How Much Essential Oil To Add To Soap

Crafting aesthetic soaps using essential oils is an art. The art of creating synergistic aromas that can uplift your gray mood with their scent. But matching and mixing different fragrances to get the one favorable scent can be complex at times.

Seasoned as well as new soap makers often struggle while adding the right amount of essential oil in their soap recipes. Adding irregular proportions of essential oils to soaps might result in overwhelming scents that can cause skin sensitivity or no scent. This creates a need for knowledge about the appropriate use of essential oil for soap making.

Being your go-to soap making partner, we have run out a detailed discussion with experts soap makers about the use of essential oils for soap making and identified details of effective usage. In this blog, we will list the ideal amount of essential oils to add in soap making recipes - some key deciding factors and varying strengths and weaknesses of different essential oils and essential oil blends.

So, How Much Essential Oil Should I Add to Soap?

To get the best fragrance out of potent essential oils, make sure to mix them in fixed ratios. A general rule of thumb is to use up to 1.5% of total oil weight in the soap recipe. No more and no less. Identify the perfect amount by measuring it along the weight of the desirable soap bar.

Even a small amount of essential oil is enough to leave lasting footprints of aromatic fragrance. Mixing excessive amounts of essential oil will turn your soap bar greasy and soft, hampering its proper solidification. Make sure to use some benchmarks or reference guides before using essential oil for your upcoming soap-making session. Read our soap making essential oils guide to get more details about the same. 

We have mentioned a source table to help you figure out the basics of using essential oils along with a good understanding about the life cycle of some promising essential oils.

Here's a complete chart of soap making essential oils to get a clearer understanding. 

Factors that Affect Essential Oils Usage for Soap Making

The fascinating process of soap-making is highly influenced by a few important factors. Keeping a brief note of these attributes can result in massive success in your soap-making journey.

Nature and properties matter the most

The foremost settling factor is the character of essential oils. Some essential oils have a mild and gentle odor, while others might offer strong and spicy scents. One should always check on the nature of essential oils before adding them to soap-making recipes. Identify the perfect essential oil that evenly defines your personality and attitude, or simply create unique aromatic essential oil blends for various moods.

You can use gentle essential oils like myrrh essential oil for creating a more relaxed and calming aroma or select spicy scents of cinnamon essential oil for crafting exotic masculine soap bars. The aroma of these essential oils is going to leave you amazed. Make sure to use them in controlled quantities.

Balance of proportion

Make sure to use essential oils in finite amounts.  
Overuse of potent essential oils can create staggy and overpowering scents, while adding too little can be of no use. This makes it extremely necessary to use a balanced amount of essential oil for getting desirable results.

For instance, overplaying the sweet floral fragrance of jasmine essential oil can show overwhelming results that will make you feel drowsy and irritated. On the other hand, a well-diluted combination of jasmine essential oil in argan carrier oil will show favorable and neutralizing effects on the mind and the body. 

Always ensure to create essential oil blend for soap making with mild carrier oils like virgin coconut oil and sweet almond oil before adding them in your soap-making recipes.

Make complementing blends

Create powerful combinations of botanicals using different essential oils. Blending of essential oils is a traditional art used by professional soap makers to create expensive exotic scents. It helps in making diverse aromatic soaps by mixing parallel scents of diverse essential oils. This technique cuts unnecessary waste of essential oils and works efficiently while crafting customized soap units.

You can also buy bulk essential oils online from a trusted wholesale essential oils supplier like Aromachology oils. It will be an economical option with a lot of feasibility. At Aromachology, you get a majestic selection of best-smelling essential oil blends for crafting nourishing soap bars for different moods and weather. Snuggle in the aromatic goodness of our Sleep Elixir Essential Oil Blend that is designed especially for visionary dreamers like you.

Keep check of temperature

Natural essential oils get their exhilarating aromas from volatile plant compounds. These nutritional components are the reason behind many healing and therapeutic benefits of essential oils. Excessive heating and sun exposure can cause transfusion of this volatile liquid into gas bubbles, and diffusing them above can result in depletion of aroma and nutritional mass.

Each essential oil has its own flash point, and identifying it is a necessity for crafting soaps. Take, for example, the fresh citrusy aroma of lime essential oil that can easily evaporate due to its strong dispersing nature, while the sweet-fruity scent of chamomile essential oil disperses slowly at warmer temperatures. 

Sensitivity and tolerance

Personal preference plays priority while selecting the ideal essential oil for the soap-making process. Some essential oils might give an overwhelming fragrance that can result in irritation and sensitivity. To avoid mishaps, use favorable essential oils in an adequate ratio only after proper dilution.

Before adopting any essential oil, you can always go for a patch test to ensure your suitability and level of sensitivity with its aroma.

Strong, spicy scents of clove essential oil and ginger essential oil might not go well with every individual. For apt usage, try adding a prosperous blend of cedarwood essential oil with the fruity fragrance of natural rosemary essential oil or grapefruit essential oil. You can also go and look out for essential oil soap blends designed to give you an energetic dose of confidence and strength.

Every essential oil is different and has varying strengths

Each essential oil carries different fragrances and botanical properties of the respective parent plant. This enables them to offer different scents of aromatic plant compounds in soaps. Some essential oils might share a similar scent profile, but they will never give similar fragrances.

Consider this example of two different yet very popular fragrances of luxury soaps. The captivating aroma of rose essential oil is unparalleled to any other essential oil and outperforms as the most commonly used fragrance in recipes of feminine soap.

Similarly, the exotic scent of cinnamon bark essential oil gives tough competition to all other refined essential oils in the vast market of masculine soap manufacturing. Comparing two essential oils is futile, as each has its own varying strengths and demerits. Nevertheless, you can easily decorate them together by creating powerful aromatic essential oil blends for soaps and other personal care products.