Candle Making At Sea Love Hilton Head

As you may have heard, my family and I just got back from a beach vacation to Hilton Head Island. You can read my recap of our coastal adventure here, but one thing I wanted to expand a little bit more on is our visit to Sea Love Candle Bar and Boutique. The shop opened just six months ago, so it was our first time there—and we’ll definitely be back again. The four of us couldn’t stop gushing about how much we enjoyed our time at the candle bar, and we’ve all agreed that it’s a new tradition that we have to make good on every time we go to HHI from now on.

If you’re just hearing about Sea Love for the first time, it’s an interactive bar where you can create your own candles and essential oil diffusers (and, yes, they also serve drinks and beer/wine like a traditional “bar”). There’s also a shop where you can pick out pre-made candles, diffusers, oils, bath bombs, and lots of other lovely home décor accents.

Sea Love Hilton Head is located in Sea Pines Center in case you’re familiar with the island. We happened to get a pretty nasty storm mid-way through our trip, so we decided to make that our candle-making day. It also happened to fall on Sea Pine’s farmer’s market day, so we got to shop tasty locally made produce, jams, and bread after our Sea Love excursion. We might intentionally make our Sea Love reservations next time for a Tuesday morning again so we can repeat the experience!

Anyway, the four of us (my mom, sister, her boyfriend, and I) decided to all make candles as opposed to reed diffusers this go-around. The first step in the process is to choose your vessel. The shop carries a range of sizes and colors for your candle jar, and then you spend time choosing your fragrances. My goal was to create something that smelled like Hilton Head to me—lots of jasmine floral notes, with sunscreen and earthy tones mixed in, too. The staff member who led us through the process of making our candles demonstrated how to use the cork tops of each scent jar option to get a sense of the fragrance. You could even stack multiple scents in one hand to find out what a mixed candle could smell like.

I chose “Honeysuckle” and “Suntan Lotion” for my candle based on the fragrance profile I already mentioned that I was going for. If you have trouble picking a good pairing for your own candle or reed diffuser, don’t worry—the shop offers a long list of inspirational combinations that are proven winners, so you can follow that formula until you find a blend that’s just right for you. They have over 100 individual fragrance options to choose from, all of which are thoughtfully sourced to be safe and sustainable, so you’ll definitely find a good option your home.

Choosing your vessel and fragrance combination is probably the most time-consuming part of the process, so once that’s done, you just settle into your spot at the bar and follow the steps laid out by your Sea Love leader. She’ll show you how to create a DIY label for your candle (I named mine “Sunny Honey” after the scents I chose), how to stick your wick in place, and then pour in your wax. You mix the combined fragrances by hand inside the jar, and then prop up your wick using a chopstick so it can dry in just the right spot.

The candles take two hours to cool, and after that they can be picked up (or you can opt to have them shipped home for you). We ended up retrieving ours a few days later when we went back to Sea Pines Center to do more shopping, so there’s really no rush to pick up if you make your candles early on in the week of your vacation. The cost depends on the size of your candle vessel, but it starts at $40, which I thought was such a fabulous deal for both the candle and a really amazing interactive experience. It was great family bonding time, and we’re still riding high on the memories from that day.

Read more information about Sea Love here, and check out their online shop here if you can’t visit in person. I bought myself an essential oil (in the scent “Sunday”) while I was there at the boutique after making my candle, and I love it so much that I’m going to order another one from here in Virginia since we won’t be back to the island until 2026. What scent combination would you try for your candle? Comment and let me know!