Which oils do you use to scent your soap bars?

At SOAK Bath Co we use the highest quality, all natural essential oils to scent the majority of our products. And in some cases we use fine fragrance oils to bring you unique and vibrant scents!

The majority of our product line is scented with all natural essential oils. We believe nature has given us some amazing scents to work with and strive to create an assortment of products that are strictly scented with essential oils. If you're looking for products that have no added scent or are only scented with essential oils we've compiled a Fragrance-Free Collection for you to discover here: https://cksoakbathco.com/collections/fragrance-free-collection

So why the need for fine fragrance oils? Any time we are combining ingredients together to make things like soap bars or bath bombs, we are working with chemistry. If you remember anything about high school chemistry class (ummm sort of?!) you may know that when combining ingredients there are instances where different ingredients can react to each other - in a good way and sometimes not-so-good way. If this doesn't make a whole lot of sense, let's look at the world of baking, we're very close to the world of baking! What happens when you combine baking soda and vinegar? You get a reaction, a pretty cool one at that! Vinegar and baking soda combine to create a foaming eruption, the perfect makings of a DIY volcano demonstration. Two entirely safe compounds: baking soda and vinegar, combine to create an entirely new substance. The same kind of thing can happen when making soap or bath bombs.

When combining different oils and butters, there are some combinations that create an undesirable reaction. This is why we make multiple test batches before putting a soap bar into full-scale production. For example, if we were to make our soap recipe and use an all-natural, cinnamon essential oil, the moment we add cinnamon essential oil to the soap batter our batter would solidify. This creates a completely unusable batch of hardened oils, our soap bar batch ruined. There are other essential oils we can't use in the soap making process because it creates a soap making side effect called "ricing." Ricing means, the moment we add our essential oil to the batter, the entire batter turns into little rice-like pieces. Sometimes we can save a batch like this but it's not something that we'd aesthetically accept in our product line. Other variables come into play as well. How will the essential oil perform in the soap batch, will you be able to smell it or will it be too strong? Most citrus-based essential oils fade very quickly in the soap making process. Beautiful scents like Grapefruit, Lemon and Sweet Orange you can add as much or as little as you want, the soap curing process quickly stifles the citrus scents so the bar doesn't smell like anything a week after it's made (who wants that?!). In this instance, soapers can use a more highly concentrated orange essential oil, which we use for our Citrus Poppyseed Soap bar, this is one of the only citrus based essential oils that will hold its scent in our soap making process.

In the soap making world, we measure volatility of essential oils as it relates to the making process. Meaning, will it work in our process or won't it, how volatile or likely to react is the essential oil. The same issues can be found in the candle making process. Add eucalyptus essential oil to a candle and actually light it, your room will smell like highly concentrated cat pee (I wish this was a joke!) moments later. Different elements added to essential oils make them volatile. Heat, fire, other ingredients, it all has the possibility to change how the essential oil smells and performs. 

So what does that have to do with all of this? Fine fragrance oils are an alternative to some of these volatile effects of essential oils. It's why soap makers and candle makers use fine fragrances as an option for their products. Fine fragrance oils tend to be less volatile when combined with any other compound (like oils and waxes) and they are created to be entirely skin safe. Most of the fine fragrance oils are made of over 50% essential oil with the remaining portion of that scented oil being made of skin safe fragrance oil compounds. One thing we never compromise on is we are dedicated to using fine fragrance oils that are paraben and phthalate free. 

When choosing a scent for any of our products we balance a few things. What is the scent profile we're wanting to achieve? Is it actually possible? How will it react in our recipes? Then we take into consideration our customer's requests for scent profiles and can we achieve that with an essential oil first? If not, can we achieve it with a paraben free and phthalate free fragrance oil? These are just some of the considerations made when creating any of our products. We are dedicated to ensuring we continue to use the highest quality scented oils to bring you an amazing smelling product. 

Below is a list of items in our product line that has no added essential oil or fragrance oils to it: 

• Neem Oil Soap
• Aloe Vera Soap 
• Botanical Bath Salts
• Cocoa Butter Bath Melts
• Cocoa Butter Lotion Bar

Below is a list of items in the product line that are only scented with Essential Oils:

Soap Bars

• Charcoal Lavender Soap
• Charcoal Mint Soap
• Charcoal Tea Tree Soap 
• Citrus Poppyseed Soap
• Elderberry Soap
• Rebatch Soap - Eucalyptus + Lavender (limited edition bar)
• Lavender Soap 
• Lemon + Rosemary Soap
• Patchouli Soap
• Shampoo Bars

Bath Bombs

• Eucalyptus Bath Bomb
• Lavender Bath Bomb
• Peppermint Bath Bomb
• Sweet Orange Bath Bomb

Bath Salts

• Eucalyptus Bath Salts
• Lavender Bath Salts
• Peppermint Bath Salts
• Sweet Orange Bath Salts