While buying soap from the store may be convenient, it's often loaded with unnecessary chemicals that can harm your skin. By making your own soap, you can customize & control the ingredients and actually create a product that is perfect for your skin!!! Pretty cool eh?
However, the process of creating your own soap recipe can be daunting, especially if you're a beginner. This blog post will give you the exact steps to help you create your own soap recipe from scratch & some tips & tricks for success.
1. Choose Your Oils and Butters
The first step in creating your own soap recipe is to choose the base oils and butters you want to use. There are a variety of vegetable/animal oils and fats that you can use, including olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, shea butter, lard, tallow and more.
Each oil & fat has its own unique properties, and the combination of fats that you choose will ultimately determine the characteristics of your final soap. For example, olive oil creates a mild and moisturizing soap, while coconut oil creates a soap with great lather.
The total amount of fats you use in a recipe must equal a 100%. For example: 50% olive oil, 30% coconut oil, 15% palm oil, 5% castor oil.
2. Calculate the lye required
Every 'g' or 'oz' of oil or butter requires a specific amount of lye to completely transform it into soap. This is called the saponification (SAP) value. Using the SAP values for each of the oils & butters you use in the recipe, you will be able to calculate the total amount of lye needed for complete saponification.
For example: if you are using 20g olive oil (SAP - 0.135) in a recipe you will need 20*0.135 = 2.7g of sodium hydroxide for complete saponification.
Additionally, for body soaps, it is recommended to include a superfat of 5-8%. This means that you are reducing the amount of total lye to act as a buffer and protect you from lye heavy soap and allow some free oils to condition your skin.
In the above recipe, if I wanted a 5% superfat, I would use 2.7-5% = 2.57g of lye.
But don’t worry! You don’t have to do this each time you create a recipe. Online lye calculators such as Soap Calc exist to spare you from complicated calculations. Just feed in your numbers and it will spit out the recipe for you.
3. Calculate the water
If you are calculating manually, an easy way to calculate water is to just double the amount of lye. For example, if you land up with 100g lye in the previous step, your water will equal 200g for the recipe.
If you are using an online calculator, it will automatically determine the amount of water depending on lye concentration factor or a ratio (2:1) that you feed it with.
4. Choose Your Extras
Any ingredient that you add over & above the base ingredients of oils & fats, lye and water is called an additive.
In the natural soapmaking realm, this can include essential oils, herbs, colorants, exfoliants and more. These extras can add scent, color, and texture to your soap.
However, it's important to be cautious when adding extras and honor recommended usage rates. The amount of essential oils used need to comply with the IFRA (International Fragrance Association) usage rates for safety.
Other dry additives can be used at ¼ to 1tsp per 100g of oils in a recipe.
5. Test Your Recipe
Before making a large batch of your new recipe, it's always a good idea to test your recipe. You can do this by making a small batch of soap that has upto 450g or a pound of oils and see how it turns out. This will give you an idea of whether you need to make any adjustments to your recipe before making a larger batch.
This may seem like an extra step but it goes a long way in improving your skills & preventing wastage of precious resources.
Tips for success with creating your own soap recipes
Start with a tried-and-true recipe: Before you start experimenting, make sure you have a solid understanding of how soapmaking works. You can try a few different recipes from here
Use a lye calculator: When creating your own recipes, it's important to use a lye calculator to ensure that your ingredients are properly balanced. This will help you avoid lye-heavy or lye-deficient soap.
Keep detailed notes: When testing out new recipes, make sure to keep detailed notes on your process and results. This will help you fine-tune your recipes over time.
Don't be afraid to experiment: Soapmaking is all about experimentation and creativity. Don't be afraid to try new ingredients, colorants, or scents. Just make sure to follow safety guidelines and use caution when working with new materials.
By following these tips, you can create your own unique and personalized soap recipes that are tailored to your specific skin care needs and preferences.
Additional Reading:
Also, check out other posts in this basic beginner series here👇