This activated charcoal face soap recipe is simple enough for beginner soapmakers, yet results in an impressive bar of cleansing, yet moisturizing face soap.
I’m really excited to share with you today’s new soap recipe. I’ve been doing more studying on the oils used in soapmaking, along with some of the other ingredients, and think that I’m getting better at developing soaps that have a good balance of cleaning, moisturizing, and lather.
Just because I’m using a few more oils and ingredients than I did in my easy beginner soap recipe doesn’t mean that this soap is difficult to make by any means. This recipe is simple to make, but looks super impressive if you want to get ahead of the game and make some bars as nice Christmas gifts.
I have to admit that I studied BEAUTYCOUNTER’s Charcoal Cleansing Bar ingredients when I was looking to formulate my own activated charcoal face soap recipe.
At the time I was one of their consultants, and wasn’t trying to copy their formula; I just used it as a bit of inspiration. There were people asking me to come up with a cheaper alternative to that specific bar, and I was curious as to what was so special about it.
Watch me make this activated charcoal face soap:
Should you buy the Beautycounter charcoal bar or make your own charcoal face soap?
Well, it all depends. If you aren’t already making your own products, and don’t have a lot of the ingredients on hand, you may not save much money, at least not in the first batch. The Beautycounter charcoal soap bar should last you at least for several months, so it really isn’t a big expense on a daily basis.
I chose to make my own activated charcoal face soap because I love making soaps to begin with. Elaborating new soap recipes has become a creative outlet for me, and I take each new recipe as a bit of a challenge. Seeing as I had most of the ingredients already, and knew I’d be able to use all of the ingredients in other recipes, it wasn’t much of an expense for me.
So, why did I study the ingredients in the Beautycounter charcoal bar?
1. While I haven’t tried it myself, I’ve heard from friends that it works really well on blackheads and breakouts, and that the soap is one of their best sellers because everybody loves it so much!
2. From what I studied when I was a consultant with them, it seemed to me that they spend a lot of time investigating their ingredients, looking for the safest yet most effective ingredients in all of their products. Knowing that, I figured that using their ingredients as a guideline would really help me formulate my own great soap.
Why haven’t I tried their Charcoal Cleansing Bar yet to compare it?
Unfortunately, Beautycounter doesn’t sell to Europe as of yet, so I have to order and send to my parents’ houses in the US whenever I want a new product. My last order of products was placed in June when I travelled to the US to pick it all up. As much as I love using those trips to stock up on new products, I try not to go overboard either. As it was, we had to pay for another suitcase on the way home this trip! š
When I did buy from them, I chose products that are more difficult to make at home. A bar of soap is probably the easiest and most inexpensive product for me to try to make myself.
While I haven’t compared them myself, I was super excited to get the following comment from a reader:
You nailed the charcoal bar!! I cannot tell the difference between my boughten charcoal bars from Beautycounter and my DIY bars ( other than price) The quality of these bars are superb, you did an amazing job!! My girls’ and I are extremely grateful!! That recipe is like gold to us!!
She was wondering when I was going to try to make a copycat of the cleansing balm. š
Hmmmmm- I guess I’ll have to put that on my “to-do” list.
What’s in the Beautycounter Charcoal Cleansing Bar?
Here is the list of ingredients: Sodium Rapeseedate, Sodium Cocoate, Aqua/Water/Eau, Glycerin, Charcoal Powder, Sodium Citrate, Hamamelis Virginiana (Witch Hazel) Water*, Carthamus Tinctorius (Safflower) Seed Oil*, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil*, Alcohol*, Camellia Sinensis (Green Tea) Leaf Extract*. Tocopherol.
*Organic
Comparing the ingredients in the charcoal face soaps…
Beginning form the top of their ingredient list, sodium rapeseedate and sodium cocoate are basically just the already saponified rapeseed and coconut oils. That means they have already been reacted with lye.
Coconut oil in soaps is great because it cleans well and adds a great, bubbly lather. I had never used rapeseed oil in soap before, though, so this was a new one for me.
I always avoided rapeseed oil in soap in the past, partly because it’s a difficult oil to find here in Spain, and partly because I had read that it could go rancid more quickly if used in large amounts in a soap. After further study, though, I read that it can a great oil to use in soap, in limited percentages, because it is moisturizing and gives a creamy lather (as opposed to the bubbly lather from the coconut oil). Plus it makes a pretty, shiny, smooth bar of soap.
Here come the first differences:
Because making a soap out of only rapeseed oil, coconut oil and safflower oil was out of my comfort zone, I decided to add some olive oil to my recipe. (Plus, olive oil is inexpensive and easy to find here in Spain.) I added olive oil for its moisturizing qualities, castor oil because it helps make the lather last longer, and shea butter because it’s high in “unsaponifiables,” leaving conditioning oils which I thought would be great for face moisturizing.
Going back to their ingredient list…
I, of course, also added water to my soap. I skipped over the glycerin, and added the charcoal powder, my version of the sodium citrate (citric acid, because sodium citrate is basically the sodium salt of citric acid), and some witch hazel.
Perhaps next time I may try substituting part of the water with glycerin as I’ve since found that it helps give a nice moisturizing quality to soaps, even when they aren’t highly superfatted. That helps give a moisturizing soap that doesn’t feel like it’s leaving a film on your skin. I really love the added glycerin in my recipes for glycerin soap, liquid castile soap, and liquid coconut oil soap.
I wasn’t sure why they would add citric acid to the soap, but after some investigation, I learned that not only does it serve to prevent oxidation of the ingredients which could lead to the “Dreaded Orange Spots,” commonly known as “DOS” in soap making forums, but it also possibly works as a chelator to help fight soap scum buildup. (Dreaded orange spots are a discoloration that can appear in soaps, especially when using certain oils or rancid fats. While it’s a mostly cosmetic problem, it can also affect the scent making the soap smell less fresh. In this case, the black coloring of the charcoal soap would hide any orange spots, but it’s still best to avoid them from forming.)
As for the witch hazel, I used a distilled witch hazel without any added alcohol. Alcohol can react with the lye, and can also affect the final outcome of the soap, so if you aren’t sure about the witch hazel you have, you can skip using it. Just make sure to replace the witch hazel with the same amount of distilled water.
Because safflower oil isn’t something I can readily find here, I decided to use olive oil, and the other oils mentioned above, instead.
Continuing down their list, I’m not sure about the addition of alcohol. I’m sure they have a great reason for adding it, but since I’m already using different ingredients and don’t know how or why to add it, I didn’t.
I did decide to go with the last two ingredients they added to their bar, though. Green Tea Leaf Extract and Tocopherol (aka. vitamin E) are great antioxidants that are not only great for your skin, but they help preserve the oils in your soap to keep them from going rancid.
Why use activated charcoal in a face soap?
Activated charcoal has become increasingly popular in beauty products lately because it is thought to absorb toxins, excess oils, and help better cleanse the skin.
One of the most common findings after using activated charcoal products is that pores become less visible and smaller, and blackheads start to disappear.
It may also help absorb excess oils in people with oily skin. Plus the black color makes a pretty slick looking black soap!
How do I like my homemade charcoal face soap?
I actually am loving this soap so far. I had planned on adding some rosemary essential oils to my soap bar, but forgot until it was too late, so my bar ended up being unscented.
Rosemary oil extract is used quite often by soapmakers as another natural additive that helps keep the oils in the soap from going rancid, and helps prevent the dreaded orange spots (DOS) I mentioned above. The extract doesn’t have much of a scent, but the essential oil itself does. Rosemary essential oil gives off a nice, natural fragrance and is a potent antioxidant for fighting off rancidity in oils.
If you don’t want to add a scent, though, you don’t really need to add much oil to help preserve your soap longer. A few drops should be enough. You could also leave it out if you wanted, like I accidentally did. š
Activated Charcoal Face Soap Recipe
Activated Charcoal Face Soap Recipe
for an 800g mold.
Materials
- 225 g olive oil
- 125 g coconut oil (Type that solidifies below 76ºF, not fractionated.)
- 100 g rapeseed oil (If you use canola oil instead, use 69g of lye)
- 25 g castor oil
- 25 g shea butter
- 100 g distilled water
- 90 g witch hazel (distilled, no alcohol)
- 68 g lye
- 1 Tbsp. activated charcoal
- 1 tsp. green tea extract
- 1/2 tsp. citric acid
- 5 drops vitamin E
- 20 drops rosemary essential oil (optional)
Instructions
- Measure out the water in a large glass or ceramic bowl, and add the measured lye to the water (and NOT the other way around). It’s a good idea to use gloves and a mask for this part of the process, and to mix together outside, avoiding the fumes. If you haven’t made soap before, or have questions about the process, I’d suggest you check out my first post about how to make an easy, beginner soap.
- Carefully mix together the lye and water until the lye is completely dissolved. It will get cloudy at first, and will begin to warm up. Leave the mixture alone to cool in an area where it won’t be touched by other people, children, or animals. You’ll notice that the mixture becomes more transparent again as it cools off.
- Meanwhile begin to measure out and combine the olive oil, rapeseed oil, coconut oil, castor oil, and shea butter. The easiest way is to accomplish this task is to tare the empty bowl before adding the first oil and taring again between additions of the oil. (I tend to make less soap in the winter when the coconut oil is solid, but since you are measuring by weight, it doesn’t make a difference if the oil is solid or liquid when you add it.)
- Combine the oils together with a hand held blender. The solid shea butter should easily combine into the liquid oils, forming a smooth, thick liquid. If you are working in cold temperatures and are having a hard time combining all of the oils, you can slightly warm them to make the process easier.
- Add the witch hazel to the lye-water mixture and stir it together carefully.
- You can now carefully combine the water-witch hazel-lye mixture with the oil mixture. I do this by pouring the lye mixture into the oil mixture and combining slowly with a metal spoon.
- Once everything is well combined, you can begin to use a hand held blender to continue to mix together all of the ingredients. We are looking to keep blending until reaching what is called “trace,” the point in making the soap when it will begin to thicken like a mayonnaise.
- When you start to reach a light trace (a thin, runny mayonnaise consistency), begin adding in the rest of the ingredients and combine them well.
- When you have a more normal mayonnaise consistency, pour the soap into the prepared molds.
- I’ve gotten into the habit of covering the soap with plastic and covering it with a towel for the first 24 hours or so, but it’s not really necessary. Leave your soap alone in the molds to completely set before removing them.
- This soap takes longer to set than my basic beginner soap, so you will need to wait longer before unmolding your soaps. I found it possible to unfold them after a few days, but the soap was still very soft and distorted and lost details. My best looking soaps had been left in the molds for a week or so before trying to unmold them.
- Once you have removed the soaps from the molds, leave them out to air dry and further harden. Ideally, you should turn the soaps occasionally so they dry equally on all sides, and you should also wait around a month before using the soap so that it is harder and lasts longer. (If you use the soap when it’s soft, it will easily dissolve and be used up much more quickly.)
- You can now use your soap, or package it for gift giving. Enjoy!
Zawadi
hi can i just use normal charcoal that i have manually grinded..not actually the activated one
Tracy Ariza
Hi Zawadi,
I’d honestly avoid it, just in case. Activated charcoal is formulated to be safe for beauty products.
When you say normal charcoal, it’s difficult to even know what that means- charcoal meant for a grill? Ashes left over from burning wood?
In any case, any of these things can be contaminated with chemicals that you probably don’t want to be using on your skin. It may be fine, but I’d personally err on the side of caution and avoid it.
Ashlee
Would I be able to use a melt and pour soap base, and then add the activated charcoal with some essential oils?
ashlee
Can you make this without lye?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Ashley,
I’m sorry, but you can’t make any soap from scratch without using lye.
You can buy pre-made soap bases where the lye has already been reacted with the oils, and you can melt them, add in new additives, and pour them into your mold of choice. That said, most melt and pour soaps have other additives that allow for them to be melted into a smooth mixture.
Lye is just a strong base, and it is often used to cure olives and to make the crust on pretzels and sometimes bagels. It isn’t some toxic substance that you need to fear. Of course, being a strong base, it can burn you just as any strong acid would, but as long as you protect yourself with goggles and gloves until you’ve mixed the lye solution with the oils, you should be fine. It sounds intimidating, but it’s really easy to make soap!
Sharifa Patel
Hi, I just want to know if I can make a pure coconut oil only soap, superfatted to 20% and add some activated charcoal to it. Will this work? I’m new to soapmaking and right now I’m just making a simple coconut oil soap with different essential oils.
Tracy Ariza
Hi Sharifa,
I’ve been meaning to try making a 20% superfatted coconut oil soap. It’s been on my “to do” list for awhile now, and will probably be one of the next ones I try.
While I haven’t personally made it yet, I’ve heard wonderful things about it. Yes, you can definitely add some activated charcoal to yours when you make it. I’m sure it would be a lovely soap!
Amanda P
I am making my first batch of soap soon and would like to add a clay to it. How much should I add and how much soap does this recipe make?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Amanda,
I usually just eyeball it and add a tiny amount. I think they usually recommend adding about a teaspoon for a pound of oils to soaps. This recipe has 500g of oils, which is pretty close to a pound, so you could add around a teaspoon.
To make it easier to incorporate the clay uniformly, I’d reserve a bit of the water of the recipe and mix that with the clay to wet it before mixing it in.
This recipe makes between 700-800g of soap. I cut mine into 6 decent sized bars of soap. You can get more or less bars of soap depending upon how large you want them to be.
Jessica
Thanks for the recipe! I’m super excited to try it. I do tend to make some substitutions based on our extremely hard water where I live and the oils I have on hand. I was wondering what percentage did you superfat this soap at? I wanted to run a lye calculator based on my substitution but wasn’t sure what the best level was for this recipe.
Tracy Ariza
Hi Jessica,
The superfat percentage for this soap is just under 6%. I usually do a higher superfat percentage for facial and body soaps, but I kept it closer to 5% than I might normally do because of the rapeseed oil. I don’t normally use rapeseed oil in soaps, and was worried it might go rancid earlier or give orange spotting if I set the superfat percentage too high. That was my logic, at least, when coming up with the recipe.
I’m still using the same bars of soap, and they seem to be just as good as they were, if not better, than when I first started using them. Of course, with the soap being black, you can’t really tell if you get orange spotting. š
Ryan Schumacher
Hi Tracy!
Thanks to your wonderful blog I am going to try to make soap for the first time next week! I am very excited to give it a try. I have a quick question though. This upcoming attempt is going to be a test run for this fall when I make soap for Christmas presents for everyone in my family. I was curious if you could make a suggestion for me though. If I were to make a soap using this recipe without the optional rosemary oil, how scent free would it be? In this fashion, I was hoping to make a scent blocking soap for the hunters in my family. Would you remove any other ingredients to help in that regard? IE the green tea extract or the citric acid… or do you think I need to rework the entire recipe and replace the shea butter and coconut oil? I don’t know how those two ingredients would affect the final product. Any suggestions you have would be appreciated. Thank you so so much!
Tracy Ariza
Hi Ryan,
Well, to be honest, when I remade this soap to take the pictures for the post, I forgot to add in the essential oils. That actually happens to me a lot and I have a lot of unscented soaps around the house, so I can try to help describe the scent. I do notice a subtle green tea scent to this soap, but it is very, very subtle. It makes it smell pleasant even without any other added scent. I can’t imagine that the citric acid would add much fragrance to the soap.
My strongest smelling unscented soap was a new glycerin soap that I made recently, but haven’t posted yet. That one is stronger smelling because it uses solvents to dissolve some of the opacity of the soap. All soaps will have some sort of scent, but most will be subtle without added fragrances.
Coconut oil soaps smell a lot like Dr. Bronner’s unscented liquid castile soap. I’m not sure how much added scent that the shea butter would add.
The problem with trying to make a truly unscented soap is that you can’t just use any oil and have the soap behave as you like. Most of the more subtle smelling oils aren’t great for using in high percentages when fabricating a soap.
Have you checked out my recipe for a basic beginner soap? (This soap is more specially formulated for face and uses a lot of ingredients.)
Olive oil and coconut oil are both good oils for soap, and the combination gives a pretty nice, all purpose soap. You could try using a lighter olive oil (vs. extra virgin olive oil) and an expeller pressed coconut oil (vs. virgin olive oil) to use oils with a lighter scent. During the saponification process, the scent will change and become more subtle. I don’t think you’ll be able to completely remove all scent completely, but it should be subtle.
Keep in mind that you can’t just switch out oils in a soap recipe- different oils need different amounts of lye- so you’d have to run any changes through a lye calculator to make sure the new recipe will be safe and work.
I hope that helps somewhat. I’d love to hear how it goes.
Holly
I am excited to give this recipe a try an was wondering if there was another substitute you could suggest in lieu of the rapeseed? I was thinking perhaps a hemp oil? Just looking to hear your take on the idea.
Thanks for the inspiring post!
Tracy Ariza
Hi Holly,
For making soap, you can’t just switch oils without running the new combination through a lye calculator because different oils need different amounts of lye.
Hemp oil can be used in small amounts, but it isn’t a great oil for using for the majority of the soap recipe (It should be used under 15% of the oils). I could try to calculate it for switching to something like a combination of olive oil and hempseed or perhaps some avocado oil if you have drier skin.
What type of skin do you have?
I’ve been meaning to make a new recipe for activated charcoal soap that is easier to make for beginners, and that uses less, and easier to find, oils. I like keeping this recipe up as is too, though, because I’ve been told by a reader that it turned out almost exactly like the Beautycounter bar, and that she has kept this recipe as if it were “gold.” š
BYoung
When I look at their ingredients for making this bar (the “beauty counter” one) it seems they are making a melt-and-pour bar, or “glycerine” bar (although all home made type soaps have glycerine in them as a by-product). Normally glycerine and alcohol are added to a soap recipe only when making such melt n pour type soaps. Like you said, alcohol doesn’t work well with lye otherwise. Either the company makes their own “glycerine/melt-n-pour” soap base or they buy it elsewhere and put in the other ingredients (vitamin e, etc). Otherwise, their recipe doesn’t look like the regular way to make soap due to the added alcohol and glycerine. The citric acid perhaps is, like you said, added to help reduce chance of DOS, but is not regularly added to natural type soaps. I have heard this charcoal bar is the rave. I’m wondering how it’s different than other charcoal bars of natural homemade soaps which cost far less. Like you, I’m going to try and make this on my own.
Tracy Ariza
Hello,
Yes, I got the same impression. I found it quite strange to list the ingredients as already saponified. I didn’t know if it was because they were afraid to show lye on the ingredient list, so as not to scare people who don’t understand that all soap uses lye, or if it was because they actually bought the ingredients already saponified, and, as you said, made it into a melt-n-pour type system.
I’ve almost finished my first bar by now. I do like this soap, but I’m not sure I’d rave about it. I’m also not sure I’ll be using rapeseed oil in soap a lot in the future. This was a bit of an experiment for me. In Spain it’s actually more expensive than a good quality olive oil, and I feel like olive oil just makes a better overall soap. (I don’t have a real reason why. Maybe it’s just my prejudice.)
In any case, I’m glad I made this.
I’m going to make up an easier activated charcoal face soap soon for those who want to make a bar for themselves without so many ingredients. That one will be using olive oil, and perhaps a few other simpler oils. š
Lisa
Tracy, I’m excited to see your new “simple” recipe for a similar bar. Could you please let me know when you have an ingredient list for it? I am new to soap making and am loving it. I suffer with many allergies to commercial made products so am learning to make more and more of my own. Thanks for your clear explanations as you write. Like I said, I’m new to this and learning as I go. The explanations help educate folks like me.
Tracy Ariza
Hi Lisa,
I’ve been working on a great facial soap recipe to which you can also add activated charcoal. I’ll try to get it up ASAP, and try to remember to let you know when it’s up. š
Treena
Hi, have you posted the new facial soap recipe yet that you referred to in the above comment? My daughter and I are very interested in trying to make it! If not, could you give me a heads-up when it is posted? Thanks
Tracy Ariza
Hi Treena,
I actually made a soap a month or two ago that would be great for face that I think would be perfect for adding activated charcoal. I was thinking of remaking it with activated charcoal in the next week or so. I can try to get it up soon afterwards. I like trialing soaps for awhile before posting, but since I’ve been using the same soap base without the activated charcoal already, I can’t imagine it would change things much- only improve it a bit- by adding the charcoal.
I’ll try to remember to tell you when I post, but have to admit that I’m forgetful about these sorts of things.
If you sign up for my newsletter, I send out an email each week on Sundays telling about my new post(s) of the week. That’s probably the best way of being alerted in the case that I forget! š
Oprintemps
Hi I like your way of making soap I prefer liquid soap what should I do?
Thanks
Tracy Ariza
Well, there are several things you can do.
You can dissolve a soap into water to make a “liquid” soap of sort, but to be honest, I’ve never liked the resulting soap.
I have several recipes for making a real liquid soap. I make a pure castile soap with only olive oil and a coconut oil based liquid soap.
I will warn you, the process is slightly different, and it takes a bit longer to make a liquid soap paste, but I think it’s worth the effort. It also uses a different type of lye.
Suzanne Wooldridge
If you wish to make a true liquid soap, you would not use Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) but Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) and yes, the process is very different from Cold Process soap making. It is not just a switch and substitute thing, but an entirely different Hot Process.
Tracy Ariza
Yep, what Suzanne said. š
It’s all explained in my liquid soap recipes.