Homemade Soap Recipes

This little collection of homemade soap recipes contains mostly cold process recipes and a couple melt & pour. Most of them are very easy and perfectly suited for beginners. You can find not only the classic and traditional recipes, but also natural and vegetable-based recipes for vegans.

When making soap from scratch, using the correct quantities of ingredients is critical. Properly formulated recipes for soap use a precise amount of lye to properly saponify the oils, butters & fats changing it into soap.

Using volume instead of weight may alter the lye amount, possibly causing the soap to contain too much lye, which can cause the soap to sting or burn skin when used. Or not enough lye will cause the soap to be ‘Super-fatted’ with excess unsaponified oils left in it. If the lye amount is off in either direction it can cause a bad batch of soap.

It’s very important to always run any recipe through a lye calculator before you use it, to be sure it has the correct amount of lye & water for the oils in that recipe. Here is a simple, easy to use lye calculator.

Best Homemade Soap Recipes

Easy homemade soap recipes for beginners

This super simple soap recipe for beginners is great for anyone getting start on soap making. If you have never made soap from scratch, this is the recipe for you: with only 3 oils, water and lye, no fragrances or colorants, you really can’t go wrong.

Homemade soap recipes without lye

Working with lye can be very dangerous. If you are not comfortable using lye just yet, you can try these basic melt and pour recipes. It doesn’t get any easier than this.

Homemade soap recipes for kids (coming soon)

Melt and pour recipes are so easy even kids can do it. Do you want a safe and simple recipe you can make with your children, try this super fun and colorful recipe.

Homemade soap recipes with olive oil (castile soap)

100% olive oil soaps (or soaps with a majority of olive oil in their composition) are also known as Castile Soaps. They are very simple and easy to do and very gentle, great for babies and people with sensitive skin.

Homemade soap recipes using lard

Lard recipes are considered to be great for beginners, because lard is sold in grocery stores and it’s very cheap. These recipes are easy to do and can help you achieve that much needed sense of accomplishment before proceeding on to more complicated and expensive recipes.

Vegan soap recipes

If the idea of using animal fats make you uneasy, you can try an all-vegetable soap. This cruelty-free recipe is perfect for animal lovers!

Safety First: remember to keep your lye & any lye water solutions out of the reach of children & pets, at all times!