Do you want to make your own lavender soap? Soap-making is easy! This post will show you how to make lavender soap at home.
Lavender is known to have soothing, calming properties, and a long history of medical and therapeutic use. It’s a perfect addition to any soap recipe, and without much effort you can make your own lavender soap that smells amazing and promotes rest and relaxation.
Recipe Ingredients
There are a million recipes online. The following is an extremely simple recipe that anyone can follow. It uses just a few basic ingredients and equipment that you are likely to have at home.
For this easy lavender soap recipe, you will need:
- Lavender essential oil. As a general guide, you want between 2% and 3% of your final weight to be essential oil. This provides enough fragrance for the soap to smell amazing and is low enough to reduce / prevent skin reactions. Make sure it is skin-safe!
- A melt-and-pour soap base. This means all the hard work has been done for you. There are a range of types but we recommend using a white base like this one.
- Dried lavender (optional)
- Colouring (optional) – we like this one as it is safe for skin and specifically formulated for uses like soap. Not essential, but it makes your soap pretty.
- Kaolin clay (optional).
You will see that the last three ingredients are completely optional and if you leave them out of your soap, the recipe will still work. Kaolin clay is a soft white clay and the reason some people add it (a very small amount) to soap, is that it holds the fragrance from your essential oil and provides a nice matter finish. Without it, the smell will eventually fade a little (no biggie, but good to know).
If you want an even easier recipe (using soap you already have)), look at this one from Happy Money Saver. Think of it as the cheat’s (or efficient person’s) way to make lavender soap at home.
If you are a pro and want to make your own soap completely from scratch without using a soap base, look at this one by Tweak and Tinker.
Equipment
You don’t need much equipment for making soap. You likely have everything you need already.
- Bowl and metal spoon
- Scales or a measuring jug
- Saucepan or pot (or jug for the microwave).
- Soap moulds or a large tray with sides (you can cut your soap into bars later).
Method
- Weigh about 200g of your soap base and melt it down according to the instructions on the packet (microwave or in a bowl over a saucepan of water).
- Add 4ml (about 100 drops) of lavender essential oil
- Add colour or texture if you want to (see notes on variations at the bottom of this page).
- Carefully pour into your moulds
- Leave to set (at least a few hours)
If you haven’t used soap moulds, you need to cut your soap into bars. We recommend making indents on the surface before the soap fully sets, so that it is easier to cut later.
Do you really need soap moulds?
Nope, you don’t need soap moulds to make your own lavender soap at home.
You can use:
- Muffin trays
- Cupcake cases
- Any silicon baking mould
- Any shallow container (and cut into bars later) – use what you already have!
Some people like to have equipment specific to the task, but I prefer to make do with what I have at home. If a mould can be used for soap AND baking – that’s a win!
Click here to see some popular soap moulds on Amazon – the silican ones are easy to use and clean.
Easy variations you can do when making soap at home
You can add a small amount of grated beeswax, use lye-free soap base (glycerin base), add some coconut oil or shea butter, and get really creative! Adding kaolin clay helps the nice smell last longer.
If you use the recipe above you will get a good lavender soap, but it might look a quite plain. Here are some ways to make it look extra nice if you want to use your homemade soap for gifts or if you just want it to look good.
Adding colour to your homemade soap
Use a food-grade food colouring in your recipe to give your soap a nice purple lavender colour. You can divide your liquid mixture into two haves, and colour only one half. Then put both into the same moulds and use a stick or spoon to give it a swirl before it sets. Beautiful! There are soap dyes that are formulated exactly for this purpose, but food colouring also works.
Colouring your soap is a really good idea if you are using olive oil in your soap base – olive oil can give your soap a grey or slightly greyish green texture. Adding just a small amount of purple colouring will mean your soap colour matches the lavender fragrance.
We recommend a natural food-grade colour such as these below. They are all natural and won’t stain your skin. Add just a tiny amount until you get the colour you like.
Click here to see popular food-grade soap dyes and colorants on Amazon
Adding texture to your lavender soap
Adding texture to a soap is visually appealing, and there are a number of easy ways to do it.
For an exfoliating effect, either sprinkle a safe exfoliating project on top of your soap after it’s poured and before it is set or mix a small amount into the liquid soap mixture before pouring into the moulds.
You can use sugar, ground walnut shells, oats, coffee grounds, poppy seeds or sea salt.
Another option to add texture to your soap is to add dried lavender flowers or dried petals. You can either mix it into the liquid soap before pouring into the mould or sprinkle it on to the top before the soap sets, or you can press a whole flower into the top before the soap goes hard.
Only add dried lavender flowers and petals to your soap. If you add fresh flowers, they are likely to turn brown.
Click here (or the image to the left) to see flower petal options on Amazon
Different soap bar shapes
Soap moulds come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. We like to make smaller soaps in a variety of different shapes and bundle them into gift bags. Tie off with a nice ribbon, and voila – gorgeous.
Click here to see some popular soap molds (we just use muffin trays we already have at home)
The lazy option- the easiest way to make lavender soap at home
There is an even lazier option… a soap-making kit. They include everything you need and just the right amounts so can be a great way to see if you will enjoy making lavender soap at home.