Handmade soap is not only therapeutic and fun to make, but it’s a great way to infuse the healing properties of plants into something that touches our skin daily. Take a look at these beautiful natural soap recipes, and make a batch of your own!
I have been making my own soap for quite a while now. At this point, I have enough natural soap recipes published on Garden Therapy that I thought it was time to give you a post where you can find them all listed in one handy place.
I make all of my own soap because it is fun, great for my skin, and makes beautiful gifts. I absolutely love playing with all the fun add-ins like natural colours and botanicals. In fact, I like it so much that I made an entire book all about melt and pour soap-making, called Good Clean Fun.
If you’re interested in soap making, I highly encourage you to give it a try. I had no idea back when I got started how much I’d love making natural soap.
Looking for a place to start? Here are all of the natural soap recipes that are currently published on Garden Therapy; I even divided them up based on the method I used to make them.
What Are The Benefits of Handmade Soap?
Handmade soaps are made using a variety of natural sources, such as plant-based oils and butters that are rich in nutrients, vitamins, and antioxidants. These are the types of ingredients that your skin, hair, and body will love.
You can enhance natural soaps with many other incredibly good ingredients that come straight from the earth, such as botanical extracts and essential oils. With so many different options and combinations, there is truly a perfect natural soap for everyone.
You’ve probably heard of glycerin. Ever wonder what it is? Handmade soap contains glycerin, which is a natural byproduct of the soap-making process. Glycerin is an excellent moisturizer that coats the skin and gives it a silky, soft feeling.
How Do I Make Handmade Soap?
Soap can only be called soap if it goes through the saponification process of turning fats and oils, water, and sodium hydroxide into soap. This process makes the most nourishing, gentlest, and healthiest cleanser for your skin.
There are many methods of making handmade soap, including cold process, hot process, milk soap, and rebatching. You can also make melt-and-pour soap at home very easily and skip the lye, as well as the weighing and mixing of the ingredients.
The two main ways I have made soap are cold process and melt and pour. Each produces a very different type of soap, but both are equally useful.
Cold Process Natural Soap Recipes
I like cold-process soap most as my everyday soap. However, there’s quite a bit of work involved in making a cold process soap—there’s quite a bit of chemistry and science involved, as well as some challenging, potentially dangerous ingredients.
If you’ve never made cold process soap, it’s doable, but it will take time and patience. It’s well worth the effort as you can completely customize your soap with natural additives and colours. See how to make cold-process soap here.
Plant-Based Natural Unscented Soap – 3 Recipes!
This unscented soap has three vegan recipe variations so you can choose which is the right one for you. It’s a return to basics and a great way to use the soothing ingredients in soap without any additives. I love how these bars come out looking like scrumptious truffles…they honestly look good enough to eat!
Gentle Rose Soap
Roses have been a staple in my skincare routine, from rose toner to face cream. They’re just fabulous for skin, while being incredibly gentle. This rose soap recipe takes the gentle nature of the flower and combines it with madder root powder and geranium essential oil for a beautiful soap.
Wildflower Soap
This wildflower soap is natural, vibrant, and gorgeous while being nourishing and good for the environment. It reminds me of walking through meadow flowers. This is a soap that you spend the time to create and enjoy, not one that you rush through.
Earl Grey Infused Bergamot Soap
I was inspired by my love of the hot drink known as a London Fog, which is essentially an Earl Grey latte with vanilla, to make this soap. The soap is infused with Earl Grey tea itself, as well as lavender and bergamot essential oils.
Lemon Balm Soap
This lemon balm soap recipe is soft and rich from the high percentage of olive oil. Its bright lemon-mint fragrance makes it a refreshing soap with a clean and energetic aroma that’s perfect for using in the kitchen to cleanse and moisturize hard-working hands.
Swirl Soap Technique
Most of my soaps feature beautiful swirls, and I’ve mastered my own technique for infusing swirls into my soap. In this swirl soap recipe, I break down my technique and provide a must-try scent combo in the process.
Sea Sponge Soap Bars
These sea sponge soap bars are topped with natural sea sponges to make a very gorgeous, organic-looking handmade soap that lathers up beautifully.
Basil and Peppermint Soap
Basil and peppermint might not be your go-to combination, but perhaps it should! This soap is really energizing, sweet and spicy, and super fresh. It reminds me of being out in the herb garden, and I like to use it in the kitchen as a deodorizing soap.
Charcoal Soap
I originally made this charcoal soap back in 2020 when I was suddenly dealing with facial acne, I called maskne. The activated charcoal and bentonite clay help to draw out toxins from the skin, making it super beneficial for oily skin that’s prone to acne.
Matcha Tea Soap
Not to brag, but I was on the matcha train long before it became one of the most popular hot drinks here in North America. I formulated this matcha tea soap in 2021 for a naturally green soap, scented with spearmint and rosemary.
Oatmeal Soap for Dry Skin
Have you ever taken an oatmeal bath to soothe an incessant it? Collodial oatmeal is great for soothing dry, itchy skin and helps to create a protective barrier. I infused some in this oatmeal soap recipe for a moisturizing and soothing soap when you have irritated skin.
Masculine Lime and Cedarwood Soap
I lean heavily toward floral scents in my soap, but sometimes I like something a little woodsy. Lime and cedarwood are a great combination to make a masculine but slightly sweet-smelling soap. Swirled spirulina powder gives it a forest-like feel.
Cheery Sunflower and Turmeric Soap
Usually a side ingredient in my soaps, I wanted to bring sunflower oil to the forefront with this recipe. To make it even more moisturizing, this sunflower soap also contains rice bran oil, cocoa butter, olive oil, and coconut oil. And turmeric brings the brightest natural pigment!
Irish Spring Soap
Irish Spring soap has always had such a strong scent that I shied away from. But when I sought to make my own version of it, I turned into such a fan! It’s a strong scent, using bergamot, lavender, lemon, and eucalyptus essential oils.
Budget-Friendly Lard Soap
While I always have a stash of oils and fancy materials as a serial soap-maker, I do know that buying all these oils can get pricey. So I did some experimenting and worked with lard to create a more budget-friendly, and traditional, soap recipe.
Loofah Soap (Made From a Real Vegetable)
Loofahs are such a fascinating vegetable. They’re a type of gourd with a fibrous inside that acts like a sponge once its dried. Many use them as natural exfoliants in the shower. To make things easy, I added loofahs to natural soap to clean and exfoliate all in one go.
Sweet Orange and Cinnamon Christmas Soap
Every fall, I make a big batch of soap to last me through the winter and to give as gifts for the holiday season. While I argue that any of the natural soap recipes on this list would make great Christmas presents, I wanted to formulate a recipe that reminds me of the holiday every time I smell it. Sweet orange and cinnamon soap is about as festive as it gets!
Lemongrass and Lavender Deodorizing Soap
Lavender is the number one scent I gravitate towards in the soap world, as it feels so clean and uplifting to me. When I sought to make a deodorizing soap, I knew a stronge scent like lemongrass would do wonders to tackle odours. Lavender became the perfect addition to help balance the soap, adding both scent and antibacterial properties.
Chamomile Soap
Yet another entry for gentle soaps, this chamomile soap is extremely calming to the skin. Chamomile herb has antibacterial antifungal, and anti-inflammatiors properties. When infused into the oil used to make the soap, you carry some of those properties to your soap.
Revamp Soap With Confetti Soap
Most soapmakers will make a batch of confetti soap every so often as a clever but beautiful way to use up soap scraps. When making soap, you’ll quickly learn that the ends of the large bars you cut don’t look good. But to keep them from going to waste, you can combine colours to create a fun confetti in a new soap batch.
Liquid Sunshine Orange Soap
While I could never pick a soap favourite, this liquid sunshine orange soap does rank in the top 5. It’s just so stunning and vibrant, and the orange scent is scientifically proved to boost your mood. As an added bonus, I show you how to dry orange slices to place on top of your soaps when gifting.
Rosemary and Peppermint Energizing Soap
Rosemary’s aromatherapy benefits include promoting focus, memory, and mental clarity. Likewise, peppermint boosts energy and enhances mental focus. And both of them smell amazing, which is why I combined them into this delicious energizing rosemary peppermint morning shower soap.
Lemongrass, Ginger, and Coffee Kitchen Soap
One of my very favourite blends in homemade soap is this fresh-smelling kitchen soap that I made using this process. The bright citrus scent is energizing and smells incredible. This bar has a great scent to wake you up and get rid of strong cooking smells from chopping onions and garlic!
Melt and Pour Homemade Soap Recipes
This is the soap-making method I would recommend to beginners or those looking for a simple project. I enjoy melt and pour for quickly making fun, decorative soaps. You can see some examples of in my melt and pour soap idea book, Good Clean Fun.
Lavender Ombre Melt-and-Pour Soap
This attractive lavender ombre soap is lightly scented with lavender and contains moisturizing rich shea butter. It may look like a high-end decorative soap from a fancy shop, but it’s easily homemade.
Rosemary Lemon Soap-On-A-Rope
Soap-on-a-rope is more than just fun to say. It’s really an artistic way to display soap that also effectively keeps it from sitting in a little puddle in your shower. This project comes straight from the garden and is a fun way to combine the stars and bars.
Exquisite Botanical Soap
These botanical soap bars use flowers, herbs, and leaves found in the garden to look almost too pretty to use. This simple project brings the delight of your backyard into your bath or shower. These soaps look much more difficult to make than they actually are.
Lavender Oatmeal Soap Cupcakes
This lavender oatmeal soap is soothing and calming for your skin. And any recipe that uses my garden-grown lavender is a favourite of mine due to the amazing scent and natural beauty that it lends to any recipe!
Homemade Honeycomb Soap
This honey soap is not only gorgeous, but it’s also fun and easy to make too! I love that this soap looks like it comes straight from the honeycomb. It’s really an aloe, cucumber, and carrot soap mixed with manuka honey and scented with citrus. Find out the trick to making the attractive honeycomb texture without buying an expensive mold.
Sakura Cherry Blossom Soap
Similar to how cherry blossoms only bloom for a short time each year, these cherry blossom soaps are not meant to last long. These small ‘blooms’, or personal-sized soaps, will only last for a few uses.
Amber Fossilized Bug Soap
These ultra-fun amber fossilized bug soaps are inspired by the fascinating look of fossilized insects in amber. What a way to make bathtime feel more like an adventure than a chore for little ones.
Winter Forest Soap
This winter forest soap recipe smells like a walk through the forest in the brisk winter air. Scented with essential oils from forest trees that make it both fresh and woodsy, this soap will perk you up and combat the dreariness that comes with the long, cold winter nights.
Embossed Calendula Soap
Embossing stamps are a fun way to personalize your melt and pour soap recipes, and make them look ultra high end for gift giving. Alongside the stamps, this calendula inspired soap uses an oatmeal base and calendula petals for a beautiful, natural colouring.
Liquid and Foaming Hand Soap
I love the silky luxury of foaming hand soap, but I don’t love using chemicals and substances I can’t even pronounce in my products. Since ingredients like that are often listed on the bottles of store-bought foaming soap, I set out to make a fantastic basic foaming hand soap recipe.
The basic version is amazing, and what’s even better is that you can easily customize it to suit your tastes.
Over the years, I’ve tweaked this original recipe for some fun variations. Here are some combinations (that can be used as liquid or foaming soap) to give a try:
Want to Learn How to Make Handmade Soap?
If you’re interested in learning how to become a soap artisan yourself, grab my ebook Good Clean Fun: THE Idea Book for Creative Melt and Pour Soap Projects.
More Tips for Soap-Making
A city girl who learned to garden and it changed everything. Author, artist, Master Gardener. Better living through plants.
