30+ Natural Soap Recipes (Cold Process)

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A collection of the best natural soap recipes on the web. Each is vetted, many are printable, and all will create small batches of beautiful handmade soap. You’ll learn how to make soap with essential oil, clay, dried flowers, and much more! These are simple and beautiful soap recipes suitable for beginner and more advanced soap makers.

A collection of free natural soap recipes with printable instructions. Each creates small batches of beautiful handmade soap with essential oils, clay, dried flowers, and pure oils. These are simple and beautiful soap recipes suitable for beginner soap makers and the more advanced #soapmaking #soaprecipe

You’ve made your first soap recipes and are hooked! Now, you’re scouring the internet, looking for even more inspiration. Recipes using different oils, scents, colors, decorations, you name it. When I first started making soap, I did the same exact thing.

When learning, it’s easier to use tried-and-tested recipes or look at others for inspiration for your own formulas. Unfortunately, the internet is awash with recipes (pun intended), and many of them aren’t very good. Rest assured that the recipes here are. They’re ones I’ve created myself or are from reputable sources, including other experienced soapmakers.

Cold Process Soap Making

This roundup consists entirely of cold-process soap recipes. The cold process is a way to make homemade soap from scratch using oils, lye, and water. You can also stir in soap additives such as essential oils, herbs, and clay to color and scent your soap. There are other ways to make soap, though, including hot process (where you cook the ingredients) and melt-and-pour. The latter uses a pre-made soap ba se and is the most beginner-friendly. It’s usually not completely natural, though.

Use a stick blender to emulsify the soap ingredients.

Let’s have a quick rundown of the basic cold-process method so you understand what’s involved. Prepare to wear safety gear, including goggles and gloves, when working with sodium hydroxide. Then, you begin by first melting solid oils, such as coconut oil and shea butter, and blending them with any liquid oils and the lye solution. Typically, you use a stick blender, then pour the batter into a soap mold once it begins to thicken. This thickened state begins with an emulsion and then progresses to what we call trace.

Cut soap into bars using a knife or a dedicated soap cutter.

After that, you let it harden, cut it into bars, and let the soap cure. Feeling a bit overwhelmed? The recipes provide step-by-step instructions, so look to each for more detail. Some also include soap-making videos to help you make the recipe successfully.

Now, on to the resources and recipes! As with any soap recipes you use from books or other sources, make sure you run them through a soap calculator to understand them better. You can also make any adjustments there.

Soapmaking Resources

Are you a beginner soapmaker? Though you can learn to make your own soap from free resources, there can be a bit of a learning curve. If you’d like to get started quickly, I recommend enrolling in the Natural Soapmaking for Beginners Online Course. Through videos and printables, it teaches you everything you need to know to get started making natural soap. You’ll also get step-by-step soapmaking videos and my support. Here are some other guides that will help you, too:

Lovely Greens Guide to Natural Soapmaking by Tanya Anderson
Pure Soapmaking by Anne-Marie Faiola
Simple & Natural Soapm aking by Jan Berry

Floral Soap Recipes

You make floral soap with flowers, usually in the form of essential oil. It adds a beautiful scent and possibly therapeutic properties. Floral soap usually comes in pretty colors and is sometimes decorated with dried flowers. Not all flowers are suitable for soapmaking, but some of the most popular include blue cornflowers, calendula, jasmine, and rose. If you grow your own flowers, feel free to use them in your homemade creations. One other note, essential oil is a liquid plant essence, while fragrance oil is a synthetic perfume. Be aware while shopping.

Learn to Make Floral Soap with essential oils and whole flowers #soapmaking #soaprecipe

Citrus Soap Recipes

Fresh and uplifting citrus is a big winner for pretty much everyone. The scent in citrus soap comes from essential oils, and you have many options to choose from. Unfortunately, some of the most common citrus essential oils aren’t suitable for soap recipes because they tend to fade almost immediately.

Learn to Make Citrusy Soap with essential oils and citrus fruit #soapmaking #soaprecipe

For that reason, I avoid using lime, grapefruit, mandarin, lemon, and orange essential oils in soap making. Instead, I recommend lemongrass, citronella, litsea cubeba (may chang), and begamot. Some citrus essential oils are concentrated enough to hold the scent in soap recipes. That includes the incredible 10x orange essential oil, which you’ll find in the first recipe.

Herbal Soap Recipes

Most dried herbs will turn black in cold-process soap recipes, but you can use that to your advantage. Little flecks of peppermint or sage add interest to single-color soaps. Use both dried herbs and essential oils in the free soap recipes below.

Learn to Make Herbal Soap with essential oils and garden herbs #soapmaking #soaprecipe

Using Vegetables in Soap Making

Making soap with vegetables usually means replacing some of the water called for in soapmaking with purees. You can get some pretty incredible colors from things like carrots and squash. The trick is that the puree needs to be very fine, and you don’t use too much. Using more than an ounce (28 g) of puree per pound (454 g) of oil can cause issues, including ‘Dreaded Orange Spot’.

Soap Recipes Using Vegetables including carrots, cucumber, pumpkin, and rhubarb #soapmaking #soaprecipe

Sometimes you can infuse oils with vegetables, such as rhubarb root. Do this with either garden rhubarb or Himalayan rhubarb, and you’ll get incredible pink and magenta colors!

How to Make Carrot Soap
Garden Rhubarb Soap Recipe (naturally pink)
Pumpkin Spice Soap Recipe
Cucumber Soap Recipe

Making Soap with Spices

Spices are fabulous soap ingredients, and many of them create lovely colors and decorations. You can also pair the whole spice with spicy and woodsy essential oils, though please use restraint. Some spice essential oils cause contact dermatitis, allergies, and other issues. Spice, as a powder from the kitchen cupboard, is perfectly safe in soap recipes. However, it can feel gritty if you use too much.

How to use kitchen spices to make handmade soap. Includes cinnamon, turmeric, annatto, and ginger #soapmaking #soaprecipe

Self-Sufficient Soap Recipes

These recipes are for you if you raise your own livestock or keep honeybees. You can make soap with almost any oil, including animal fats and waxes like tallow and beeswax. Tallow soap is particularly good, but so is using milk, honey, and oats to make soap. I’d also like to share my solid dish soap recipe with this collection—it’s fantastic and ideal for the self-sufficient home!

Cold process soap recipes using honey, milk, beeswax, tallow, and other farm-fresh ingredients #soapmaking #soaprecipes

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