Would your life look better by candlelight? 

When Jess Wheeler moved to the wild moorlands and mountains of north-east Wales three years ago, it ignited a creative spark. Living in a remote, poorly lit 13th-century farmhouse with shoddy electrics, where the family chop wood and build fires for heat, compelled the former set designer to seek out alternative sources of illumination. Working from a converted cow shed in the garden, Wheeler began forging her own sculptural foliage candle sconces and chandeliers; brass renderings of the leaves fallen from an old oak tree outside her studio. She hasn’t stopped since. 

Her latest metalwork design, which launches in April, is an oval wall-hung candle wreath composed of brass garlands of climbing English ivy. In the absolute darkness of the Welsh Berwyn ranges, the burnished patina of the brass, set against the flickering flame of a candle, conjures an ethereal glow. “It’s really magical,” she says. For Wheeler, the act of lighting her creations is an analogue joy that sets the mood. “There’s a sense of celebration,” she says. “Even alone, it’s a commitment to settle down into a space.” In a candlelit room, she suggests, you’re more likely to sit, think and read, or have a conversation than watch TV. 

Lola Lely, the co-founder of Wax Atelier, an experimental east London studio, describes wax as “prehistoric plastic”. She creates handmade twisted and tapered candles, and naturally dyed beeswax-finished textiles, employing a traditional dipping technique. Working with natural beeswax from The London Honey Company but also innovative German-made waxes formed from green tea, rose and orange (as a byproduct of the orange juice industry), Lely has a deep understanding of her medium – and the power of candlelight. 

“Striking a match, trimming the wick or blowing out the flame are ritualistic steps that can help you to disconnect from the stresses of urban life,” says Lely, who even works by candlelight during the day. For her, it’s a practice that connects us to an ancient past, when candlelight provided a moment of spiritual illumination in a far darker world. She has observed a growing appreciation among consumers for natural candle-making. At the beginning of winter, as the energy crisis prompted fears of blackouts, Wax Atelier saw a huge upswing in sales, and customers shared their candle customs on social media. “The use of candles makes people much more aware of the finite quality of resources. Wax is still a precious material – you can’t just create it in abundance without nature being present. It’s all interconnected with the bees and flowers.” 

Lighting a candle is a commitment to settle down into a space

Candlelight burns brightly in the work of wife-and-husband designers Hannah Plumb and James Russell of the creative studio JamesPlumb. They conjure magical environments such as a candlelit evening for Hermès and bold, brutalist objects such as Steel Roots, the vast, modular candelabrum designed for private clients in New York. The pair devised a short film study of the shadow of candles on a 19th-century chandelier (first in 2012, and more recently for the Mayfair members’ club Maison Estelle), which is a commentary on the candle as a measure of passing time. In the medieval era, scholars might speak of writing for two candles per night. “The world we live in is far too bright,” says Plumb. “All that light adds extra noise and interference to us as human beings.” 

Though much has been gained through electrification – convenience, cleanliness, clarity – they also ask what has been erased. “We’ve lost a whole way of seeing, and being, that comes from everything being too exposed. Bright electric light has infiltrated every aspect of life to the extent that shadows are becoming a luxury,” says Plumb. She points to the seminal 1934 essay by the Japanese novelist Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, which explores the mysterious beauty of candlelight, and the role it has played in aesthetics from Kabuki theatre to lacquerware. “Darkness seen by candlelight – it was a repletion, a pregnancy of tiny particles like fine ashes, each particle luminous as a rainbow,” he writes. “Our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, came to discover the beauty in shadows.” As Japan, like America, pursued a neon-bright quest of electric illumination, Tanizaki lamented a fast-receding candlelit past in which the ornaments of Japanese homes served only to bring depth to the shadows. 

After all, it was only a century ago, in the ’20s, that it became commonplace to live in a house lit solely by electricity. “In times past, an abundance of light in the home signalled prosperity and wellbeing… conspicuous consumption,” writes Maureen Dillon in Artificial Sunshine: A Social History of Domestic Lighting. Most homes were brightened by fires and rushlights; beeswax, and even good-quality tallow candles – introduced by the Romans, were largely the domain of the wealthy.

According to Louis Platman, a curator at the Museum of the Home in east London, where visitors can tour almshouses dating to 1714, the world was divided into those with light and those without. “I’m often asked what they would have done once it got dark,” says Platman. “The answer is, go to bed. Light was a luxury,” he adds of the upper middle-class preoccupation with late-dinner dining and carousing: one of the most extravagant examples being the occasion in 1695 when the mirrored walls of the Galerie des Glaces at the Château de Versailles were lit by 7,000 candles. 

The decorative use of mirror and glass to amplify light endures. The south London home of Charlotte Freemantle and Will Fisher – founders of the reproduction and antique fireplaces, furniture and lighting firm Jamb – is filled with original Georgian pier glasses. And these soft gilt mirrors, whose perished, mercury-bevelled plates hold a pair of candle sconces, have inspired their most recent design. “There’s nothing more soothing than these mirrors, which were always intended as a light source,” says Fisher, who recently collaborated with Moro Dabron on a candle design inspired by the hub of a Roman chariot. 

Much of Jamb’s lighting, including its signature lanterns, comes with the option for a candle rather than electric fittings. In a recent project, the couple covered the dining table at their showroom with 19th-century cut-glass candle holders that snake the tabletop. The allure for Fisher lies in “living the Caravaggio dream of the chiaroscuro. There’s nothing nicer than the deep pause of shading and shadow,” he says. 

At Magdalene College, Cambridge, students can dine by candlelight in the early-16th-century hall, complete with elaborate Queen Anne-era painted armorial and vast stained-glass windows. In the evening the green panelled interior is lit by white Liljeholmens Kanalljus candles in silver candelabras, and escutcheons on the wall, while a three-course meal is served. The ritual has become the college’s USP. A democratising experience, it fosters a sense of coming together for food, conversation and community. 

“There might be 100 people in the hall, but it creates this sense of intimacy as people join little conversational puddles of light,” says Dr Jane Hughes, a fellow, director of Studies in English, and the current Pepys Librarian. Phones and blue jeans are frowned upon. Meanwhile, nearby in the cafeteria, students eat hurriedly while simultaneously tapping away on their laptops or scrolling on mobiles. Their faces glow with the blue glare of electronic devices. It is a world of light and shade…