30 of the Best Free Soap Recipes

A collection of all-natural free soap recipes including floral, citrus, herbal, vegetable, spice, and farmhouse blends. Simple and beautiful soap ideas suitable for beginner soap makers and the more advanced.

A collection of free 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 #soapmaking #soaprecipe
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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, decorations, 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 free soap recipes and instructions online. They’re to help and instruct you to make natural handmade soap from the comfort of your own kitchen.

The collection of free soap 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.

A collection of all-natural free soap recipes including floral, citrus, herbal, vegetable, spice, and farmhouse blends. Simple and beautiful soap ideas suitable for beginner soap makers and the more advanced #soaprecipe #soapmaking #coldprocesssoap

Free Soap Recipes with Floral Inspiration

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.

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. Check out these free soap recipes with a citrus twist:

  • Sweet Orange Soap Recipe a simple soap made with grated orange peel and a special type of orange essential oil that lasts
  • 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-Infused-Oil Soap Recipe with natural yellow color and scented with may chang essential oil
  • Melissa Balm Soap Recipe made with Melissa (lemon balm) infused oil and lemon and peppermint essential oils

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.

Start your herbal journey with the Herbal Academy's beginners program

Vegetable Soap 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 are a few free soap recipes to try.

Spice Soap Recipes

Spices are fabulous soap-making ingredients. Many of them naturally color or add fun decorations. 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.

Farmhouse Soap Making Recipes

You can make soap with almost any oil including animal fats and waxes like tallow and beeswax. These free soap recipes are great for using farm ingredients from your own homestead or even the farmer’s market.

  • Natural Goat Milk Soap 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.
  • Simple Hot-Process Soap Recipe with mango butter and a rustic farmhouse look
  • Scrubby Kitchen Hand Soap Recipe Make handmade soap with lavender and rosemary essential oils, shea butter, and poppy seeds.
  • 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.
  • Honey & Beeswax Soap Recipe is a simple and all-natural soap recipe that includes tips on how to use honey to tint soap pale brown to deep caramel
  • Calendula and Tallow Soap Recipe with tallow (or lard), calendula-infused olive oil and lavender essential oil
  • Simple Soap for Dry Skin for anyone suffering from dry or sensitive skin who wants a gentle, soothing soap, free from fragrances

Soapmaking Books

For even more free soap recipes and inspiration browse these ideas but also check out these recommended books including this ebook. 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.

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19 Comments

  1. Melissa Looney says:

    I think your soaps a really quite attractive. Could you use the soaps with plant in them for melts to scent the room?

  2. mary koons says:

    can you use goat milk instead of water in these recipies

    1. You can use goat milk (liquid or powder) in almost any soap recipe. You add the powder at trace and can replace up to 100% of the water amount with liquid goat milk. Goat milk does have a tendency to discolor, though, so I recommend that you follow the instructions I give in my goat milk soap recipe.

  3. Thank you for all the lovely recipes, tried a few and the turned out beautifully!

  4. Bonsoir,
    Je suis Mme EULALIE
    J’ai télécharger un e book malheureusement c’est en anglais, possible de me l’envoyer et en français svp.
    Merci pour votre bonne compréhension

  5. Veronica Owusu Nkrumah says:

    please thanks very much for sharing your experience. Please kindly continue with the sharing of your experience 🙏

  6. Peaches Alexis sweeting says:

    Am into making soap am so glade that found this site

  7. Thank you very much on this page and all recepies. it is very helpfull

  8. 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!

  9. 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?

    1. 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.

  10. 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

  11. 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?

    1. 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 :)

      1. 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.