How To Make Rose Water Toner

This rose water toner is made by infusing rose petals into water. I add a preservative to make it safe. DO NOT use homemade water infusions for more than one week, even if refrigerated.

Learn how to make rose water toner with rose petals. Try this homemade skincare product that surprised me by its simplicity and efficacy: a rose water toner, that cleanses and hydrates your face at same time, leaving you refreshed and moisturized.

Table of Contents

Is Rose Water a Good Toner?

People have been using rose water for generations as a natural and gentle facial toner. Probably long before we had commercially produced rose water, the average person would have used this infusion method to make soothing and cleansing skin toners. It’s just so simple! You apply it with a cotton pad and it helps to cleanse and tighten the skin. To reduce redness and inflammation. To moisturize your face!

It’s also very mild and adequate for most skin types. It is a great ingredient for creams and lotions, face or body ones. It’s very good for mature skins, making it my favorite face toner.

how to make rose water toner

How To Make Rose Water Toner For Your Face?

Make an infusion of rose petals with distilled water. This infusion can provide just as much skin-loving therapy as some of the more expensive products. It’s a hack, but a very good, accessible and cheap one!

True rose water and most generically hydrolats are made by distillation so this recipe is technically an infusion. Rose absolute and rose hydrosol are beautiful skin therapeutic extracts but they can also be pricey.

This recipe will give you a sweetly scented natural skin toner that you can make yourself for practically nothing. All you need is rose petals and distilled water. It was taken from the Lovely Greens website, where I go to find inspiration for my recipes, information about natural ingredients (herbs, natural colorants) or simply try the ones listed and see how good are they. I’ve added to it the preservative and rose geranium essential oil.

Click here if you wish to see the original recipe.

How Do You Preserve Homemade Skin Care Products?

I use a relatively strong natural preservative as this product is just water: Euxyl k940. It is sold by Plena Natura and it keeps this product from gaining microbes, germs and fungus, which is the last thing we want to put in our skin. Still, I take extra care with it, keeping the toner in the fridge (away from light and temperature exposure) and only giving it a shelf life of 3 months.

I’ve checked this list of natural preservatives, and chose one that seemed equally effective but was more common to find out – Liquid Germall Plus. Just be aware that this “natural” preservative is actually synthetic. Personally, I prefer an effective preservative to a natural one: this product is already mostly natural with no other chemicals; it’s better to have microbe and fungus-safe products than an all-natural unsafe ones…

I don’t want to point fingers. But it’s scary the amount of natural skincare blogs posting recipes for homemade products, completely unaware of how dangerous it is to use a natural product for more than one week without preservatives. No warnings about that. And you, also unaware, start spreading on your skin a bomb filled with microbes, germes, fungus, and whatnot.

If you wish to skip the usage of a preservative, use it only for 1 week, and always keep it in the fridge. Natural skincare is supposed to give you health, not take it away from you.

If you have a question or would like to make a suggestion, feel free to leave a comment below.

Find Out Where To Buy Handmade Rose Water

I love this homemade cosmetic product. But I get it if you’d rather just buy a natural handmade rose water. Not everyone is into DIY. Be careful and choose 100% natural rose water without additional ingredients (or too many of them…). Find where to buy rose water below:

Use This Rose Water Toner in Homemade Products

Small bottle with rose petals toner

How To Make Rose Water Toner With Rose Petals

How to make a homemade rose water toner using fresh rose petals. Use directly on your skin as a natural toner or blend it with oils to create creams and lotions. Please, do not skin the preservative, otherwise, use it refrigerated, and only for 1 week.
Prep Time: 40 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Method: Infusion
Cosmetic: Facial Toner
Servings: 1 Jar
Author: Sofia Matias
Cost: Approx. 0$ – 0€

Ingredients

Instructions

  • If you are collecting fresh rose petals from your own rosebush, let the rose petals rest for 30 minutes to allow insects to leave
  • Put the rose petals into a pan
  • Fill the pan with distilled water until the petals are covered
  • Heat the pan on low heat (~50ºC – 122ºF), keep the water from simmering
  • Turn off the heat once the petals are discolored, should take around 20 – 30 minutes
  • Measure the rose water and add your preservative according to instructions. I use Euxyl K940, and usually add 2g of it to around 200 ml
  • Add the essential oil and mix well, or give it a good shake
  • Place it in the fridge. It has a shelf life of 3-6 months, but discard it if it starts to smell bad before that.

Video

Tried this recipe?Send a pic to @herbalcochete!

7 thoughts on “How To Make Rose Water Toner”

  1. This article really got my interest because I buy facial toners a lot and they are filled with a lot of chemicals unlike this here which is natural and home made which makes it a perfect option. I was really surprised to see that fascial toners can be made from the comfort of my home. Thanks a whole lot

    • Hello Collinsss and thanks for your comment.

      As a facial toner, you can purchase rose water and use it as such. I love this version since, as you said, I can make it in the confort of my home… for free!! 🙂 As long as you use a preservative, or you are careful enough to not use the toner for more than one week (while keeping it in the fridge) you can use this recipe with pretty much any herb, for example, green tea, which is said to be a great anti-ageing.

      Hope you try this recipe and let me know how it went!

      Cheers,

      Sofia

  2. This was highly informative, keep up the great job Sofia. I enjoyed reading this, thanks for sharing. With Facial Toners I think the natural ones feels better, what I think tho. Personally, I use Rice water made into rice wine. It does me a lot of good. Rose water seems great. I am Curious if I could add them both together.

    • Hello Josh and thanks for your comment.

      Rice water sounds just as great as rose water. If you are happy with it, you shouldn’t change. I really like this “rose water” toner (it’s an infusion not an hydrolat) because it cleans and hydrates my skin equally, it’s so balanced. So, I don’t even need to use a moisturizer aferwards. That’s the beauty of natural products, they give you everything they have and they don’t force you into purchasing a whole line of expensive products to feel healthy.

      Cheers,

      Sofia  

  3. In this tie when we have so many people who have started using organic cream, and making organic facial cream, i just like the fact that your toner comes from Rose Petals, it is natural and what bad can come from rose petals, thank you so much i am delighted to get information on this .

    • Hello Babakes, such nice comment you offered! Thank you!

      Indeed, what I really love about natural cosmetics is the fact that you don’t need a lot to create great products! Of course, you can add more ingredients and enrich your cream or lotion. But use one or two ingredients only and it’s still a lovely and effective product, like this toner (as long as you are careful with microbes. without a preservative, this toner is only good for a week if kept in the fridge). 

      I am not even sure if the “organic” designation means “free of chemicals”, although I can say that an organic cream has much more potential to have natural, or at least, soft ingredients that don’t harm your skin. Still, they are expensive to purchase…. 

      In my blog, I try to show a way to be healthy and use the most out of natural ingredients for your skincare routine, while spending much less than perfumeries and pharmacies make us believe we need to.

      Cheers,

      Sofia

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