Cheap Tealight Candles: The 3 Best Sources

Tealight candles are often a necessity. Many candle holders are specifically designed for tealight sized candles, and if you have a tart warmer or potpourri burner, chances are that it, too, requires tealight candles. Tealight candles are small wax candles in plastic or metal cups with a small flame that can be used for many purposes. But the cost of tealights vary widely from store to store, and since it is easy to use a lot of them, it makes sense to try to find the lowest price available. I've searched high and low for cheap tealight candles, and these are the 3 best places to get them in my opinion:

1) Ikea - This Swedish furniture store is a great place to find inexpensive items in general, and that certainly includes tealight candles. Ikea sells a bag of 100 tealight candles in metal cups for just $1.99, which is only $0.02 per tealight. You won't find them cheaper than that anywhere else. The Ikea tealights burn well, although in a bag of 100 you might find a few misshapen ones that will work fine in a tart burner but might not fit in some small candle holders since they aren't perfectly round. But, the insanely low price makes a few imperfect tealights perfectly acceptable to me, and I think most people will agree.

2) Wal-Mart or Target - Although Ikea is the absolute cheapest store to get tealights at, there are many areas of the country that do not have an Ikea store. But, just about every town in America has a Wal-Mart or Target store, and these big-box retailers also sell tealight candles very inexpensively. I have been able to find a bag of 50 tealights at Wal-Mart for $1.50, and the same sized bag at Target for $1.79. This is still a very low price-per-tealight compared to what some companies are selling them for. Plus, the tealights from Wal-Mart and Target are much more likely to be perfectly shaped, eliminating a small annoyance when compared with Ikea.

3) The Dollar Store - Finally, most dollar stores sell tealight candles, but surprisingly, when you look at the cost per candle, they are often not the cheapest store. My local dollar store sells a box of 10 tealights for $1.00, which works out to $0.10 per tealight. This isn't a horrible price, but it is 5 times more expensive than the tealights from Ikea. But, dollar stores are pretty much everywhere, so if you need cheap tealights in a pinch, they might be a good bet.

One place to NEVER buy tealights is the mall: stores like Yankee Candle, Bath & Body Works, Hallmark, and The Body Shop all sell tealights, but they are not worth the money. These stores may make great scented candles, but a tealight is usually used just for heat or light and it's really not worth spending $5.99 or more per bag to get them from a mall store. If you're in a mall, chances are they have a dollar store, so get your scented candles wherever you want, but swing by the dollar store to grab your tealights.