Crayons as Emergency Lighting: Does It Really Work?

If you are in prepping communities online, you may have seen an emergency crayon light idea floating around. This piqued my interest and I was curious how it would work.

So, I put my family to work and put us all at risk for the sake of science! Your welcome. ?

Below are images and notes I took throughout the process of using crayons for light. Will I use this moving forward as part of my prepping strategy? You will need to read to the bottom to find out.

First we took a crayon and melted the bottom, then we placed it on a plate. The heat helped the crayon stay affixed in the upright position.

The second step was to melt the crayon to get down to the paper.

After we melted it, we realized we could have just broken the top off instead. That would have been easier and faster. This is why testing is important!

Breaking the tip off also prevents the extra wax vapors from getting into the air. You really want to minimize the inhalation of those vapors so the less wax we need to burn the better.

Once the tip is removed, then you will see the paper start to catch fire.

Once the wax and paper started burning, the flame clearly became much larger – and brighter. My only hope was that the house would not burn down.

I would keep a fire extinguisher close by during testing.

Now we are at the point when we begin to wonder if this is really worth it.

The flame continued to get bigger and more out of control the longer it burned down the candle. One thing I wish I had thought of for this test was to put a hurricane lamp glass to put over this to see if it helped. But I did not have one on hand.

The single crayon did actually throw off more light thane expected when we turned off the lights and shut the curtains.

But I didn’t feel safe with it at all.

The other option for this practice is to bundle and light the crayons together. Of course this might actually look like a torch and be much more dangerous. But, it could be a great light and heat source in an extreme emergency.

It could be very effective in a school environment, but of course safety is first and foremost.

After our experience, this is not something we will rely on or add to our prepping. We do happen to have a box of crayons and small coloring books in one of our go kits, so we can use them if we had to. But, this would be a last resort prepping strategy due to the danger.

A better option for emergency lighting might be to use outdoor solar lights indoors. It is a safer and less stressful option.