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Making Aromatherapy Soap & Choosing Essential Oils

Making aromatherapy soap at home lets you choose the scents you want and avoid ingredients you don't want. This article describes options for making soaps, talks about how to choose essential oils, and points you to resources for detailed soap-making instructions.

Cold Process Soaps

To make cold process soaps, you combine a base oil containing fatty acids (almost any oil, from beef tallow to olive oil) with sodium hydroxide (lye).

Lye is a caustic substance that you must handle with extreme care using the appropriate safety precautions. However, no lye remains in the finished soap. Learn more about lye in soapmaking.

For cold process soaps, Cathy Winsby of Soap Making Essentials recommends 3 to 4 teaspoons (15 to 20 ml or 0.5 to 0.7 ounce) of essential oil for each pound of base oil. She notes some people use as much as one ounce of essential oil for each pound of base oil. However, that much essential oil creates a very strong scent not everyone likes or can tolerate.

You want to add the essential oils near the end of the soap-making process, after the lye has mostly evaporated. Lye can damage essential oils.

Here's a video on getting started making cold process soaps:

Hot Process Soaps

A variation of soapmaking is hot process soaps, where you heat all the ingredients to put the soap through various stages. When the excess water evaporates, the soap is ready to cool and then use. You add the essential oils at the cooling stage.

Here's an introductory video:

Melt and Pour Soaps

The easiest way to make soap is to use melt and pour. You purchase a clear soap base, melt the blocks, add color (if desired) and essential oils, and place the melted mixture into molds to harden into solid soap. This approach is especially good if you want to get your children involved.

Essential Oils For Aromatherapy Soap

Which essential oils can you use in making aromatherapy soap? You can choose any oil that's not irritating to the skin. It's also important to use only high-quality oils.