I knew almost nothing about handmade soap until I made my own.

Here are the three most interesting things I learned since becoming a soap maker.

Handmade soap is actually soap

Not everything that is sold as soap is actually soap

Like most people I had assumed ‘Soap’ was just a general term for any product that is used to clean things.

I discovered that ‘soap’ is actually a specific term. Real soap has been made by people for thousands of years. It is made by mixing oils and/or fats with lye. These react together and make a new substance - soap.

The majority of products sold commercially as soap are in fact ‘detergents’. Detergents were first invented during WW1 due to a global shortage of oils and fats. Detergents are made from a wide range of chemicals and are designed to mimic the cleaning properties of soap.

Commercial "soap" bars and body washes are made from various detergents, synthetic materials, processed chemicals and cleansers, and stabilisers that are harsh to skin and strip it of its natural protective oils and moisture and may aggravate irritated skin conditions like eczema.

Handmade soap is great for dry skin

Detergents are made to mimic the cleaning properties of soap but they completely lack handmade soap’s best feature.

Handmade soap is moisturising to skin in two ways.

1. Naturally occurring glycerine

   The natural chemical reaction of making soap is called saponification. This is when the oils and lye combine and chemically change into soap and glycerin. Glycerin is a humectant that draws moisture from the air to the skin creating a moisturising protective layer.

2. ‘Superfatting’

   ‘Superfatting’ in soap making means to have extra or ‘superfluous’ fats. I do this by formulating my soap recipes to contain a little bit more oils than the lye can convert into soap. So once the lye has all been used up converting the oils into soap and glycerine, a small percentage of oil will also remain in the soap bar. In the case of my soap these oils are Irish rapeseed oil, coconut oil and whichever blend of pure essential oils I use in that recipe.

Since adding extra oils and butters can decrease the shelf-life of a soap bar, commercial soaps sacrifice the moisturising properties for their "forever" shelf-life.

Commercial soap companies remove the glycerin from their soaps. The excess glycerin will decrease the shelf-life. Also, these companies can sell the glycerin to companies or use it themselves to make the lotion your skin needs after using commercial soap.

Handmade Soap Provides Rich Lather Without Synthetic Foam Boosters

Although we have come to associate the cleansing properties of soap with the amount of lather it produces, this is a misconception. Soap does not need to create a lot of lather to do its job.

Since commercial brands make money by catering to customer demands, lots of foamy lather is an important property of any commercial cleansing personal care product.

A properly formulated and cured bar of natural soap needs no synthetic additives to create a lather or to clean because natural soap is a natural surfactant. So it not only makes great bubbles and lather, but it also helps clean oily dirt from your skin naturally.

The foam, bubbles, and lather we know and love from commercial liquid and bar soaps are produced by surfactants - synthetic foam boosters, lathering agents, and detergents. These chemicals are often petroleum by-products like Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) and its cousins, are very inexpensive way to add to body cleansing products, and are also quite drying for the skin.

Nature’s ingredients like coconut oil, castor oil as well as the retained natural glycerin also help create a rich silky lather. The creamy silky lather from a natural soap is much richer than commercial soap.