11 Wonderful Essential Oils for Soap Making (and Bonus Chart)

Soaps are an integral part of our daily routine and they come in varied forms. This could be in the form of body soap for daily bathing of hands and body, as well as soaps for washing dishes, floors, clothes and countertops around the house.

What is common in all the above soaps used for different needs is the fact that they have a cleansing, disinfecting and refreshing effect on whatever surface they are used on.

This could be on a human body or a surface in your home.

Most people like a bathing soap that lathers well and has an uplifting scent while maintaining the ability to cleanse your skin without harming it.

Luxury bathing soaps have all the above qualities, as well as additional ingredients that are either medicinal to your skin or are capable of providing you skin with moisture and nourishment.

Soaps for cleansing surfaces in your household work well if they have ingredients that have the ability to kill germs and deter bacteria from building up.

A number of essential oils are beneficial when used in soaps because of their aromatic disposition, as well as nourishing and cleansing properties.

Are Essential Oils Safe for Soap Making?

Essential oils are best known for their cosmetic value and some people may wonder whether they can be safely used in soap making. This is a valid question because soaps contain several ingredients and you never know how these ingredients may react with essential oils.

But to answer your question – selected essential oils are safe to use in soap making.

However, they must not be concentrated as this can affect the skin by causing contact dermatitis such as rashes, burning and photo sensitivities.

Usually, the process of soap making means that you will have to dilute the essential oil anyway, so these sorts of issues are rare and unlikely.

The advantage of using select essential oils in soap is their natural aromatic properties and skin-nourishing abilities. But more importantly, the scent is likely to remain pleasant and gentle and take hold despite the soap-making process.

Benefits of Using Essential Oils for Making a Soap

One of the main buying factors that consumers consider when buying soap is the fragrance and whether the soap is gentle and nourishing to their skin.

The main advantage of using essential oils for soap making is the fact that despite diluting the essential oil the scent remains present.

Using essential oils in the soap making process for fragrance, as well as skin nourishing effects, allows creative flexibility as you can use one essential oil, such as lavender, or a combination of several oils, such as lavender and eucalyptus, to create interesting scent profiles with numerous benefits.

For example, a combination of these two natural oils in soap will result in a calming aromatic effect and skin nourishment that lavender has to offer, while clearing your airway, because of the eucalyptus minty effect.

Related Articles:

• Best Essential Oil Diffusers for Large Space: Aromatherapy Made Easy
• What is the Shelf Life of Essential Oils?

Essential Oils vs Fragrance Oils (for Home Made Soap)

Many types of ingredients can be used to scent soaps. Fragrance oils are the most common.

But, which has better value and results when making soap, essential oils, or fragrance oils?

Fragrance oils and essential oils are phrases that are often used interchangeably and most people may mistake both to mean the same.

But an in-depth look reveals that they are not the same, especially when it comes to soap making.

What are the Fragrance Oils?

These are synthetic or artificially manufactured scents that are designed to mimic real fragrances, such as peach, lemon, candy, flowers or chocolate, just to name a few. Whereas fragrance oils may succeed in getting the scent right, they have zero health benefits.

What are the Essential Oils?

Essential oils are natural and are extracted from the various parts of natural plants including:

• Roots
• Stems
• Leaves
• Barks
• Flowers
• Wood
• Resin

The extraction of essential oils is achieved through the process of solvent extraction or steam distillation.

The main difference between fragrant oils and essential oils is that the former is artificial manufactured and has zero health benefits while the latter is extracted from natural plants with tons of health benefits.

The health benefits of essential oils are threefold, as their natural properties can affect a person positively in a physical, mental, and emotional sense.

So if you are looking to have your soap deliver certain health benefits, such as a calming scent, skin nourishment, or other therapeutic benefits, the best choice would be to use pure essential oils in soap making.

If your interest is fragrance only and without a care for therapeutic benefits, then using fragrant oils can be the other option for soap making.

How to Choose Essential Oils for Soap Making?

Soap making is an art and a science. Part of your success in producing a great batch is dependent on the ingredients used. As you have already seen, opting to use essential oils in the soap mix is a good idea, particularly if you are looking for the soap to have some health benefits.

When choosing essentials oil for soap making, you may have to consider the sort of fragrances you are looking for, as well as the availability of those oils from local suppliers and the cost.

Usually, supply is not a problem, but some extenuating circumstances can affect supply and cost. For instance, the yield of a particular essential oil in a given year may affect availability and price.

When choosing an essential oil for the purpose of scenting soaps, it is important to know what sort of notes you are aiming for.

This could range from, herbal, woody, floral, or spicy scents.

What affects the final result is how one has chosen the top, middle, and base notes.

Top Notes

Ordinarily, essential oils that tend to evaporate faster are classified as top notes and form the first impression of the soap.

They will usually also have anti-viral traits in them and are generally very affordable.

Top notes are important because of their fresh and uplifting scents. However, they are quite volatile and their scents are fleeting.

Such essential oils include eucalyptus, grapefruit, hyssop, lemon, orange, peppermint, lemongrass, and basil, just to name a few.

Middle Notes

Middle notes are subtle scents in a blend and tend to be warm and soft fragrances.

They are great for a balancing effect on the blend and serve the purpose of giving body to a blend of scents.

These include essential oils such as black pepper, cardamom, hyssop, geranium, marjoram, pine, rosemary, nutmeg, and yarrow, just to name a few.

Base Notes

Base oils make for great stabilizers in a blend due to their ‘heaviness’, as they help slow down the evaporation of other oils.

They tend to be the most expensive essential oils because of the intensity of their fragrance, which lingers for longer.

Some base note essential oils include but are not limited to cedarwood, clove, frankincense, jasmine, myrrh, patchouli, rosewood, vanilla, and vetiver.

When choosing essential oils for straight use or blends in soap creation, you should bear in mind that some oils are overpowering in terms of fragrance and should, therefore, be added a drop at a time to prevent them from masking other notes with their potency.

Which Essential Oils are Good for Soap Making?

There are so many options when it comes to essential oils that can be used in soap.

Below, we take a look at the most popular ones because of their ability to blend well with other selected essential oils and the fact that they are readily available. They are also packed with exceptional therapeutic benefits.

1. Lavender Oil

There is a myriad of lavender essential oil varieties to work with.

In fact, the challenge becomes choosing the right one, as they can tend to have slight variations in fragrance notes.

When it comes to lavender, our recommendation for soap making is:

• Lavender 40/42 essential oil
• Lavandin Grosso
• Lavandin Abrialis

Because of scent variations in most lavender types, lavender 40/42 is standardized, therefore providing the same fragrance every time you use it.

Best blend partners

Lavender will pair well with just about any of the essential oils on this list.

2. Rosemary Oil

Rosemary also comes in a large number of varieties and different scent profiles. If one is looking for more of a woody scent profile, then the Moroccan rosemary will work.

However, if one prefers more of a herbaceous aroma, then Spanish rosemary would be the best option.

Rosemary blends well with citruses, and woody, and herbal scents.

Best blend partners

Our recommendations of essential oils that blend well with rosemary are lavender, cedarwood, peppermint, bergamot, lemon and orange.

3. Lemon Oil

Lemon is a one-in-a-million scent with a slight tart fragrance that exudes freshness and vitality.

Lemon essential oil is a good choice for soap making because of its ability to anchor especially for soap processed, using the saponification method.

Best blend partners

Lemon will blend with most other essential oils, such as eucalyptus, ginger, lavender, May Chang, as well as other citruses, such as orange and tangerine.

4. Cedarwood Oil

This essential oil makes for a good base note owing to its dry and woodsy aroma.

Like most other essential oils, it has numerous varieties with differing fragrances.

Cedarwood varieties include Himalayan and Atlas.

Best blend partners

We recommend that you blend with rosemary, bergamot, lavender, frankincense, juniper, and clary sage. Cedarwood oil also blends very well with citruses.

5. Patchouli Oil

Patchouli essential oil comes in light or dark form. Both are great for soap making base notes because they have a musty, earthy, yet warm scent.

Dark patchouli is stronger in scent and is a great choice if you want to have a heavy presence of the base note.

Best blend partners

It blends very well with floral, herbal as well as citruses. We recommend that you blend it with lavender, geranium, lemongrass, neroli, or clary sage.

6. Clary Sage Oil

This essential oil has an amazing scent and comes in several varieties. It is hard to come across a variety that does not have a pleasant fragrance.

The scent notes in clary sage are predominantly herbal and floral, with a touch of earthiness, fruity, and sweetness.

Best blend partners

It blends seamlessly with woodsy varieties, citruses as well as herbal types. Our recommendation is blending clary sage with geranium, sandalwood, vetiver, lemon, lime, orange, cedarwood, and lavender.

7. Sweet Orange Oil

The fragrance of this essential oil is fruity and juicy, with a touch of sweetness similar to the smell of the fruit itself.

When used in soap making through the saponification process, the anchoring power of the oil is strong. It has variations, with the sweet orange oil being preferred to the bitter orange oil in soap making, because of skin sensitivities.

Best blend partners

It blends well with other citruses, like lemon, for anchored sweet notes in the soap fragrance. Also, you can blend it with geranium, juniper, lavender, May Chang, neroli, and rosewood.

8. Peppermint Oil

Most soap makers love the unexpected twist that peppermint brings to soap making blend.

It predominantly has strong minty notes and mild sweetness. This oil blends very well with citruses and minty camphorous essential oils. It is also known to pair well with woodsy and herbal varieties.

Best blend partners

We recommend blending with essential oils such as cedarwood, lemon, rosemary, marjoram, lavender, pine and spearmint.

9. Bergamot Oil

Bergamot is well known for its spicy, floral, and warm scent profile, which makes it an excellent choice for soap making.

Due to photosensitivity to the skin, it is recommended that you use bergamot essential oil that is free of bergapten.

Best blend partners

Bergamot will blend seamlessly with any soap making essential oil including lavender, sweet orange, lemon, citronella, eucalyptus, geranium, neroli, palmarosa, and ylang-ylang.

10. Tea Tree Oil

Tea tree can come across as a tad too strong for most people. This is owing to its medicinal, camphorous, sharp aroma.

This essential oil comes in several varieties. The most popular is the Australian tea tree oil. Another variation includes lemon tea tree oil, whose scent is more forgiving with a citrus and woodsy scent profile.

Best blend partners

Our soap blending recommendation is to try it out with minty, herbal, and citruses. This includes essential oils such as lavender, rosemary, bergamot, citronella, May Chang, and orange.

11. May Chang Oil

Also known as Licea Cubeba essential oil, it has an amazing scent a citrusy aroma with a touch of spice as well as grassy undertones, not common in other citruses.

It blends well with other citruses and does an excellent job of providing the body with the fragrance of soap and helping the scent profile stay longer.

Best blend partners

May Chang generally blends well with all other soap making essential oils like tea tree, bergamot, cedarwood, eucalyptus, ginger, and frankincense, among others.

Essential Oils for Soap Making Chart

Soap making using essential oils requires that you build familiarity with how to use top, middle, and base notes. Also, you have to understand that, although essential oils are natural, it does not mean that they can’t be harmful.

This is why there are guidelines to help any soap makers use the right essential oils, in the right quantity in order to prevent issues such as skin irritation and photo sensitivities.

This is where a chart for essential oil use in making home­-made soaps comes in. We used above mentioned essential oils as examples.

How to Mix Essential Oils During Soap Making Process?

There are two major soap manufacturing methods:

Melt and Pour

This is the method used by most beginners and some professionals, owing to its simplicity.

The first process involves melting the pre-made base and then simply customizing it with essential oil scents or fragrance oils, as well as your preferred colors.

Pour it into a mold and, once it dries, your soap is ready.

Cold Process

This method involves a process known as saponification.

Saponification is a chemical process that comes about when sodium hydroxide lye is combined with essential oils or fragrance oils.

This process is most preferred by more seasoned soap makers, as it produces glycerin as a by-product. Glycerin moisturizes and nourishes the skin.

Best Essential Oil Blends for Homemade Soap

All essential oils recommended for soap making can be used straight or as blends for producing homemade soap.

The only thing to look out for when using essential oils for soap making is to use them in diluted form to ensure that they don’t cause any skin irritation because of being too strong.

All the essential oils listed above are excellent for using exclusively, or for creating different blends for numerous scent profiles.

Recipe 1

• 10 drops of lemon oil
• 5 drops of lavender oil
• Pre-base

Mix the oils one drop at a time into the pre-base until you find the note that works for you. Put it into your favorite mold and let it dry.

Recipe 2

• 2 cups of distilled water
• 20 drops of patchouli oil
• 20 drops of peppermint oil
• 20 drops of folded sweet orange oil
• 3 tbs of unscented castile soap

Mix all the ingredients and blend them properly. Each oil has been measured to perfectly balance with the rest, so no need for drop measures.

You can use this blend as your everyday handwash.

Recipe 3

• 10 drops of lemon oil
• 10 drops of May Chang oil
• 15 drops of rosemary oil

Mix these oils into your cold-press or your melt and pour the mixture and create the soap you love.

FAQ: Essential Oils for Soap Making

Conclusion

Using essential oils for homemade soap has great health benefits that occur aromatically, as well as fostering a healthier and smoother skin owing to the many natural ingredients possessed in the oil.

Soap making is a fairly easy process.

With the help of the above listed essential oils, you can now create some amazing blends of aroma profiles to use with soap recipes.

You can even use them as party favors for your next bash.

Let us know how it goes for you or if you have tried it and seen spectacular results in the comments below.