Ways To Make Soaps For Sensitive Skin

Different Ways To Make Soap For Sensitive Skin in Malaysia

Few days ago i wrote about Sensitive skin and how does it happen (you can click here) and about how using the correct soaps can actually reduce your sensitive skin (you can click here). Today lets talk about the methods or ways to make your own soap.

Again; you dont really need to make the soaps for your sensitive skin; you can also just make sure the surfactant used in your commerical soaps are not harsh (ill be doing a post about this soon); but for today lets talk about how do you actually make these soaps on your own so that you can control and know exactly whats added in.

Now when making soap; there are three main ways to make it; the Melt and Pour Soap, Cold Process Soap and Hot Process Soap. (click here to read old post on this)

Melt and pour Soap:

Melt and Pour Soap is a method of soap making where its literally; you are using a soap base (most commonly known as glycerin soap base in Malaysia), melt it (in either a double boiler or microwave), add your extra ingredients like color and fragrance, and pour it into a mold and its done! You can click here to view the simplest recipe on how to make these type of soaps

Now here is the problem; these bases are mostly factory made therefore there is no difference between these and the normal commercial soap! Two years ago during my experimentation mode; ive come up with my own soap base thats more natural. Yes soap lab handmakes these bases from scratch. (You can click here on the journey of how we made it.) However; even though we make it ourself and its way better than the factory made ones; i personally still prefer cold process soap especially when it comes to sensitive skin.

Why? Because melt and pour soap bases requires us to add a lot of other additional unwanted ingredients like propylene glycol, glycerin etc to make it meltable at lower degrees (it melts at 50 degrees as compared to cold process soap that melts at 200 degrees). So if you are making something for sensitive skin; use cold process method.

Also if you are a business owner; you should read about our previous post on how your competitors can do the same thing you are doing and steal your recipes if you were making melt and pour soaps. Click here to read more about it.

Cold Process Method.

Cold Process method is like the 'entry' level method of making soap from scratch. If Melt and pour soap is like 'Maggi' where all is done you just have to mix the prepacked ingredients; CP method is more like making your own Mee Goreng.

You add what you want and leave out all the unwanted things out.

The basis of soap making is only three things; The oils, Water and a strong alkali (sodium hydroxide for solid soap, potassium Hydroxide for liquid Soap. You can click here to learn the difference).

The process of making soap is called as saponification:

• Fats + Sodium Hydroxide (diluted with water) --> Soap + Glycerin.

Fats= Any fats like vegetable oils or animal fats (we prefer vege oils because we are 100% vegetarian store)
Sodium Hydroxide = Lye / NaOH
Glycerin =byproduct of soap; a humectant aka moisturiser

Now wether you want or not you must use sodium hydroxide to create the saponification reaction. If you notice after the reactions; when the oils are already turned into soap; there is no sodium hydroxide left! Ill be talking more about lye handling in the next post.

If you are interested to make your own cold process soap; take a look at this yogurt soap or breast milk soap that you can start making immediately here.

Hot process soap

this method of soap making is exactly cold process soap only this time instead of not adding heat; we are adding heat to make the soap 'cure' faster and use immediately.

Here is an example of recipe to make hot process soap (click here)

In this next few post ill try to cover all this methods (cold process and hot process) so do check it out.

If you have any further questions do comment below or if you would like us to clarify anything regarding these methods; do leave a comment

If you are interested in learning the formulation for these soaps for business purposes we do have online course that you could sign up for. These classes are conducted via facebook group. For more information please click here.

Thank you for reading;
Nisha