Our story
One person, one workshop, ten days of patience.
Candles by Midnight began in 2025 in Ludhiana, Punjab. It is still small enough that one person sees every candle through from melt to box.
See how they are madeWhy we started
Richa Sharma started Candles by Midnight in 2025, hand-crafting every candle herself in her own workshop in Ludhiana. That has not changed as the range has grown. Each candle is still poured by hand, in batches small enough that one person sees it through from melt to box.
The starting point was a simple frustration. Most candles sold in India are either imported at prices that make them an occasion in themselves, or mass-produced from paraffin with a fragrance that disappears within the hour. There was very little in between: nothing made here, made properly, at a price an ordinary household could justify as a gift.
So the brief was narrow and it has not moved. Use a wax worth using. Cure it long enough for the fragrance to actually bind. Build scents from an Indian vocabulary rather than a borrowed one. Price it so that giving one does not require an occasion.
What we insist on
100% GMO-free soya wax. Soy burns cooler and cleaner than paraffin and holds fragrance without petroleum soot on your walls. It costs more than the alternative, which is the entire reason most brands do not use it.
Ten days of curing. This is the step almost everyone skips, because it is ten days of finished stock sitting in a workshop earning nothing. Curing is what lets fragrance bind into the wax rather than flashing off in the first hour of burning. A candle shipped the day it is poured smells weaker for its whole life.
Vegan, always. Plant-based wax, no beeswax, no animal-derived additives, and cotton wicks with no lead core.
IFRA-certified fragrance, at an 8–10% load. High enough to scent an ordinary Indian living room without becoming cloying in a closed one.
Scents Diptyque will never make
The Scent Library is twelve fragrances, and most of them are built around notes that mean something specific here. Mysore sandalwood. Pushkar rose. Madurai jasmine. Idukki cardamom. Khus vetiver, the root woven into screens and hung in doorways to cool a house before air conditioning existed. Petrichor — rain landing on dry earth, which is not a metaphor in India, it is a season.
These are not exotic. They are ordinary, and that is the point. A French maison building a candle for a global market has no reason to reach for them, and no particular reason to get them right. We grew up with them.
Explore the Scent Library, or let the Scent Advisor narrow it for you.
Made to be given
Most of what leaves the workshop is a gift. That shapes decisions that have nothing to do with wax: a printed card free with every order, hand-written in ink for ₹15, and never a price or an invoice inside a parcel going to someone else. An urli that stays in the family long after the wax is gone. A jar that becomes a brush pot.
Where we are going next is more of the same, slowly. More scents drawn from places that deserve them. Better photography. Eventually, a workshop large enough to let more people learn to pour properly — without the batches getting so big that nobody is watching them.
Questions
About us, answered
Who makes Candles by Midnight?
Richa Sharma, the founder and CEO, hand-crafts every candle in her own workshop in Ludhiana, Punjab. The business started in 2025.
Where are your candles made?
All of them are poured by hand in our workshop in Ludhiana, Punjab, and shipped from there across India.
What wax do you use?
100% GMO-free soya wax — vegan, with no paraffin and no lead in the wicks. Soy burns cooler and cleaner, and holds fragrance well.
Why do you cure candles for ten days?
Curing lets the fragrance bind into the wax instead of evaporating off during the first burn. It is the step most makers skip, because it means finished stock sitting in the workshop for ten days. A candle shipped the day it is poured smells weaker for its entire life.
Are your candles vegan?
Yes. 100% plant-based soya wax with no beeswax or animal-derived additives, and cotton wicks.
Do you do custom and corporate orders?
Yes, from 50 units upward with GST invoicing and logo branding on packaging and cards. See corporate gifting.