Tomato-Scented Candles Are Suddenly Everywhere—and These Ones Are the Best

Calling all tomato heads to the front: We know you wait all year for those three precious months of peak tomato glory. You’re the type to salivate as juice drips down your chin while you secretly devour the first ripe heirloom of the season in a corner, Mr. Peepers style. You deserve to feel that high year-round, all at the strike of a match. If you guessed that we’re talking about tomato-scented candles, you win a prize—and it’s an inside scoop on absolutely every summer-nostalgia-inducing, olfactory-orgasm-triggering tomato candle on the market. (These ones also won’t cost you $475 like the giant Loewe Tomato Leaves candle of our dreams; maybe we’ll get on Seeking.com to find us a candle-daddy who will trade feet pics for designer candles.)

Long story short: Tomato candles are now sprouting up everywhere—even at Trader Joe’s—but that’s not to say they’re all the same; some smell like the earthy stem of a freshly cut Early Girl tomato, while others are more like the red skin of a Roma still on the vine. These are the best-smelling tomato-scented candles for pretending like you’re in Ina Garten’s South Hampton vegetable garden (instead of locked at your home office while your cat climbs on your keyboard). 

Apotheke makes one of the first tomato candles we remember smelling a while back, and its Tomato Tarragon candle smells exactly like you’d expect. We don’t blame you if this conjures up images of a tote on the kitchen counter full of tomatoes, tarragon, oranges, and a little bit of (organic) dirt fresh from the farmer’s market. 

We are unabashedly obsessed with Flamingo Estate. Not only does the Los Angeles-based lifestyle brand make luxurious olive oil and dried flowers worthy of Instagram all from a gorgeous hilltop estate, but the Roma Heirloom Tomato candle also slaps. It’s meant to transport you to “late summer dinner parties in Sicilian gardens” with notes of tomato vine, holy basil, and black pepper. 

A favorite of TikToker @SirCandleMan, Otherland’s limited-edition three-wick candle is currently on sale for less than $25 and has a 55-hour burn time. With notes of celery salt, heirloom tomato, and left vines, it’s giving Sir Candle Man: “Spain…think gazpacho and your rich friends in the Mediterranean.” Yes, we’re imagining that now… don’t disturb us. 

Boy Smells’ Gardener is a great scent, especially when you want tomatoes to be present in the scent profile, but not to be the main note. This candle marries tomato vine with orange peel, oakmoss, cedar, and dirt, plus adds in floral elements of honeysuckle and rose, so you get the effect of walking through a hypothetical garden and catching whiffs of everything growing within. 

Not only does Jonathan Adler’s take on tomato include rhubarb, basil, crushed thyme, and sandalwood, but it’s also in a glorious red glass vessel that throws glowing warm light around the room. 

When reading the description of Malin + Goetz’s tomato candle for the first time, we got chills. The tomato candle’s herbaceous mix of basil, mint, and lavender mingle with ivy and woodsy petitgrain, “recreating the abundance of aroma that permeates through a flourishing vegetable garden in late summer.” Take us there now!

This one is just for funsies and mostly aesthetic, as it doesn’t have a tomato scent. But you can trick people into thinking you’ve gone full meta by burning this one while hiding another more fragrant pick and see if anyone notices. 

Pomodoro feliz! (That means happy tomato!)

The Rec Room staff independently selected all of the stuff featured in this story. Want more reviews, recommendations, and red-hot deals? Sign up for our newsletter.