This face soap recipe with shea butter and oat flour is extremely soft and gentle, and it helps to keep your skin moisturized, making it ideal to wash and clean your face with soap. Shea butter adds extra conditioning properties, while oat kernel flour will give your soap a luxuriously silky and soft feeling.

Keep reading and find out how to make this great soap for your face.

How Do You Make Homemade Face Soap?
Face Soap Recipe Ingredients
Can You Use Homemade Soap On Your Face?
- Mass-Produced Soap
- Why Handmade Soap Was Harsh In The Past And Now Is Gentle To Your Skin
Find Where To Buy Handmade Shea Butter and Oat Soap
How To Use This Soap
Related Posts
Watch This Video Before Starting Your Recipe

How Do You Make Homemade Face Soap?

This homemade face soap is made with a rich mixture of oils, shea butter as a special moisturizing addition and oat flour

Shea Butter

Shea butter that goes by the INCI name Butyrospermum parkii, is a wax-like solid butter, extracted from the nuts of the shea tree. It has an off-white or ivory color when refined. Natural shea butter is more yellowish.

It’s rich in several essential nutrients: linoleic, palmitic, stearic, and oleic fatty acids; vitamins A, E, and F; triglycerides, the fatty part of the shea nut that nourishes and conditions your skin; cetyl esters, the waxy part of the shea nut butter that conditions skin and locks in moisture.

That makes shea butter a noble ingredient in natural cosmetics, easy to spread, great to smooth, sooth and condition your skin.

I’ve used shea butter in this Liquid Soap Recipe and it adds a very creamy texture to it, makes the soap smoother and more conditioning to skin.

Oat Flour

I’ve bought oat kernel flour in a cosmetics supplier as a vegetal protein for my own cosmetics. Namely, to try on facial lotions, shampoo bars and my hair conditioner.

It’s probably too expensive for soap as you can perfectly use oatmeal flour with same effect. The difference may very well simply be the granularity, where cosmetic oat flour is a finer powder. Why did I use it then? I had just too much of it with a short shelf life, and thought of using it in soap than throwing it away later on…

Colloidal oatmeal contains several components that could be beneficial for the skin. These include

beta-glucan, a soluble fiber that can absorb water and has anti-inflammatory properties
phenols, which are a type of anti-septic, desinfectant and antioxidant
saponins, which have soap-like properties and can act as a cleanser
oils, skin nourishing and moisturizing

Skin soothing, skin protecting and antioxidant, it’s a real treat for dry, irritated, inflammed or eczema-prone skin. Even if you skin is normal, it will benefit from an oat skin treatment.

Depending on the size of the powder, oat flour can make for a gentle exfoliant. Oat flour is nothing but fine ground whole grain oats. You can even make it at home, by grounding whole oats in a food processor. Probably your homemade flour will be more exfoliant, as the powder will be coarser than the flour your buy in health stores.

It’s an excelent ingredient for a facial soap, adding exfoliation, skin soothing, anti-inflammatory and desinfecting properties to soap.

Rose Geranium Essential Oil

Regarding scent, I have used a blend of rose geranium essential oil with patchouli for this facial soap. I personally love to use the scent of rose geranium in facial products, even in my hair conditioner sometimes. Remember, essential oil’s plant medicinal properties probably won’t survive saponification, so use them as the most natural way to scent your soap.

While a bit intense on itself (probably unpleasant to some), rose geranium has a more delicate, flowery but also camphorous scent in this cold process soap.

If your skin is sensitive, you can turn this soap milder by switching to chamomile or lavender essential oil. Best option, however, is to leave the soap unscented.

Face Soap Recipe Ingredients

This face soap recipe has a rich mixture of oils: olive oil, coconut oil, castor and sunflower oil. Shea butter adds creaminess and strong moisturizing properties, making this soap creamy, soft and conditioning.

Oat flour provides extra silkiness, gentle exfoliation, and anti-inflammatory properties to soothe the skin in your face. The soap has a light yellow shade, most likely coming from the olive oil, but it may be also from the oat flour. A silicone mold with individual hearts give a cute and lovely shape to this gentle and nourishing face soap.

face soap recipe with shea butter and oat

Can You Use Homemade Soap On Your Face?

You can use homemade soap on your face, since it contains nourishing, moisturizing oils and natural glycerin. This face soap recipe in particular, contains 5% superfat, most of it from shea butter, adding extra moisturizing properties.

Natural glycerin, a natural humectant that helps to keep moisture on your skin, is present in any handmade soap. That’s right, all handmade soap, even the one we don’t call “glycerin soap” contains natural glycerin. Check out more detailed information about glycerin in Glycerin vs Vegetable Glycerin.

Mass-Produced Soap

Glycerin is chemically removed from mass-produced soap, and used as an ingredient for other skincare products, like face lotions and creams. You can only enjoy it in a natural form in your homemade soap. In addition, commercial soap contain chemicals such as detergents, preservatives, artificial colorants, emulsifiers, or hardening substances, that are known to dry out the skin and leave it dry, irritated and sore.

They are present to make soap last longer in your shower, have a long shelf-life, look pretty and have a strong scent. They are NOT there to benefit your skin. And it is insane the amount of ingredients most commercial soap have.

Why Handmade Soap Was Harsh In The Past And Now Is Gentle To Your Skin

Around the last century, housewives made soap at home as a routine task. Many times, lye was obtained from dissolving wood ash in water, making this way a lye water – where lye concentration was difficult to control. Since lye wasn’t pure or concentrated as nowadays, the resulting soap was rough and harsh, and it was used to clean everything.

Today’s handmade lye soap is made with pure lye, carefully calculated, and superfat is always added to make sure all lye is consumed. This is why handmade soap nowadays is mild, gentle and much less drying. “Grandma’s lye soap” days are past. Therefore, the idea that handmade soap is harsh and commercial soap is better – it’s just wrong.

But don’t take my word on it. Make your own experiment. Make soap at home, or buy it online, and give it a try for one month. Then go back to a commercial soap or bath gel. See the difference for yourself!

Find Where To Buy Handmade Shea Butter and Oat Soap

Still not inspired to make your own soap at home? But you do wish to use or give it a try at a wonderful handmade soap with shea butter and oatmeal? You can find a few options online to buy handmade soap below:

How To Use This Soap

Wet your face and hands with water, then rub your soap in your hands to create a lather. Apply to face with circular movements until you have a creamy lather. Wash away the soap abundantly with water. Avoid eye contact with soap to prevent stinging.

This soap is made specifically for your face, but you can use it as a body wash as well with no problems. Make a patch test before using your soap. Stop using your soap if you feel any immediate adverse reaction in your skin (red skin, rashes, itching).

To take best advantage of your handmade soap (made by yourself or store-bougth), read How Do You Use Handmade Soap?

Vegetable oils: Oil Properties For Soap Making
Essential oils: Best Essential Oils for Soap Making
Colorants: How To Color Your Soap With Kitchen Ingredients
Cold Process Tutorial Guide: How Do You Make Cold Process Soap?
Cold Process Soap Recipes: Free Cold Process Soap Recipes
Beginner Recipes: Soap Recipes for Beginners

Watch This Video Before Starting Your Recipe