About Cold Process Soap

Cold process soap is a method of making soap that involves mixing oils with sodium hydroxide lye, which causes a chemical reaction called saponification.  The soap is then left to cure for 4-6 weeks before being ready to use. Cold process is made 'from scratch', as opposed to melt and pour soaps where the base ingredients have already been saponified.

Ingredients

Olive oil
Oilve oil is a staple in soap making and is used in all BrightEssence soap recipes - it is excellent for all skin types and it adds conditioning to soap bars and creates a creamy lather. 

Coconut oil 
Coconut oil is used in most soap recipes and helps create a hard bar with loads of fluffy lather and cleansing power.

Cocoa butter
Cocoa butter provides luxurious moisture and skin protection and also helps to harden bars of soap.  

Shea butter
Shea butter creates hard bars and good lather, and adds conditioning properties to soap bars.

Avocado oil
Avocado oil contributes to a soap’s mildness and moisturising qualities. While avocado oil doesn’t produce copious bubbles on its own, it contributes to a stable, creamy lather that feels luxurious on the skin. 

Sweet Almond oil
Sweet almond oil creates a rich and conditioning lather and decent hardness.  It is a lightweight oil that absorbs easily into the skin, leaving it feeling soft and smooth without a greasy residue.

Mango butter
Mango butter adds non-greasy conditioning properties to soap and adds hardness to the bars.

Castor oil
Castor oil draws moisture to the skin and creates amazing lather in soap.

RSPO Palm oil
While BrightEssence offers many palm-free soaps, we have made the decision to include sustainable palm oil in some of our soaps. 

Palm oil is an excellent addition to soap – it is one of the few saturated vegetable hard oils that produces a hard long-lasting bar with a rich, creamy lather.

Palm oil has received negative attention in recent years due to reports of harm to animals and harm to the environment, and that has led some to boycott the product altogether. However, there have been huge advancements with positive impact for the palm oil industry since the creation of RSPO in 2004.

RSPO stands for the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which is an organization established to promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil through global standards and governance. It aims to reduce the negative environmental and social impacts of palm oil production by certifying products that meet specific sustainability criteria.

Check out https://rspo.org/why-sustainable-palm-oil/on how sustainable palm oil is good for the planet, for people and for protected species.

Essential oils
Essential oils are aromatic volatile oils that are extracted from plants through a process of steam distillation or solvent extraction. Essential oils can add complex and unique aromas to soaps, and when used in salves and other body products they add therapeutic properties that can benefit the skin. Th essential oils are used at a rate that meets safety regulations. 

Fragrance oils
Fragrance oils are synthetic or natural oils that are used to add pleasant fragrance to products including soaps and candles. The fragrance oils used at BrightEssence are all certified to be skin safe to use in soap and meet International Fragrance Association (IFRA) standards, EPA approved, not tested on animals, and phthalate-free.

Oxides and mica
Oxides and micas are used to colour soap. They occur naturally; however many used in soaps and cosmetics are synthetically produced in the lab. The micas used in BrightEssence recipes are certified safe to use in body products and are listed on the ingredients. 

Sodium lactate
Sodium lactate is a liquid salt that can be added to soap to produce harder, longer-lasting bars of cold process soap.  It is a derived from the natural fermentation of sugars found in corn and beets.

Distilled Water
BrightEssence only uses distilled water in soap and moisturisers for purity.  Tap water contains mineral salts that can cause sliminess in finished soap bars and reduce the quality and shelf-life of products.

Sodium hydroxide (Lye)
Sodium hydroxide (also known as lye) is what reacts with the triglycerides in oil to form soap, the process is called saponification.