Choosing lamp oil

Ultra-Pure against Medallion, clear against colored, and which bottle size earns its shelf space.

Two lines, one habit

Ultra-Pure is the line we built the house on: sootless, smokeless and odorless indoors, and those words come off the bottle, not out of a brochure. Medallion is the plain clear workhorse in the 32 ounce bottle.

Both feed the same lamps. Which one lives on your shelf is a matter of how often you burn and how you buy.

Clear or colored

The red, blue and green bottles exist for the table, not for the flame; they burn the same as clear. Pick a color when the lamp itself is glass and the oil will be seen, clear for everything else.

Sizes that earn their shelf space

Bottles run from 18 to 128 ounces. The small bottle suits a lamp that comes out a few evenings a year; the gallon and the cases of twelve belong to households that burn weekly or keep an outage shelf stocked.