What are the essential oils for cold-process soap? That’s what I will show in this article.
As an experienced soap maker in all types of soap-making methods, adding essential oils in cold-process soap is a vast topic; sometimes, people overthink it.
Due to the saponification and curing process involved in cold-process soap-making, prudence is needed in choosing and calculating the right amount of essential oil.
As you know, essential oils are not merely aromatic agents; they bring therapeutic benefits and contribute to the overall quality of the soap.
I will show you suitable oils for cold-process soap making in this blog post.
Let’s start!
What Essential Oils Work Well In Cold Process Soap?
With essential oils, you have top, middle, and base notes.
Top notes tend to be the ones you smell first; they are the lightest, like citrus, lemon, lime, grapefruit, and orange.
They are the ones that generally smell first, but they fade quickly.
The middle note is quite an extensive section; it includes geranium, lavender, rosemary, lemongrass, mei chang, tea tree, and eucalyptus.
These oils hang around longer than the top notes.
The base notes are woody and spicy, like cedarwood, sandalwood, and patchouli. Cinnamon, ylang-ylang, is flora but strong.
In cold-process soap, not only does your essential oil have to go through saponification, but it must also undergo a curing period.
Cedarwood is a fantastic essential oil for blending in with other essential oils. It creates a lovely, deep scent.
It behaves nicely in soap; the scent is retained reasonably well and doesn’t seize, accelerate, or thicken.
I tend to mix it with scents that don’t last very well in soap.
Fir needle Siberian: I use it around Christmas; it does give a kind of pine forestry scent.
It is not too expensive either.
In my opinion, it works better as part of a blend and blends nicely with cedarwood, among many others.
I wouldn’t use this as a stand-alone oil in my soapmaking; it is better blended with other oils.
Lavender
Lavender is one of the most popular and versatile essential oils for soap making. It has a floral, herbal scent that is calming, relaxing, and antiseptic.
Lavender blends well with many other oils, such as litsea, cedarwood, geranium, and citrus oils, and it doesn’t thicken your batter.
It is suitable for beginners because it is easy to work with, sticks nicely, has a moderate usage rate, and does not accelerate trace or discolor soap.
Rose geranium: Rose Geranium is incredibly popular among our customers.
When we sell our soaps, our rose soap is always one of our top sellers, and we always get loads of positive comments about how this one smells.
Rose geranium is a variety of geranium; it is not exactly a rose. However, rose essential oil is costly.
This is why it is kind of prohibitive to use natural rose essential oil in soapmaking.
And that is why I chose a rose geranium because a rose geranium does have a lovely rosy scent.
However, Rose Geranium does tend to accelerate trace in your soap better.
And if you’re not prepared for it, it can seize on you, and getting the soap batter into your mold can be challenging.
So when you make your soap and add in your essential oils, some essential oils will behave nicely.
And you’re better off staying nice and fluid; some can cause your batter to thicken up quickly, and it gets thick and gloopy.
So, you need to work quickly with it and be prepared for the fact that your soap batter will likely thicken up quickly on you.
Be ready to get it poured into the mold as soon as you have incorporated your rose geranium.
Lemongrass
Lemongrass has a lemony, fresh scent that is refreshing, uplifting, and cleansing. Lemongrass helps anchor citrus scents that tend to fade in cold process soap.
Lemongrass is suitable for beginners because it has a high usage rate, does not accelerate trace or discolor soap, and can add a natural yellow color to soap.
Rosemary: Rosemary is another essential oil I wouldn’t use alone as a stand-alone scent.
However, it blends nicely with other essential oils, and in particular, it blends nicely with lavender.
It also blends nicely with lemon, but lavender and rosemary are a perfect combination.
There are different varieties of rosemary, such as French Rosemary and Tunisian rosemary.
As I said, I wouldn’t use this as a stand-alone oil; personally, you can if you want to.
It does last reasonably nicely, and in soap, it doesn’t fade too much, but it is kind of intense and has a slight Herbiee medicinal smell in my nostrils.
So that’s why I prefer to blend it with another essential oil.
Peppermint: Peppermint has a clean, fresh scent that is cooling, energizing, and antiseptic.
Peppermint is suitable for beginners because it has a moderate usage rate, does not accelerate trace or discolor soap, and is relatively cheap.
Although it is a love-and-hate scent, if you are a fan of pepperminty things, then you will love it.
Patchouli
Patchouli gives a deep sense. It can be overwhelming; however, if you are using it as part of a blend, use less patchouli.
As opposed to your other essential oils because the patchouli can take over, it’s a powerful bass note.
It blends nicely with things like orange, especially if you’re looking for a Christmassy-scented bar. Patchouli and orange are nice.
Standard Tea tree or (lemon scented): lemon-scented tea tree is technically a tea tree oil, so although it is lemon-scented, it’s still classed as a tea tree essential oil.
One of the reasons I like the lemon-scented tea tree is that you get a pleasant, strong lemon scent.
But unlike a lemon or an orange essential oil, it doesn’t fade too badly in soap. Citrus essential oils are notorious for disappearing in soap.
And while the tea tree, yeah, it does get lighter over time. It doesn’t fade as much as other citrus oils, and you get a nice lemony scent permit.
The downside to the lemon tea tree is that it is costly and on par with the rose geranium.
This keeps the batter nice and fluid; it has no issues with any accelerating trace or anything like that.
You can use it on its own and are not obligated to blend it with other essential oils.
Orange
Orange has a citrus, sweet scent that is cheerful, bright, and uplifting.
Orange is suitable for beginners because it has a high usage rate, does not accelerate trace or discolor soap, and adds a slight natural orange color to soap.
However, orange essential oil can be photosensitive, so it is recommended to use a folded (5x or 10x) version that is more stable and concentrated.
I find that sweet orange oils fade quickly in soaps. 5-fold orange is a bit stronger; the scent is concentrated, easy to work with, and goes well with cedarwood.
Mei Chang: This is another citrusy essential oil. It has an orangey-lemon scent to it.
It is very much a citrus oil, but unlike the majority of citrus oils, this one stays strong. I’ve used it in soaps, and it lasts well compared to other citrus oils in soaps.
No experience of batter seizing, and blends well with orange and cedarwood.
You can also check for essential oils that smell good together and experiment with your preference.
However, these are not the only essential oils available for cold-process soap.
There are many more, and you can blend essential oils to create unique scents.
The critical factor to note when it comes to essential oils is to ensure any essential oils you use for your soaps are skin-safe and have low to zero acceleration and coloration.
Conclusion
In cold-process soap making, experimenting with these essential oils will not only introduce you to the art of scent blending but also allow you to craft soaps with unique therapeutic benefits.
Remember to start with small quantities, explore different combinations, and, most importantly, enjoy the creative journey of soap-making.
