Rose Skin Cream Recipe
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Learn to make this all-natural rose skin cream recipe with rose water and pure oils. It’s a thick and nourishing cream that’s wonderful for moisturizing hands and body. To make it, you pour warm oils into rose water and then blend them together. Add drops of rose essential oil at the end to give it an incredible scent and more skin nourishment.
Roses have many beneficial skin properties, and extracts from their petals are shown to be anti-inflammatory and moisturizing. That means that while they work to soothe redness, they lock moisture in, making your skin appear just as smooth and soft as the rose petals themselves. Rose extract also works as a gentle toner, balancing your skin’s pH while leaving a lingering rosy fragrance. That’s why I’ve included both rose water and rose essential oil in this rose skin cream recipe.
You can begin this recipe by making your own rose water from flowers in the garden. Alternatively, use purchased rose water (rose hydrosol) to make it. The final cream is white to light pink in color, thick like a mousse, and feels incredible on your skin. From start to finish, it will take you about thirty minutes and can be very inexpensive to make.
Making Handmade Skin Cream
Thick skin creams aren’t difficult to make and are made up of about thirty percent oil phase ingredients and about seventy percent water. There’s a tiny amount of additional ingredients, such as essential oil and preservatives. As you can imagine, oil and water do not mix together very easily, so you need to use an ingredient that will help bind them together. It’s called an emulsifier, and the one called for in this recipe thickens as it helps the ingredients to emulsify.
If you’ve never made skin cream or lotion before, it’s easy and nothing to be worried about. The important parts are that the ingredients are accurately measured, the temperatures adhered to, and a broad-spectrum preservative is used. It also helps to use the recommended immersion blender or milk frother. The high shear action of the blades or whisk helps the ingredients come to a thick emulsion in seconds. Stirring gently with a spoon will also work but it takes longer.
Rose Skin Cream Ingredients
Skin creams consist of three groups of ingredients. The water phase includes water, water-based ingredients, and ingredients that can be dissolved in water. The oil phase includes lipid oils, waxes, and oil-soluble ingredients. Lastly, the cooling phase ingredients are heat-sensitive and, in this simple recipe, include essential oil and preservatives.
The lipid oils I’ve chosen for this rose skin cream recipe are jojoba and sweet almond. Jojoba is very close in structure to human sebum, so it makes an excellent base for a natural cream. Sweet almond oil is much lighter and will balance any potential oily feeling. If you would rather use different oils, that’s perfectly fine! Use a thick oil, such as avocado oil or rose hip oil, for the jojoba and another light oil, such as safflower oil, for the sweet almond.
This recipe’s main ingredient is rose water, which can be purchased or homemade. If you can’t find or make rose water, you can replace it with distilled water. The last ingredients include rose absolute, a deeply rose-scented essential oil, and a broad-spectrum preservative. While the rose absolute is optional, the preservative is not. Made without a preservative, this cream (and all others) would become a breeding ground for bacteria and other microbes within days, even if you keep it in the refrigerator.
Homemade Rose Water
If you grow old-fashioned or English roses, you can use them to make homemade rose water for this recipe. There are a few ways to do it at home, and you can use garden roses or wild rose petals. Alternatively, you can invest in a gorgeous bottle of rose water. It can have a lot more natural rose fragrance than your homemade versions, and the rose extracts will be more intense.
More Skincare Recipes
Rose Skin Cream Recipe
Equipment
- digital jewelers scale (if measuring the ingredients by weight)
- 2 heat-proof jugs (or jars) (glass or stainless steel)
- immersion blender (stick blender) (milk frother or spoon)
- pH testing strips (optional)
- 1 small dark glass jar (3.4 oz /100 ml) (100 ml)
Materials
Water Phase
- 0.6 cup rose water (rose hydrosol) 140 g
Oil Phase
- 4.5 tsp emulsifying wax NF (or BP) 15 g
- 7 tsp sweet almond oil 30 g
- 3 tsp jojoba oil 10 g
Cooling Phase
- 10 drops rose absolute Optional – or 20 drops rose geranium essential oil
- broad spectrum preservative* such as Leucidal SF Complete, or Optiphen
Instructions
- Measure the oil phase ingredients into a small saucepan and the rose water into a heat-proof jar or container.
- Heat both using indirect heat — Place a cloth or flat potholder at the bottom of a saucepan. Set the oil and water phase containers on top, then fill the pan with hot water up to the level of the oil phase ingredients.
- Heat on medium to medium-high until the oils and wax have completely melted. Take the temperature: the oils and the rose water should be about 150°F (66°C). When they reach this temperature, carefully lift the jars out of the water and set them on the counter.
- Pour the rose water into the container of oil phase ingredients. The mixture will become opaque very quickly.
- Mix with an immersion blender or milk frother (or spoon) until the mixture thickens to the consistency of double cream. This takes less than a minute with electronic mixing but will take longer if stirred with a spoon.
- Allow the rose skin cream to cool to about 122˚F (45˚C ) before stirring in the essential oil and preservative*. By this time, it will have thickened, and you should be able to spoon it up.
- Test the cream's pH (see below) before spooning it into jars for storage. Once made, it's best to allow the ingredients in the skin cream to synergize for a day before using. If properly preserved, the rose skin cream can have a shelf-life of up to eighteen months. Once you begin using it, use it up within six months.
This is my very first lotion making attempt. It has been sitting for 4 hours and feels lumpy. The temp of the oil was 144 and the water was 134 so I am hoping the water was too cool and solidified the emulsifier. Otherwise I do not know why. I will try again with everything closer to or at 150.
I am enjoying your site and all the wonderful information you are sharing.
Arnita
You’re welcome Arnita. Try gently reheating it and blending and see if that works for you.
I am so glad to find your you tube video then to your site. I am making rosemary oil for a friends daughter. she has ADHD. Is there any other herb take could compliment rosemary? Thank you for a wonderful site. Kate
Hi Kate and welcome! If you’re looking for herbs specific to memory and brain function then ginko, rosemary, ashwagandha, turmeric, and lions mane (a mushroom) are all good bets.
Hi,
Thankyou for all your lovely recipes.. Could you tell me is emulsifying wax the same as BTMS 50 or is it just called emulsifying wax?
Thankyou
Regards Nicole
Hi Nicole, BTMS 50 is a type of emulsifier, but one that’s used for wash-off creams like hair conditioner.
This is my first time trying this and just wanted to clarify when measuring liquids or oils are you including the weight of the container you are using?
No
Hi Tanya, thanks for the lovely recipe. Made it once now making my 2nd batch as I type this.
Great as a face cream too!
Hi Tanya, do you weigh your finish product to work out your % of preservative and essential oils?
The percentage used takes into account the entire recipe, if that’s your question.
Thank you for sharing this recipe. Can beeswax be substituted for the emulsifying was?
Only if you also add Borax, which is actually not recommended in skincare anymore. Otherwise it wouldn’t create a truly stable emulsion.
Thanks for such a detailed tutorial. This cream looks really effective.
Hi, Tanya.
Thank you so much for sharing your recipes. There was a giant rugosa rose in the garden when I was growing up and I’ve always loved the scent so I’m looking forward to making this body cream.
My question is what oil could I substitute for the jojoba oil? My skin doesn’t like it. lol
Thank you, again.
Claire =)
Sunflower and macadamia nut oils could be good substitutions.
Hi again Tanya : )…Another question…if you have to raise the pH for a moisturizer you are selling what do you use? You mentioned lye…how would you use it? Is there anything else you can use given that baking soda is for home use products? Also, in what proportion would you use it to raise the pH of the formula?
Same with the citric acid to lower the pH…in what proportion would you use it in the formula?
I can’t give you advice on adjusting for commercial use — I don’t sell preserved creams and lotions and tend to only make them for home. For commercial products in the EU you have to send a sample of your product to a 3rd party analyst to test for microbes after certain periods of time. Without this test, you’re not legally able to insure or sell water-based cosmetic products. I’d hope it were the same in north america but somehow I doubt it?
As for how much to use in adjusting. I mix a tiny amount into warm water as indicated in the recipe. Measure and pour a little in, mix it, and after a few minutes take the pH again. It’s the same for bicarbonate (baking soda), citric acid and sodium hydroxide. With the latter you need to be especially careful though. It’s much stronger a base than the bicarbonate. Make sure to always keep notes of how much you use so that you can make the recipe again. It’s through trial and error that you create a recipe that you can whip up time and time again.
Hi Tanya ☺… I have Leucidal preservative. Can you tell me what they mean when they say “use between 2% to 4%”? 2 to 4 % of what specifically?
Use it at 2% for creams – 2% by weight of the entire recipe
Great detail and explaining. Thank you. I made this recipe yesterday using roses my husband bought me for our anniversary. Love that they don’t get tossed like they used to. Also question: can I quadruple this recipe? Or should I make all four batches individually?
Hi Sherry, it’s not advisable to make anything edible or for skin with roses/flowers from bouquets. Unless they’re growing organically, they will be sprayed in insecticides and fungicides to keep them looking their best. Use homegrown roses that you know are not contaminated for this recipe. As for quadrupling — yes, feel free!
Thank you Tanya! I’m so glad that you talked about pH, and relieved that I’m not the only one getting readings under 4! I had been planning on trying the baking soda method to bring it up a bit, and you did it for me, yay! Have a beautiful day :)) Kristina
You’re so welcome :) There are a few ingredients you can use to bring the pH up a bit. Baking soda (Bicarbonate) is one that you can use for home use — probably not for skincare that you sell though. Another one is NaOH — Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye. You’ll see that in the ingredients list of some commercial creams and lotions. To lower the pH you can use lactic acid or citric acid.