Best spring candles | Apartment Therapy

Do you hear the birds chirping? See the trees blooming? Feel the rain… raining? Spring is here and it’s time to update your home’s scent. When it comes to spring candles, there are a lot of options out there, and I (again) made it my personal mission to smell as many as my nose could handle, so that I could bring you only the best.

I reached out to a variety of candle brands all across the price spectrum, from big retailers to small batch producers. Then, because everyone is different, I invited some friends over to join me for an evening of sniffing a record breaking 100 of them (yes, it was quite daunting). Each candle was grouped into categories by scent notes, and placed in individual paper bags (not lit, don’t worry) so that the smell was concentrated and that my testers weren’t immediately influenced by the packaging.

What you’ll find below are the highest rated candles by scent category, plus a few wild cards worth noting.