Eco-friendly and good for your hair, learn how to make a non-soap shampoo bar, why to make one, and how to use it.
What is a Shampoo Bar?
A shampoo bar is a solid cleanser that is meant for cleaning the hair. Shampoo bars have been gaining popularity lately because they have no need for plastic packaging, allowing them to be a zero waste type cosmetic product.
Why Use a Shampoo Bar?
There are several benefits to choosing a shampoo bar over a liquid type shampoo.
Sustainability
Because they are a solid-type product, no plastic bottle is needed for storing shampoo bars. When you make them yourself, there is absolutely no need for any sort of packaging whatsoever. Choosing to use a shampoo bar means that you can help reduce waste and eliminate the need for single-use plastics.
Travel-Friendly
With new restrictions on traveling with liquids, shampoo bars are a great TSA friendly alternative for those who want to fly with cosmetics in their carry on luggage.
Can you use a shampoo bar on your body?
Because the surfactants used are nice and gentle and the pH is also skin-friendly, you can use the shampoo bar on your body too. That makes it especially travel-friendly because you really only need to pack one bar for all over cleansing.
Preservative phobia?
While I think you should use a preservative when making this, as a precaution, shampoo bars are really the only type of surfactant based shampoo that you could get away with making without a preservative.
Because it doesn’t have any water-based ingredients in it, it technically doesn’t need a preservative. On the other hand, because you are contaminating the outside with water constantly, it still is a good idea to use one to keep microbes from growing on the surface of your bar.
If you are completely set against using a preservative, though, this is the only type of product where I’d say you could give it a try. If you do go that route, I’d suggest being careful about drying the bar immediately between uses and storing in a very dry environment.
Soap-Based Shampoo Bars vs. Surfactant Based (SYNDET) Shampoo Bars
There are several types of shampoo bars that are available for selling or for making yourself.
Soap-Based shampoo bars
While considered the most “natural,” soap based shampoo bars aren’t the best choice for most of us because of their high pH. Soap based shampoo bars are just that, soaps made with lye and oils just like the other soaps that I have shown you how to make on the blog.
Often times, people try to make soap bars slightly less harsh for hair by slightly lowering pH. That is done in an effort to make them better for hair. The problem is that the pH of soap can only be lowered slightly or you end up ruining it. Soap’s high pH is also what makes it self-preserving, meaning that it doesn’t need a preservative.
While most people’s skin can easily recover from using soap with its high pH, our hair is much more delicate. Most of our hair (other than the part in the follicle) is dead. For that reason, it can’t as easily recover from harsh conditions as our skin can. While you can condition your hair and smooth out the outer portion (the cuticle), making it look shinier and healthier, prolonged use of soap will normally damage hair.
When using a soap-based shampoo bar, you are normally told to do a final rinse with vinegar. The high pH of soap lift up the cuticle of your hair, making it look dry and dull. Because vinegar is acidic, that is meant to help close the cuticle and make your hair look healthier and shinier again.
Why make/choose a surfactant based (SYNDET) shampoo bar?
A synthetic detergent shampoo bar may sound like it would be harsher on your hair, but that isn’t really the case.
Many of us have been told that soap is good and natural and that “detergents” (other non-soap surfactants) are harsh and bad for us.
That misconception probably stems from the fact that most shampoos for sale use sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), a popular (yet harsher) anionic surfactant. SLS is often used because it cleans very well and is quite inexpensive, but it also can irritate skin and strip skin and hair of their natural oils. (Yes, it may be cleaning too well, in a sense.) Fortunately for us, there are many types of milder surfactants available. As the demand rises for more natural, safer alternatives, the variety of available surfactants is increasing.
The advantage of using these more natural surfactants is that the pH can be adjusted to better suit our hair and keep it looking healthy. Soap, at the lower pH’s that we’re aiming for in hair care products (between pH=4-6) just isn’t soap anymore. Trying to lower the pH of soap that much would break it down. It’s impossible to make a soap-based shampoo bar in the ideal pH range for our hair.
If you do choose to use a soap-based shampoo bar, remember that it is important to follow it up with an acidic rinse. That can be achieved by rinsing your hair with diluted apple cider vinegar, for example.
How to use a Shampoo bar
Shampoo bars are actually quite simple to use. Using one is just like using a bar of soap. In fact, you can begin the process by lathering up the shampoo bar in your hands just as if you were washing them. Once you’ve worked up a lather, you can then rub your foamy hands over your hair and scalp, rubbing it in to work up a lather.
The other possibility is to take the shampoo bar and rub it over your wet hair until you’ve worked up the desired amount of lather. The only inconvenience to that method is that you are more likely to cover your shampoo bar with stray hairs.
Where to Store a Shampoo Bar
Once you’ve finished lathering up with the shampoo bar, you should rinse it and store it in a place where it can fully dry. Make sure that you don’t store it in a puddle of water or your shampoo bar could easily disintegrate.
I normally stand my shampoo bar up so that it is resting on one of the smaller edges, this allows for the maximum amount of air circulation around it. (It’s also why I prefer making a rectangular bar to a round one like the ones made by Lush.)
If you do plan on storing in a travel tin, make sure that the bar has completely dried before you store your bar or it could melt into a mushy mess.
Watch How Easy it is to Make a Shampoo Bar
How to Make a Shampoo Bar?
Shampoo Bar
Materials
- 45 g SCI
- 20 g SLSA
- 18 g coco glucoside
- 8 g coco betaine
- 3 g shea butter
- 2 g BTMS (I used BTMS-25)
- 2 g b-panthenol
- 1 g preservative
- 1 g essential oils
- .5 g vitamin e
Instructions
- Weigh out the surfactants (the SCI, SLSA, coco glucoside, and coco betaine), the shea butter, and the BTMS in a double boiler insert, or in a bowl that can be heated over a pan of boiling water.
- Begin to slowly heat and melt the ingredients over a double boiler, stirring until the ingredients have fully melted.
- This mixture is very thick and difficult to work with, so it’s really impossible to let it cool before mixing in the other ingredients. You’ll want to remove the mixture from your heat source and add in the other ingredients, working quickly.
- Do your best to fully incorporate the preservative, vitamins, and essential oils. Immediately press the mixture into a bar mold. I use silicone molds meant for bars of soap.
- You can help smooth the top of your bar by placing a sheet of parchment or wax paper over the mixture in the mold. Carefully rub over the top of the bar to smooth it.
- Optionally test the pH of your shampoo bar by running some water over the finished bar and testing the lather with a pH test strip. Because this is a solid product, it’s impossible to otherwise test the pH.
We’re looking for the pH of the lather obtained using your shampoo bar in your water (with whatever preservative you chose to use, and whatever optional ingredients you may have added).
This will help us determine if it would be best to adjust the pH of our next batch. The pH can be lowered by adding a few drops of lactic acid. (It’s unlikely that you’d want to raise the pH, but that can be done with some NaOH carefully dissolved in water.) - Once your shampoo bar has cooled, you can remove it from the mold and allow it to dry further. Unlike homemade soap, this shampoo bar can be used immediately. If it’s too soft, though, you can let in harden up slightly by leaving it to dry for a few days. (This can occur in regions with high humidity.)
Customizing your homemade shampoo bar
This shampoo bar uses a mixture of liquid and solid surfactants. Depending on the humidity of your region, you may want to adjust the ratio of solid to liquid surfactants in order to obtain a harder or softer shampoo bar.
The solid surfactants
SCI is short for Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate. It’s the first of the solid surfactants used and is also sometimes called “baby foam” because it is a gentle surfactant, mild enough for use in baby products. It’s derived from coconuts. SCI can be tricky to work with, but worth it because it’s such a great surfactant that works well in both soft and hard water. It’s normally sold as a powder or fine granule.
SLSA is short for Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate. It’s an ECOCERT certified surfactant that gives off a lot of foam. Because it can be derived from both coconut and palm oils, it’s a good idea to look for providers that either derive it only from coconut oil, or use sustainably obtained palm oil.
The liquid surfactants
Coco glucoside is one of my favorite mild and natural surfactants. It’s a gentle non-ionic surfactant and I’ve used it already in several recipes, including my DIY micellar water and the liquid clarifying shampoo.
Coco betaine is another coconut oil-derived natural surfactant that is often combined with coco glucoside because they work together well to form a nice foam and together have better cleansing properties.
Conditioning agents
Even though the surfactants that I have chosen are mild, it’s still a good idea to add some emollients or other conditioning agents. In my bar, I’ve chosen to use shea butter and BTMS. BTMS-25 is the cationic emulsifier that I use in my favorite homemade conditioner. (Soon I’ll be showing you how to make a solid conditioner bar too!) While these are optional ingredients, I think it’s a good idea to use them to help protect your hair.
Vitamins
I chose to use both vitamin E and b-panthenol in my shampoo bar. Vitamin E is an antioxidant that when used at .5-1% of the recipe helps keep other oils from going rancid. B-panthenol is also known as provitamin B5, and it can act as a humectant, helping to attract moisture into our hair, as well as to help nourish it. While these are also optional ingredients, they are a very welcome addition to your shampoo bar. I use both of these vitamins in most of my homemade skin and hair care products.
Preservative
I’d suggest using a preservative in your shampoo bar because it will be used in a humid environment, and you’ll likely be getting it wet quite often. You’ll want to make sure the pH of your bar is in an effective range for whatever preservative you choose (and you’ll need to use it at the recommended percentage). I’ve been using Sharomix 705, an ECOCERT certified natural preservative which can be used at around 1% of the recipe by weight. For it to be effective, the product needs to have a pH below 5.5.
If you are dead set against using a preservative, do so at your own risk. You’ll need to be very careful about keeping the bar in a very dry environment and making sure you can dry it out fully as quickly as possible.
Laila
Hi Tracy! I’m very happy to finally find a recipe like yours. I’m having a little bit of difficult to find Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate in my country. How can I substitute him? Can I use only Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate? Thanks a lot!
Tracy Ariza
Hi Laila,
I haven’t tried it with only SCI, but you can definitely try it. I would think it would work fine. It may affect the amount/type of lather slightly, etc., but should still be quite functional. If you try it, I’d love to hear how it goes!
Janet
Hi! I have been reading about coco betaine and the issue of it being different from cocamidoproply betaine, which is synthetic, but suppliers are selling them as the same making it difficult to be sure which is which we’re getting. So, i wanted to ask if there is an alternative to coco betaine? One that is sure to be natural like coco glucoside. Or can i use just coco glucoside?
How many bars are manageable to do for a batch? Will the mixture remain soft if they stay heated in the double broiler?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Janet,
I would try it out with coco glucoside if you don’t feel comfortable with coco betaine. They will be slightly different, but I don’t think it would make a huge difference in something like a shampoo bar. (You may want to check the final pH by lathering it up and then testing the lather with pH strips. That would mimic the pH of it when in use.)
I only make these for myself, so I’ve only made one bar at a time. I’ve never tried making more.
That said, I don’t see why you can’t just slightly re-heat it to “melt” it again, as needed. I wouldn’t heat it high as that can affect any delicate ingredients, but a quick burst of low heat shouldn’t be a problem. (The hard part of melting the more difficult solid surfactants has already taken place.)
This isn’t a liquid-y mixture, even when hot, so you’re never going to be able to “melt” it. The ingredients will probably stay malleable for a while, enough so that you can probably press the ingredients into various different molds, as needed, without needing to reheat. Another possibility is to try making one big bar that you cut into smaller bars like I normally do with soap. (Again, I haven’t personally tried that either, but in theory, it could work.) 😉
narda
Hi and thanks for the recipe. I have had a couple of people say that coco betaine is bad for the environment and googling it is very confusing. So you have thoughts on this please 🙂
Tracy Ariza
Hi Narda,
My suspicion is that people are referring to Cocamidopropyl betaine and not coco betaine. Cocamidopropyl betaine is a bit more controversial. Many people erroneously think they are one and the same, but they aren’t.
Kim
I was wondering about the difference between Coco betaine & Cocamidopropyl betaine. My daughter is allergic to Cocamidopropyl betaine & we have a hard time finding shampoo & body soap, tooth paste etc that doesn’t contain it. So much stuff has it in it to make it suds more. What are your thoughts on the difference?
Tracy Ariza, DDS
I guess the easiest way to explain it, at least as I understand it, Cocamidopropyl betaine is a more synthetic version of coco betaine. It does seem to cause more irritation than coco betaine and is rated differently on the EWG cosmetic rating scale. That said, they behave similarly as surfactants. I’m not sure if someone with issues with Cocamidopropyl Betaine would tolerate coco betaine or not.
I’d actually suggest just trying to use a different liquid surfactant. Ideally, you’d sub it for another liquid amphoteric surfactant, but you could experiment with just using more coco glucoside to see what happens.
You may need to make minor adjustments to get the hardness of the bar right- that’s true of any changes to the recipe, but I wouldn’t think it would change too much with a minor change like that.
Janet
Hello! What is the benefit of using two solid surfactants instead of just one? Both seem to have the same qualities. For this recipe, can I use just one? Or is the result better with the two surfactants?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Janet,
You could definitely try using just one. I haven’t tried it that way.
I chose to use both because that’s what was recommended in a haircare course I took. The SCI is naturally acidic, helping to bring the pH into a good place for hair care.
The SLSA is a good foam booster.
That said, they are both good anionic surfactants. If you are going to choose only one, I’d probably try SCI- and I’d try to test the final pH of the product to see if it’s in a good range. (You can make a lather with water and then use a pH test strip on it.)
Rachel
Could I use Citric Acid as my preservative?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Rachel,
While citric acid isn’t a true cosmetic preservative, it can be used as a preservative, in a way. If you lower the pH of something like this shampoo bar enough, it will be in a range that isn’t very hospitable to microbes. That’s why soap doesn’t need a preservative. The pH is so high that microbes don’t tend to grow there. The problem is that the high pH of soap is what keeps it from being ideal for your hair.
While you could probably lower the pH of the shampoo bar enough to keep out most microbial growth (below pH=4), I’m not sure that you’d end up with a product that is ideal for your hair. I imagine that an acidic pH is better than the alkaline pH of soap, but normally they recommend a pH of 5-6 for hair products.
So, I wouldn’t suggest using citric acid as the ideal solution to preserving this.
That said, this product doesn’t strictly “need” a preservative as it doesn’t have any water-based ingredients. So, you could experiment with it and see.
The preservative is there to keep mold and bacteria from growing on the surface since you will be wetting the bar to use it (and it is often stored in humid environments.)
What I would suggest is that if you aren’t going to use a true preservative (or aren’t going to lower the pH of this to below 4), that you are especially careful about trying to dry the bar as quickly as possible and to store it in a dry environment.
Tami
Can I use liquid germall plus instead of sharomix? Or phenoxyethanol? Thank You
Tracy Ariza
Hi Tami,
You can definitely sub out preservatives. I prefer the more natural alternatives, but you’re free to use what you have on hand.
What you do want to keep in mind when substituting preservatives is that you want to use it in the suggested percentage for your particular preservative. Most suppliers will give you that information, or you can check online. Most preservatives are used at around 1% of the recipe, but some will need more to be effective and others can irritate your skin if you use too much.
The other thing to keep in mind is that not all preservatives are effective at all pH levels. So, you will want to test your shampoo for pH and then make sure your preservative is effective at that pH. If not, you can adjust the pH with either NaOH (to make it more alkaline) or, more likely, with something like lactic acid to make it more acidic.
(Keep in mind that you don’t want your shampoo to be on the alkaline side.) 😉
Tracy Ariza
I’m just now noticing that this was for the shampoo bar and not the liquid shampoo, which, of course, makes testing the pH more complicated. You really have to test after the fact by making a lather and then testing with a pH strip or tester.
In all likelihood, the pH of this shampoo bar should be fine for most preservatives. I just needed to mention it as it is one of the places where a preservative can fail.
Dawn
Hello, thanks so much for a very informative blog post….would you mind sharing where you source Sharomix 705….Many thanks, Dawn
Tracy Ariza
Hi Dawn,
I live in Spain so I buy locally. I’ve bought from several places already. (I’m happy to share the places, but I sort of doubt it would help you- unless, of course, you are also in Spain.)
Anabela Silva
Hi Tracy!
Thank you very much for the formula, I was anxious to find a shampoo formula and there it is!
Where do you buy your supplies?
I’m from Portugal and normally I order on-line from shops from Spain…
Tracy Ariza
Hi Anabela,
We’re neighbors, then! 🙂
I’m happy to help!
I buy most of my supplies from cremascaseras.es
They do send internationally, so you shouldn’t have any problems buying from them!
Anabela Silva
Yes, I also order from cremas-caseras! ? do you find btms-25 there? I think I only saw btms-50 there…
Tracy Ariza
Hi Anabela,
Yes, it’s actually BTMS-25. They don’t sell the 50 there. 😉
They don’t specify, but if you look at the ingredients, it only has Cetearyl Alcohol (> 50%) and Behentrimonium Methosulfate (<30%). BTMS-50 has a glycol and different amount of BTMS.
A long time ago, I specifically asked them about it, too, and they specified for me that is was BTMS-25.
They tend to stick to the more natural options, so I believe that's why they chose that one. Some people don't want to use any glycols. 😉
Jennifer
Thank you so much for all your wonderful recipes. I’m wondering if I could make this shampoo bar without any coconut derived ingredients. Any suggestions?
Thank you,
Jennifer
Tracy Ariza
Hi Jennifer,
I’m not really sure. Most of the natural surfactants are normally derived from coconut. I usually choose those over the palm derived one. Sometimes you can find the same surfactants that have been derived from other plants, but that would be specific to each supplier. Off the top of my head, I have no idea how to do it.
Amanda
FINALLY! A TRUE ‘SHAMPOO’ BAR!!
I will be trying this once I’m caught up and can order these ingredients.
Thank you and GOD bless you for sharing! ??
Tracy Ariza
Yay! I’m so happy to have helped you! 🙂
Yes, there is a big difference between soap and a shampoo bar, especially for those of us with curly or wavy hair!!
Tam
Hi, can I left the panthenol out? It is hard to buy here in Asia. Even online. And can I use liquid germall plus for the preservatives?
Last one, can we make the shampoo bar like LUSH? They have like noodles yet gorgeous look. Does the process is the difference with your recipe?
Thank you so much!
Tracy Ariza
Hi Tami,
Yes, it’s fine to leave out the panthenol. It’s just a vitamin that helps nourish the hair. Seeing as this is a rinse out product anyway, it may not be providing that much benefit anyway. (I can get it inexpensively, so I add it to pretty much all skin and hair care products.)
I’m not sure what you mean about the noodles- do you mean adding colorants to the bar? I don’t see why not!
As for the preservatives. Yes, you can switch out preservatives, but just make sure you are using the right percentage for the particular recipe and that the pH is at the right range.
Kris Bordessa
I just ordered all of the ingredients for this. I’m determined to find a bar that works for my curly hair and so far, the lye soap bars are not doing it. Fingers crossed that this works — all the ingredients I got will make LOTS of bars!
Tracy Ariza
Yay! I really hope you like it.
If it does work well for you, yes, you should be able to make a lot of bars pretty inexpensively once you have the ingredients.
I’ve been wearing my hair curly/wavy for the last couple of years now, and changing up my shampoos has really helped. With conventional shampoos, the top layers of my hair became straight, so I ended up having to straighten my hair to make it look presentable. I love being able to wear my hair curly/wavy these days instead! I also wash much less often these days and that helps. You can also try co-washing with a conditioner between shampoo washings and that should help keep your hair hydrated, which will help maintain healthy curls.