured by hand in Maine, but it takes its fragrant cues from the intoxicating blend of scents distinct to the mediterranean, including herbal cassis, pink grapefruit, and wild celery. Let this soy wax puppy rip and you're three-fourths of the way to a delicious salad—and a living room that smells like an Aegean bed and breakfast.
- 21/21
Makers of Wax Goods sandalwood musk candle
Along with a grip of cold-weather goodies, our latest Best Stuff Box also happens to include one of our all-time favorite candles courtesy of the SoCal scent experts at Makers of Wax. It's no exaggeration to say the brand's sandalwood musk candle is a perennial crowd-pleaser—right now, it's entirely sold out everywhere you look. Except here. Because for our Winter Box, we convinced ’em to bring the candle back exclusively for our members. Subscribe now and you can snag the veritable home goods grail—and a slew of menswear essentials and top-tier grooming products—for only 50 bucks a pop.
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