Cire Trudon - Prestige and Highest Quality

What Trudon candles are made of

Trudon's FAQ describes the wax in Trudon candles as a blend of vegetable wax and paraffin, burned on a cotton wick. An earlier version of this review called the wax paraffin-free; we go by Trudon's own answer. Trudon doesn't call its candles non-toxic, and we don't either. Our non-toxic candles guide lists what each brand we carry says about its wax. Trudon pours the candles by hand at its own factory in Normandy, into glass made by hand in Tuscany.

What Trudon candles smell like

Ernesto is the dark one: rum, grapefruit and bergamot over clove and oakwood, settling into tobacco, moss, leather and amber. Trudon sets it in a Havana hotel during the Revolution. If you'd rather go fresh, Abd el Kader, our second best seller, is Trudon's Moroccan mint tea, with spearmint, blackcurrant bud, ginger and clove over jasmine and vanilla. Figuerie is the green one, fig leaves and cedar leaf over sandalwood and tonka in celadon glass, named for the fig garden of the Potager du Roi at Versailles. With Diptyque Figuier, it's one of our two best-selling fig candles. Our winter pick is Gabriel, birch wood and glacé chestnut over cashmere wood and moss, a limited edition that stayed.

Trudon's history

Trudon dates itself to 1643, when Claude Trudon kept a shop on the rue Saint-Honoré in Paris selling spices and candles. The candle works at Antony, outside Paris, became a Royal Manufacture in 1719, Jérôme Trudon bought it in 1737, and by 1811 it supplied Napoleon's Imperial court. Trudon calls itself the oldest candlemaker in the world still active today. Its first scented candles came in 2007, and for years they were sold as Cire Trudon; cire is French for wax.

The gold emblem on every glass comes from a bas-relief at the old Antony works, with a beehive for the bees in Trudon's motto, "Deo regique laborant": they work for God and the King. The Trudon Cire candle smells of the workshop itself: warm wax, beeswax absolute, honey and waxed wood, in amber glass. Trudon gives 4 percent of the Cire candle's sales toward saving the Orne dark bee.

Reviewed and updated November 6, 2026.