What Fuel Should You Use in an Oil Lamp?
The fuel decides almost everything about how a lamp behaves: how bright it burns, whether it smokes, whether the room smells, and how often you end up cleaning the glass. It's also the one place where a wrong choice can be genuinely dangerous. Here's what I use and why.
What I use: purified kerosene
My own preference is purified kerosene — sold in the Netherlands as "gezuiverde petroleum", and called paraffin in Britain. I buy mine from olielampen.nl, it gives a bright, steady, soot-free flame in everything I've put it in.
In the United States the equivalent is 1-K kerosene. On the label you'll see it described as:
- highly refined or odourless kerosene
- water-clear kerosene
- low-aromatic kerosene
What makes it the best choice:
- It burns far cleaner than ordinary kerosene, because the aromatic compounds that cause smoke and smell have largely been refined out.
- Properly refined, the smell is very light.
- It gives a bright, steady flame on flat wicks and round wicks alike.
- It suits every common type of lamp and lantern, so you only need one can in the shed.
- It's usually cheaper than branded lamp oil or high-grade paraffin oil.
The alternatives
Clear lamp oil and paraffin oil are both reasonable substitutes, but here the brand matters more than the category. There are beautifully refined lamp oils on the market and there are cheap ones that have barely been purified at all, and the difference shows within minutes of lighting the lamp. What's available varies a good deal from country to country.
Paraffin oil is generally the better-refined of the two, and priced accordingly.
Worth knowing: a lamp that has been run on poor lamp oil is usually saturated with it, and the wick most of all. Simply switching to a better fuel often doesn't clear up the smell and the smoke, because the old oil is still in the wick and keeps being drawn up. In those cases the wick needs replacing as well.
Citronella oil belongs in a garden torch, where the point is keeping mosquitoes away. It smokes, it smells, and it makes a poor light. Never indoors — and for an outdoor lantern, purified kerosene is still the better fuel.
What never goes in an oil lamp
- Petrol
- Diesel
- Alcohol or spirit fuels
- Vegetable oil
- Barbecue lighter fluid
Each of these is either too volatile, too dirty, or simply too hot for a wick and burner designed for kerosene. Petrol is the serious one: it will not burn quietly in a lamp, and putting it in one is how people are badly hurt.
I'd add coloured lamp oil to the list. It looks lovely in the bottle, but the dyes clog the wick, produce more soot and smell, and make the flame behave unpredictably. There's no version of it that burns as well as a clear, well-refined fuel.
A few rules worth keeping
- Let the lamp cool down before you refill it.
- Fill to a maximum of two-thirds of the tank. The fuel needs room to expand as the lamp warms.
- Never mix fuels, and don't top up one brand with another if you can help it.
- Keep the wick trimmed to 1–2 mm above the burner.
- Stay near the lamp for the first few minutes. As the burner and chimney warm up and the wick saturates, the draught increases and the flame climbs on its own — set it and walk away, and you'll come back to a smoking lamp.
- Give the room some ventilation.
- Keep lamps away from children, pets and draughts.
There's more on trimming, lighting and cleaning on the How to use an Oil Lamp page.
