Top 10 Essential Oils for Soap Making

February 22, 2025

You might have come across the vast importance and uses of essential oils for soap making formulas of various brands. After understanding everything, you must be thinking of adding essential oils in your next soap-making recipe. But before that, there is a need to look out for a match that ideally complements your taste and preferences.

For finding the perfect fit, it is necessary to learn about different essential oils and their respective uses in aromatic soaps. In this detailed addition, we have shared extensive knowledge about the benefits and systematic use of essential oils for the soap making process. Let’s start by learning the why behind this wide usage of essential oils.

Why Use Essential Oils in Soap Making?

Essential oils are indispensable ingredients in the recipes of professional soap makers and DIY enthusiasts.The fresh aromatic flavor and relaxing elixir of soaps work best in enhancing the user's experience with them. These potent plant liquids contain the nourishing and healing benefits of bioactive compounds of nature. Adding a definite amount of essential oil in soaps nurtures many skin benefits and also improves their life-scale usage.

All our organic essential oils are a treasured blessing of Mother Nature. We offer unparalleled support to bulk soap manufacturers and handcrafting individuals on orders of wholesale essential oil for their every personal and business requirement.

Benefits of Essential Oils in Handmade Soaps

The practice of mixing essential oil in soap formulation offers many promising advantages that can facilitate both the manufacturer and users. Let’s understand the varying list of benefits that essential oil offers while crafting a natural, handmade home.

Longivity: Adding essential oil improves the natural life-spam of soaps by altering their solidification process. When you use strong aromatic flavors of cinnamon essential oil or cedarwood essential oil, it contains substances that tightly bind all the ingredients together. This makes the soap bar turn out firmer and more durable for use.
Aromatic fragrance: Essential oils are primarily used for enhancing the natural scent profile of soaps. The rich fragrance of flowers and leaves unlocks natural flavor and provides many calming and relaxing benefits for the mind and muscles.
Holistic goodness: Pure essential oil contains bioactive nutrients from plants with a high amount of antioxidants and vitamins. This makes them a natural anti-inflammatory, bactericidal, and anti-microbial liquid that prevents bacterial allergies and skin infections.
Improved texture and feel: The natural nourishing fats and oils of essential oils help in improving the texture and appearance of soaps. These vital fats provide natural lather and work as a great exfoliator on skin. You can use the luxuriopus scent of rose essential oil in your soaps for a relaxing, expensive feel.

10 Best Essential Oils for Soap Making

Till now, you must have gotten a comprehensive idea about the extensive use of essential oils for making nourishing soaps. For the ease and comfort of our readers, after covering every aspect of diverse aromatic oils, we have finalized the top fits that you use for your upcoming soap-making project.

Lavender Essential Oil

The soothing touch of lavender essential oil will fly out all your tiredness and relax your mind completely. You can experience the captivating aroma of lavender oil as a fragrance contender in homemade soap-making recipes.

If you are looking for a stronger scent of lavender then you could also explore lavender CO2 extract obtained via supercritical extraction. This is a type of lavender oil that doesn't use steam distillation and gives a cleaner and more powerful extract.

Discover complete lavender essential oil benefits and uses.

Wondering how to source pure lavender oil for soap making? Learn about different types of lavender oils and their specific properties in this guide to buy bulk lavender essential oil for your soap making business.

Rosemary Essential Oil

Add rosemary essential oil for a productive dose of antioxidants that will eliminate bacterial enzymes and free radicals from skin. It is widely used to make de-tanning soaps as it naturally regenerates the natural skin complexition and masks the skin from harmful sun rays.

Moreover, the herbal and refreshing scent of rosemary essential oil works wonders for energizing soap bars. You can get creative and blend it with citrus oils like bergamot or orange for an extra kick of energy.

Along with killing those nasty germs, rosemary essential oil is also an unquestioned blessing for hair and scalp. Which means you can easily incorporate it shampoo bars too.

Discover complete list of rosemary essential oil benefits and uses.

Lemon Essential Oil

This summer, create a refreshing feeling of freshness and Vitamin C with pure lemon essential oil. The active compounds of citrus are effective on bad body odor and gently exfoliate the buildup of dirt from skin.

Using lemon essential oil for soap making helps add a zesty fragrance to soap bars and enhances their ability to fight pigmentation on skin.

Another great reason to use lemon essential oil in soaps is that its aroma is not overpowering. It has a mild and bearable scent so it works well for clients who want a mild lingering aroma in soaps.

Lemon oil is also versatile and can be paired with floral essential oils like jasmine or champaca.

Peppermint Essential Oil

It is a must-have additive ingredient in the recipes of traditional soap makers and skin experts. The cooling sensation of peppermint essential oil has soothing effects on redness and itchy skin. This adds to its extensive use in derma-tested soaps and homemade bath oils.

Ylang Ylang Essential Oil

This Indian origin fragrance comes from the flowers of Cananaga Odorata. It is widely used for crafting fresh and flavorful aromas of soaps by bath essential manufacturers across the globe.

Ylang ylang essential oil has a romantic and relaxing aroma with floral and slightly green notes.

What does this mean for soap makers?

Well, firstly it makes soap bars smell romantic and all things sensual.

Secondly, it helps keep skin oil-free and works particularly well in summers.

Know more about complete benefits of ylang ylang essential oil and how to use it in soaps and other products.

Oregano essential oil

The fresh and spicy scent of oregano essential oil is used to compose most exotic soap bars. Beside being an excellent food flavorant, oregano essential oil also caters to many healing benefits for skin. This Mediterranean herb shows majestic results on bacteria and fungal allergies while also working as a nourishing supplement on skin.

Using oregano essential oil for soap making can add potent anti-bacterial properties and oh-so comforting warm scent.

Mix it up with some ashwagandha oil or ginger root essential oil to increase the herbal quotient of your soap bars. Many seasoned aromatherapists recommend using spicy oils to balance chakras, especially in winters.

Bakuchiol Oil

If there is one natural oil making headlines for countless skincare benefits, it is undoubtedly Bakuchiol oil.

This organic retinol alternative shows tremendous effects on improving the natural elasticity and texture of skin. High-brand influencers and skincare lovers are actively appreciating cold pressed bakuchiol oil usage in soaps and beauty products. Consistent application of bakuchiol oil on skin effectively helps with sunburn and symptoms of melasama. Plus it is gentle and more loving towards the skin which means you can use it for soaps designed for sensitive skin.

While bakuchiol oil (also known as Bakuchi oil or babchi oil) isn't a typical essential oil, it still contributes countless active compounds to soap making recipes, making your soap bars stand out in the crowd.

Unless you are a seasoned skincare formulator, there is a high chance you might still be wondering what is bakuchiol? Simply put, it is a cold pressed extract that offer same properties as retinol. However, there are many differences between retinol and bakuchiol in terms of extraction, application, potency and result timelines.

Myrrh essential oil

The gentle cleansing properties of myrrh essential oil are efficiently used to make soft soap flavors. It is an ideal companion for individuals who do not like tacky fragrances and strong scents in their soaps.

Also known for its prominent spiritual benefits, tuning myrrh essential oil for soaps can add detoxifying properties and grounding aromatherapy benefits.

Rose essential oil

For once, everyone among us must have experienced the luxurious scent of rose essential oil in our soaps. The romantic and alluring fragrance of delicate rose petals is a personal favorite of expensive soap manufacturers. It is the most commonly used essential oil in feminine soap formulations for adding an exhilarating feel.

Seasoned soap makers usually use three types of rose oils in hot or cold process soap recipes - Rose fragrance oil, rose absolute oil or rose essential oil. While all three help get that perfect floral rosy scent in soaps, they differ greatly in terms of price and benefits.

Discover complete rose oil benefits and uses.

Black seed oil

All the beauty bloggers can't stop praising black seed oil and for all good reasons.

The antimicrobial properties of black seed oil are an excellent addition in recipes of soaps used for bacterial infection and skin allergies. It also shows suitable effects on dull and loose skin by increasing blood circulation.

Without investing much in expensive soaps, you can easily make DIY black seed oil soaps at home for soft and supple skin. Along with body bars, it can also be used in making shampoo bars as black seed oil has immense hair care properties.

Black seed oil is also known as black cumin oil so don't get confused if you get a bottle of black seed oil and the label reads black cumin oil instead.

Do I have to use essential oils for my soap?

It completely depends on your own choice and preferences. However, as holistic living and vegan lifestyles are the current trend of the hour, more consumers are switching to organic soap options which implies using natural essential oils sounds reasonable.

There is an extensive increase in the manufacturing of herbal soaps and natural bath essential products. Soaps made with the goodness of essential oils are non-toxic and do not cause any side effects on the skin.

It also provides you with an opportunity to reap the nourishing therapeutic and healing properties of nature without putting in any extra effort.

The potent nature of these essential oils makes them a natural treasured accessory for users. This sometimes leads to mishaps and the flow of synthetic essential oils into the market. To make the best choice, one should always look out for trusted essential oil providers.

Having said that, using essential oils for soaps is not mandatory. You can either replace natural essential oils with fragrance oils for soaps or completely skip scenting them. Both options are completely fine, the final decision to add essential oils to soaps should depend on your vision for soap bars.

Best Place To Buy Essential Oils For Soap Making

Seasoned soap makers trust Aromachology Oils as their go-to wholesale essential oils supplier for bulk and small quantities. With over 170 selection of bulk essential oils and carrier oils, Aromachology has is undoubtedly emerged as one of the best places to buy essential oils for soap making.

We partner with global brands and soap industrialists for crafting essences that bring value and utility for consumers. Whether you are just starting out or looking to expand, our handpicked collection of essential oils for soap making will help elevate your soap recipes.

If you want to take your soap bars up a notch, we’ve also got supercritical CO2 extracts too - perfect to add powerful scent and active compounds.

With a promise of sustainable, vegan and cruelty free products, all our essential oils are eco-friendly and not tested on animals. We provide great deals and discounts on buying bulk essential oil for soap-making businesses. Get the best out of nature with aromachology as your trusted growth companion.