Candles making began in the thirteenth century when traveling chandlers went door to door, dipping tapers from patrons' tallow or beeswax. Candle molds made of tin, wood, or copper were also used. Candles have to be placed in something substantial to prevent fires, so candleholders were designed to offer a choice of lighting material. As the availability of candlesticks and candleholders reached middle class households in the 1700s, living standards improved greatly. Brass, wood, pewter, clay, and iron were common materials for candlesticks, although the upper class preferred candlesticks made of silver or brass. (Many a convict was sent to Australia for stealing the 'candlesticks".)

Candle lanterns made of tin, iron, wood, glass and horn allowed light to be portable. The word "lantern" evolved from the term "Lanthorn"--thin, translucent sheets of flattened cattle horn which light could pass through.

To snuff a candle means to trim the wick, not extinguish the flame. Snuffers look like a pair of scissors but only open beginning at the snuff box.  The point on the snuffers was used to straighten the wick before trimming it.  Candle boxes were placed conveniently in the house.  They were both free standing and hung on the walls.  They were made of wood, brass, sheet iron, and tin. Every home would have had some kind of a candle box.

Punched tin lanterns were a fairly common and cheap type of lantern. Panels of glass were often used in tin and wood lanterns to allow for better illumination.

Lamps burned many types of oil, from animal oils or grease to fish oil to whale oil. Beeswax candles burn significantly longer than petroleum based, paraffin candles.  They also have the highest melting point of any known candle wax.

The iron Betty lamp produced comparatively good light. The amount of light varied with the size and material of the wick. An improvement over other spout lamps, Betty lamps were rather messy to deal with and, thus, were used by farmers and tradesmen rather than the wealthy. These lamps burned many types of oil and were extremely handy for household illumination. In isolated rural areas Betty lamps were used until the mid to latter part of the 19th Century. The simple iron Betty lamp produced comparatively good light for its time. The light varied with the size and material of the wick.  Animal oils or grease were commonly used  as fuel in these lamps. Fish oil gave the poorest light and was very smoky.  Animal fats were somewhat better but still burned with an odor.  Whale oil was much sought after as it produced the best light.  It usually  was available in coastal towns but not always in rural areas. Whale oil gives off light about equal to that of two ordinary candles. This fuel was always expensive and highly sought after   

Early settlers burned fish oil or fat trimmings and had wicks of twisted cloth. These lamps were smoky, smelly, and the wicks often drew up oil quicker than it burned, allowing the surplus to spill over the sides of the lamp onto anything that rested beneath them.

A wickholder in the base was added to the crusie lamp design which channeled the drippings from the wick back into the bowl of the lamp where it could eventually be consumed. A cover was added to confine heat, decrease smoke, and make the oil burn efficiently. These changes also reduced the chance of dangerous house fires.

Many house fires and deaths were caused by the lamps and candles.   Curtains or  nightclothes caught on fire with no more than a slight breeze to brush fabric against the exposed flame

Burning whale oil in lamps led to the vertical wick tube. Such a tube had not been possible until finding a thin enough product to carry the fuel from the font to the top of the wick. Although whale oil was costly due to the difficulty and danger of whaling, the quality of light it delivered made it the oil of choice from the 1840s to the 1860s. 1854 was the high point of the whaling industry, with whaling vessels bringing home $10,766,521 worth of whale oil and bone, oil sold for $1.44 per gallon the disagreeable-smelling whale oil produced a higher degree of candlepower than anything else,Although whaling didn’t end technically until 1924, it started declining in the 1860s, to be replaced by petroleum products or lighting fuels

Even after the invention of wax candles, tallow remained more popular because the British tax on wax was eight times more than the tax on tallow. So only the wealthy could afford wax candles to light their homes. The taxes were dropped in 1831, after which wax candles came into more popular use.

By the early 1800s whale oil lamps represented the earliest large-scale use of glass to produce a lamp form. Whale oil was quite expensive (nearly $2.00 a gallon then, which roughly converts to $200 in today's money). A whale oil lamp is distinct from other early lamps in its burner configuration. The wick holders are one or two short tubes about ¼ inch in diameter and close together. A challenge in burning whale oil was keeping the fuel liquid enough to be taken up by the wick. Whale oil thickens when cool so the flame was, by necessity, close to the font (fuel holding bulb) so that heat would transfer down the metal wick tubes to warm the fuel oil! Few could afford whale oil, desired for its brighter light and cleaner burn, and lamps designed to burn it are not common today. Most homes used lard oil or some other rendered fat and often non-glass lamps or candles. In the first half of the 19th century, the most common light source remained candles and the natural light from the fire on the hearth.  The success of affordable soda lime glass and the new fuel source boomed kerosene burning lamps and coal oil lamps by the 1870s

The first metal burners, devices to hold the wicks, were introduced in the 1700s. Glass chimneys were first employed in the 1700s to protect the flame and control the air flow. In 1783 a Swiss chemist, Ami Argand, applied scientific ideas and developed a hollow circular wick surrounded by a glass chimney. The appearance of glass chimneys on lamps was not common until the 1800s. With Argand's innovations, the era of successful lamps had begun. The Argand ideas are today recognized as the basic principal behind such successfully styled lamps as Aladdin lamps

Sulphur matches were used to transfer the fire from the tinder to light a spill.  The tinder was then extinguished by smothering.  A spill was a twist of paper or slip of wood that was used to light the hearth fire or candles.