Essential oils are often put into homemade melt and pour soap. They can create delightful fragrances that make your soap feel more luxurious. But there’s a lot to know about essential oils in soap. A lot of articles only focus on cold process, ignoring melt and pour, despite the fact melt and pour is a better choice for people with young children, pets or making soap in a campervan.

When I started soaping, I assumed essential oils would behave the same way in cold process soap and melt and pour soap, but this is not true. I have experimented with a lot of different essential oils and found that they definitely don’t react the same way in melt and pour!

Here is an infographic with the essential facts about essential oils in soap:

This infographic shows some basic facts about essential oils in soap along with the results of an experiment I did with several different essential oils.

I tested eight essential oils (lavender, spearmint, lemon, 5-fold orange, rose geranium, eucalyptus, citronella and sage) in clear melt and pour and white melt and pour. The scent seemed to last longer in the clear (colourless and translucent) melt and pour soap base than in white melt and pour soap base, and the results in the infographic are from that.

I have seen some chitchat that citrus oils don’t come out as strong in cold process, and that lavender tends to come out stronger, so it’s interesting to me that my own experiments with melt and pour had the opposite result.

As a conclusion to that experiment, I would say if you want to make lavender soap, do it in cold process, and if you want to make citrus soaps, use melt and pour, because the citrus scents have come out really strong in all my melt and pour soaping so far.

Other articles about essential oils in soaps:

How to get the essential oil scent to show up in soap

History of essential oils in soap

How to safely use essential oils in home-made soap (and infographic)

How to make soap: Everything you need to know to make soap even in a campervan.

Other articles about making home made cosmetics:

Vegan green tea shampoo bar recipe

Vegan hair conditioner bar recipe

One-ingredient avocado face mask recipe

Easy melt and pour breastmilk soap recipe

At-home DIY facial for new mamas!