There's no shortage of ways to spend an evening — dinner out, a movie, another round of "what do you want to do, I don't know, what do you want to do."

A candle seems like a small thing — wax, a wick, a bit of fire. But there's a reason people have been lighting them at the end of a long day for, well, all of recorded history. It turns out a lit candle does more for your evening than just smelling nice.

Candles are one of the coziest things you can add to a room, and also, technically, an open flame sitting on your coffee table. Both things are true, and the second one just means it's worth doing right. None of this is complicated — it's mostly common sense — but a few small habits make a real difference.

If you've ever picked up two candles that look almost identical and wondered why one costs three times as much as the other, the answer is usually sitting right there in the wax.