How we made the best natural soap on the market

We did. We really did.

Over the past two (almost three) years, we've been testing all the natural soaps on the market and we think we're better than all of them.

We understand being "best" is subjective, but across several features that you want in a bar of soap (keep you moisturized, lather well, smell good etc), we think we outperform our competitors.

It wasn't easy though.

In this post I'd like to walk you through how we did it, what challenges we faced and how we overcame them. Finally, why we are the best natural soap on the market.

Let's start with some of the basics.

What is natural soap?

Natural soap is made through a process known as saponification, where oils and fats are combined with lye. Unlike the typical supermarket soaps that often rely on synthetic detergents and chemical additives, natural soap is crafted from pure, plant-based ingredients like coconut oil, olive oil and shea butter

The key difference lies in what's not in natural soap. You won't find artificial fragrances, sulfates, parabens, or other harsh chemical substances. This makes natural soap gentler on your skin, especially if you have sensitive skin or conditions like eczema or psoriasis.

Natural soap also retains glycerin, a byproduct of the saponification process that acts as a natural humectant, drawing moisture into your skin. Many commercial soaps strip this out and sell it separately (to make more $$$), leaving their products drying. With handmade natural soap, you get that moisturizing benefit built into the soap bar already. 

Another important feature of good natural soap is how it lathers (we say foams). Real natural soap creates a creamy, luxurious lather that feels great without relying on synthetic boosters such as SLS. The lather comes from the oils themselves, which means it's both effective and good for your skin.

Is natural soap always handmade?

Most often yes. Always? No.

Technically speaking, natural soap can be made in large-scale productions - run primarily by machinery. However, most large productions that do create natural soap are often doing so to cut corners: rushing the cure time, shaping the bars in particular ways or using less quality oils. Handmaking soap (and things in general) just adds that additional level of detail to the end product.

Its often easier to create soap by outsourcing the production to a large-scale industrial manufacturer. We know because we did have discussions with potential partners when we started. However, we quickly realized that the benefits of making it handmade are just too good to neglect.

By making it handmade we can:

• Select premium, carefully sourced ingredients and control their chain of supply.
• Control the curing process precisely to our liking, allowing the soap to develop better texture and lather
  
• Control the sizing and shape of our bars.
• Experiment with unique scent blends and botanical additions.
• Last but not least, ensure consistency and quality across every bar. Was one bar cutout wrong? Well then it doesn't go into our packaging. (we still save the excess soap and give it away to charity so it doesn't go to waste)

In short, it allows for us to control our R&D entirely while still being able to live up to the promise we make to our customers.

Why a soap bar and not a liquid shower gel?

Although bar soap was once the more obvious choice for bathing and showering, it is not anymore. Most people would expect to find a plastic body wash bottle filled with liquid soap in their bathrooms. So this begs the question of why we did not make a natural liquid body wash?

There are ways to make liquid shower gel natural. Yet, the process of doing so is quite difficult and in the end, most manufacturers end up using synthetic substances in order to live up to customers expectations.

The most natural way to make soap is to make it into a solid bar. The benefits are also clear:

• No unnecessary water weight.
• Can be packaged into more environment-friendly materials such as paper.
• It lasts longer - if you take well care of it and keep it dry between uses.
• Clean formulas and recipes.
  

Last but not least, the feeling of holding a solid bar of soap in your hand and against your skin is underrated. 

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How did we do it?

The process of making the perfect natural soap bar.

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Step 1: Choosing what oils and butters will serve as our base

The purest and most simplest way to make a natural soap bar is by taking one type of oil, mix it with lye and water and voilà. So for example, if you want to make a pure olive oil soap, you choose olive oil, mix it with the lye/water combo and you're done.

Easy right?

Well, the tricky part comes with understanding what characteristics each oil or butter gives to the soap. Olive oil for example creates a moisturizing bar that is very gentle on the skin. However, it does not have the best lathering characteristics - meaning that if you only use olive oil - you won't get enough foam.

Therefore, choosing the right combination of oils and butters is critical. We were always sure we wanted to have the milder features of olive oil in our bars - but we also knew making a pure castile soap bar wouldn't give the best experience.

We went through and tested more than 20 different oils and butters. Everything from avocado oil and jojoba oil to almond and shea butters. At one point we were even considering pistachio oil!

In the end we settled on these oils and butters:

For each oil or butter, it is important to understand that they give different characteristics to the soap (e.g thick foam or hard bar) but they also bring different vitamins/minerals that are not saponified which end up on your skin. For example, coconut oil is great to apply directly on the skin as body butter, but in a soap bar, not all of its vitamins remain as they are consumed during the saponification process. Therefore, judging which "unsaponified" molecules remain is also a key component to decide on.

Step 2: Deciding on proportions for the perfect formulation.

So we now that we had our oils and butters, we just had to mix'em up and start slicing them right?

Not quite.

The proportions of each ingredient matters just as much. Frankly, this is where we have noticed more soapmakers stop caring. Even splits between the oils are very common. However, after loads of testing we realized that increases in one ingredient made a big different in the end result. If you've ever baked bread you know how the wrong amount of one ingredient can mess up the dough. The same theory applies here.

So we again spent lots of time doing experiments with different recipes. Of course, this also meant we (and our friends and family) had to shower a lot to review the bars. :)

After hundreds of recipes, we finally decided on our base formula. Unfortunately, these proportions is not something we will share here as they are proprietary to foamclub and one of those things that we are a bit extra proud to have succeeded with.

Its important to note that step 1 and 2 were not done in sequential order. In reality, we kept increasing proportions while also adding/removing oils and butters. The creative process is never really structured.

Step 3: Finding the natural fragrances.

After settling on the base, we needed to decide on the scent of our soap bars.

Of course, this is not an easy task as there is an entire industry when it comes to fragrance. Different ingredients, extraction methods and blending tools are just a couple of topics that matter when it comes to perfumes and scents.

And seeing that we knew we only wanted natural fragrances, we hadn't made it easy for ourselves.

The first area we dove into was essential oils such as peppermint oil, tea tree oil or lemongrass. These oils are directly extracted from plants. These oils often tend to have a very clear olfactive profile with a strong base or a very clear top note. Therefore, blending these types of essential oils require lots of experimentation (just like the soap base did) of choosing the right oils and the right proportions.

The second area we dove into was aromatic raw materials that are combined to create fragrance compositions. This area is a lot more complex as it requires the knowledge of a perfumer to understand what blends bring out the different scents in a composition. For us, this area brought us all the way to Grasse, France to work with experts on finding the right scents to go with our preferred profiles.

After diving into both areas, and making sure we had learned enough about the pros and cons of both. We then proceeded to create the six variations of natural soap bars. Each distinct to its own, from a gourmand almond cookie scented bar to a fresh mint tea soap bar, all naturally derived.

Step 4: Finding scrub and natural colorants.

Now that we had the base and the fragrances, the bars were starting to feel like actual products. But there were still two things missing: texture and color.

For texture, we wanted some of the bars to provide a bit of physical exfoliation as it paired nicely with their scent profiles. Not the kind that feels like you're rubbing sandpaper against your skin, but enough to make it rejuvenate your skin.

Once again we found ourselves in an area where there are endless number of ingredients to choose from. Ground coffee, seeds, different salts, clays, mineral powders - the list could go on forever.

For us, it was important that the scrub and color paired well with the scent profile of each variant (obviously). But it was also important that each active ingredient contributed something to the skin or the soap bar.

We experimented with a number of different ingredients before settling on ingredients such as turmeric, oats, clays and teas.  This gave us a broad variance in our assortment as each bar could be either highly exfoliation (with some scrub that you actually feel) while others were more gentle.

When it came to color, this could sometimes be combined with the scrubbing ingredient. For example the rhassoul clay creates earthy brown shades, while mineral clay such as iceland moss is used to create the deep green color.

The slightly annoying, but also beautiful, thing about working with natural materials is that they don't always behave perfectly. One batch comes out in one color hue while another comes out slightly different. Being patient is also key when understanding the color of the natural soap bar as it can drastically change depending on how long you cure it.

Again, after tons of testing and experimenting we finally had the right recipes with the right proportions.

Step 5: Deciding on the perfect shape.

With the recipes completed, we really thought we were done and could move into production.

However, the shape of the soap bar turned out to be incredibly important. We had noticed in our rounds of testing, people kept asking us to change the shape to their liking.

• "I want to be able to properly grab it"
• "I want the bar to cover a larger area of my body when scrubbing with it"
• "I want it to dry off quicker"

So we realized the perfect shape of the soap bar was to make it

1. Cover a large area of the body 
2. Be easily gripped by both women and men
3. Be aesthetically pleasing for the eye

And based on that we found that around 8x8x2.5 cm was the right shape and size. This also meant that the bars could easily be stores in bathroom cabinets and fit in soap holders in public showers.

That's how we did it.

The best (and perfect) natural soap bar on the market. We dare you to try to prove us wrong.

In the meantime, we are actually working on making it even better, since our goal is to maintain our position as offering the best natural soap on the market.