A collection of natural soap making recipes including floral, citrus, herbal, vegetable, spice, and farmhouse soap recipes. Simple and beautiful soap ideas suitable for beginner soap makers and the more advanced.
Okay, you’ve made your first simple soap making recipes and are pretty much hooked. Now you’re scouring the internet looking for even more inspiration — different scents, colors, decoration, you name it. When I first started making soap I did the same thing but had a lot less luck. It’s because I’ve been there too that I share so many of my own recipes and instructions online. They’re too help and instruct you to make natural handmade soap from the comfort of your own kitchen.
The collection of cold-process soap making recipes below use natural ingredients such as essential oils, herbs, and clays. Some also include soap making videos to help you make the recipe successfully. Have fun with them and for even more inspiration check out the soap making books at the end.
Floral Soap making Recipes
The scent of most floral soap recipes comes from essential oils. They’re liquid concentrations of a flower’s essence and a little goes a long way. Some flowers can also add natural color and decoration too including blue cornflowers, calendula and a few others. If you grow your own flowers you can dry them and use them to make these creations too.
- Honey & Lavender Soap Recipe A gentle recipe for lavender soap with a dash of honey. The honey adds sweet fragrance and a light golden color. This is a very popular soap recipe and is also very gentle on the skin.
- Rose-Geranium Soap Making Recipe Colored with a mineral pigment to make the bars a pretty shade of pink and scented with rose geranium (my absolute fav) and cedar essential oils
- Dandelion Soap Recipe that uses both dandelion leaves and the yellow petals
- Old Fashioned Rose Soap Recipe This pretty soap features real roses, creamy shea butter and nourishing rose hip seed oil.
- Wildflower Soap Recipe uses dandelions for a sunny color and cornflowers, calendula, and rosepetals for pretty decoration
- Homemade Rose-hip Soap made with rose-hip oil, rose-hip tea, pink clay, and geranium essential oil.
- More Soap Making Recipes
Citrusy Soap making Recipes
Although orange and lemon essential oils don’t hold their scent for long in cold-process soap, there are others that do. Litsea cubeba (May chang), lemongrass, and citronella to name a few. You can also use dried citrus peel to decorate soap, whether it’s lemon peel or slices of dried orange pushed into the tops.
- Natural Lemongrass soap recipe This lemongrass soap recipe comes with a video showing the exact steps to make the recipe. It’s a simple palm-free base and tinted with a mineral powder and lemongrass essential oil.
- Calendula & Citrus soap recipe simple cold-process calendula soap recipe with dried flower petals and citrus essential oils
- Melissa Balm Soap Recipe made with Melissa (lemon balm) infused oil and lemon and peppermint essential oils
- Sweet Orange Soap Recipe a simple soap made with grated orange peel and citrus essential oils
Herbal Soap making 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 to create the herbal soap recipes below.
- Natural Rosemary Soap tinted with Cambrian Blue Clay Soft green bars colored by extra virgin olive oil and natural clay and scented with rosemary essential oil. Includes an instructional video.
- Herbal Eucalyptus Soap Recipe Tinted to the color of eucalyptus leaves and scented with deep and clearing essential oil
- Peppermint Soap Recipe Refreshing and tingly soap recipe using peppermint essential oil and leaves. Full DIY video included.
- Homemade Rosemary Mint Shampoo Bars You can use these natural bars to wash your hair
vegetable Soap making Recipes
Making soap with vegetables usually means adding a puree at Trace. 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 don’t be tempted to use too much either. More than an ounce (28g) per pound (454g) of oils can cause issues including ‘Dreaded Orange Spot’. Here’s a few recipes to try.
- All Natural Carrot Soap Recipe with Real Carrots Vibrant yellow-orange soap scented with citrusy essential oil
- Cold Process Cucumber Soap make simple natural soap using cucumber puree and a mix of skin loving oils
- Real Pumpkin Soap Recipe pumpkin puree from a can tints soap a deep orange
Spice Soap making Recipes
Spices are fabulous soap making ingredients. Many of them naturally color or add fun decoration. You can also pair the whole spice with spicy and woodsy essential oils, though please use tried and tested recipes. Many spice essential oils should only be used in small and very controlled amounts.
- Natural Cinnamon Soap Recipe Perfect for holiday gift giving, you make this soap with warming essential oils and red Moroccan clay.
- Vibrant Turmeric Soap how to naturally color soap using the common spice, turmeric. Tints soap a pale warm pink to electric orange.
- Pumpkin Spice Soap made with both pumpkin puree and warming spicy essential oils
- Safflower & Ginger Soap Recipe an advanced soap recipe featuring different layers, poppy seeds, safflower petals, and essential oil
Farmhouse Soap making Recipes
You can make soap with almost any oil including animal fats and waxes like tallow and beeswax. These recipes are great for using farm ingredients from your own homestead or even the farmers market.
- Natural Goat Milk Soap Making Recipe Sugars and milk tend to turn soap brown but using this recipe will give you creamy white bars. They’re lovely in their simplicity and goat milk contains nutrients and alpha-hydroxy acids that are great for your skin.
- Tallow Soap Making Recipes Using Tallow can be a sustainable and inexpensive way to make handmade soap. This piece from homesteading soap maker Liz Beavis fills you in on the facts on using tallow in soap and includes two of her own recipes.
- Calendula and Tallow Soap Recipe with tallow (or lard), calendula-infused olive oil and lavender essential oil
- Honey & Beeswax Soap Recipe a simple and all natural soap recipe that includes tips on how to use honey to tint soap pale brown to deep caramel
- Homemade Dog Shampoo Bars made with neem oil and lavender to help repel fleas
- Simple Soap for Dry Skin for anyone suffering from dry or sensitive skin who wants a gentle, soothing soap, free from fragrances
- Scrubby Kitchen Hand Soap Recipe Make handmade soap with lavender and rosemary essential oils, shea butter, and poppy seeds.
Soap making books
For even more soap making recipes and inspiration check out these recommended books. They feature step-by-step cold-process soap recipes from well known soap makers. All have nearly five-star reviews and will come in handy in your soap making adventures.
- Pure Soapmaking: How to Create Nourishing, Natural Skin Care Soaps
- Simple & Natural Soapmaking: Create 100% Pure and Beautiful Soaps
- Making Soap From Scratch: How to Make Handmade Soap – A Beginners Guide and Beyond
- Soap Crafting: Step-by-Step Techniques for Making 31 Unique Cold-Process Soaps
Naima Kramer says
Hi, do you have a book of the natural vegetable soap recipes with all those lovely pictures you take and a possible visual step by step process for at least one of them. Too many recipes to print I need them in one place. And your pictures look great!
lovelygreens says
Thanks Naima and I’ll consider making one 🙂
fransisca says
Thank you very much for the recipes! I have something to ask, if I don’t use solid coconut oil, can I replace it with liquid coconut oil with the same composition?
lovelygreens says
Liquid (Fractionated) Coconut oil needs a different amount of lye to transform into soap. This means you can’t simply replace solid coconut oil with it. You’ll need to recalculate the recipe if you want to use it.
amanda jones says
I love your soap recipes and how pretty they look, so full of character which isn’t there in supermarket soaps. Looking forward to more soap recipes, please ,please. Amanda
robert says
A good idea for winter my rosemary is still green even after 5 inches of snow on the ground and then melted and now its raining non stop…. lost over 8 hives due to a bear… life right i bet where you live no bears on the island? Just deer?
lovelygreens says
No bears or deer even. The largest wild animal on the Island isn’t actually native — it’s the Australian Wallaby. They don’t live anywhere near my garden though 🙂
Scott says
Help! Liz I could have sworn it was one of your recipes that I made a month or so ago and it was hot process with tallow. I know it had tallow ,olive oil, coconut oil and cocoa butter because I have all the ingredients right here. I also remember measuring things in grams which would set yours apart from others on the web. However, I cannot for the life of me find it again. Would you please point me to it? It had all the above ingredients plus the other obvious ones like lye, et. Thank you and I hope you get this soon.