If you dream of fluid body milks, ultra-light emulsions, and fast-absorbing lotions, this post is for you. Today I’ll be teaching you how to make thinner, lighter emulsions—I’m sharing three different strategies that you can mix and match to create the fast-absorbing emulsion of your dreams 😍
I struggled with what to title this post. I will be teaching you how to make your lotions richer and thicker, but the formulation skill behind that richness & thickness boosting is so much more than that! I will go as far as to say if you don’t know how to do this, you don’t know how to formulate emulsions. This skill is that important—really. This formulation decision is what will form the chassis of your lotion formulations: everything else will grow from there. What is that super important skill, you ask? Determining (or changing) the size of the oil phase. I know it doesn’t sound exciting, but I promise it is! Once you know how to do this you will have so much more control over your lotion formulations. You’ll start to know how rich or light a formulation will be from just looking at it, and you’ll know how to structure your own formulations based on how fast-absorbing or heavy you want the finished product to be. This skill is so essential to lotion formulation that you’ll wonder how you ever emulsified without it. Let’s dive in!
If you want to make thicker lotions and creams, you’ve come to the right place! In this post I’ll be teaching you three different (easy!) strategies for thickening and adding body to your natural lotions. You can use these strategies alone or combine them–it’s up to you. They each have their pros and cons, so it’s worth experimenting with each method so you know what you like.
Today I’ll be teaching you how to safely and naturally scent your lotion formulations using essential oils and natural fragrance oils. The formulations I’m sharing today are extensions of the formulation shared in this post, but you can easily apply these fragrant strategies to any lotion formulation, and with a bit of extra thought, any type of formulation! This written post goes quite deep into safety concerns and usage limits, while the partner blog post is more about how to adjust your formulations to include fragrant ingredients + demonstrations of how to find and review essential documentation. Make sure you read and watch to learn as much as possible!
In this post I’ll be discussing two potent ways to naturally add scent to your lotion formulations: essential oils and natural fragrance oils. I’m referring to these options as “potent” because you can get a noticeable scent pay-off with 1% or less of these ingredients. Their potency also means they also have a higher potential to be irritating to the skin.
I’ve already shared a post and video on how to gently scent your formulations using hydrosols and fragrant carrier oils, which are less potent than essential oils and natural fragrance oils. If you have sensitive skin and/or scent sensitivities, I’d start with those options.
Make sure you read this section in the post on “gentle” ways to scent formulations; there are two super important points in that post that need to layer in with the IFRA category info 😄
IFRA, the International Fragrance Association, has defined 12 major categories of products to assist in determining safe use of fragrance ingredients (essential oils, natural fragrance oils, and synthetic fragrance oils). I’ve bolded the categories that we’re most likely to encounter as DIYers. The base lotion formulation we’re working from today would either be a 5A (body lotion) or 5C (hand cream). You could also use it as a face cream (5B), but it would be a pretty boring face cream 🙂
Source: the chart on page 8 of this document: Notification of the 49th Amendment to the IFRA Code of Practice.
Once you know the IFRA category of your formulation you can cross-reference that with the usage rates provided by your suppliers, which should be divided by IFRA categories. This information is usually much more available for fragrance oils (natural or synthetic) than it is for essential oils.
Some suppliers will list IFRA limits right on the product detail page, but a downloadable PDF seems to be the more common approach.
Click here for the product page for Brambleberry’s Natural Geranium and Sandalwood Fragrance Oil. Navigate to the “Documents” tab and open the “EU Allergen – IFRA 49 – Prop 65 Reports” document. On page 2 you’ll find the IFRA statement.
You can see that we could use this natural fragrance oil at up to a whopping 82.87% (😳) for a 5A product (body lotion), 57.41% for 5B (face moisturizer), and 82.87% for 5C (hand cream). That’s far more than we’d ever need or want to use, but you know you’ve got a pretty wide safe range to work with when using this product.
Click here for the product page for New Directions Aromatic’s lemongrass essential oil. Navigate to the “GCMS & Documents” tab and open the “Quality & Regulatory Info” document. On page 12 you’ll find the “IFRA Standards Conformity Certificate”.
You can see that we could use this essential oil at up to 0.2% for 5A (body lotion), 5B (face moisturizer), and 5C (hand cream) products. The usage rates you’ll find for essential oils are typically much lower for than they are for fragrance oils (natural or synthetic).
Once you know how much of an essential oil or natural fragrance oil a product can use, you need to think about how much you want to use (this amount needs to be within the allowable maximum usage rate, of course!).
How a formulation will be used (basically, where on your body it will go and who it is for) is a very important consideration when adding scent to a formulation. A foot cream will have very different scent needs than an eye cream!
If a product is designed for application around the eyes, I usually choose gentler options if I want the product to have a scent. I explain how to do that in this post.
Facial products can contain fragrance oils and essential oils, but I usually keep the usage levels low—often below 1%.
Body and foot products can contain higher concentrations of essential oils and fragrance oils, though I usually still stick to around 1%.
Rinse-off products can contain higher concentrations of potent scenting ingredients, though as always, keep in mind what you’re scenting! I wouldn’t add any sort of potent scenting ingredient to a cleansing oil designed to remove waterproof eye makeup, but I’ll happily scent a shampoo or hand wash with essential oils and fragrance oils. It’s also a good idea to think about how precious the scenting ingredient is; should you use expensive rose essential oil to scent a wash-off formulation? I wouldn’t.
Do not try to drown out the inherent scent of a formulation with tons of essential oils or fragrance oils; that can lead to using far more essential oil or fragrance oil than is safe (or pleasant).
Essential oils are potent, fragrant oil-soluble substances extracted from plants through methods like steam distillation and expressing (squishing, basically). They’re complex chemicals that plants make to draw in pollinators, deter predators, and do other “help the plant live its best life” jobs. Some of them smell great, so we use those in our formulations so they smell great, too.
Essential oils are a very popular, effective, easy way to scent all kinds of formulations, but I do want to emphasize that the term “essential oil” encompasses hundreds of very different ingredients with different chemical compositions. Different essential oils have different maximum allowable usage rates, which is then further complicated by maximum allowable concentrations of individual chemical constituents that can be exceeded in an essential oil blend without exceeding the individual usage rate of any one essential oil.
It’s a bit like the idea of “spices”; there’s a lot of them, and some are stronger than others. You wouldn’t use sweet paprika and cayenne pepper in the same way because one is mild and one is spiiiiiicy 🥵 Similarly, it’s not a great idea to assume that 1–3% of all essential oils is fine, and just run with that—it’s perfectly fine for some essential oils, but far too much for others.
I’ve discussed essential oils more in this post: Ten DIY Ingredients for Beginner Formulators: Part 1. Please give that a read!
I learned the specifics of how to work with essential oils safely in my Formula Botanica Diploma in Organic Skincare Formulation coursework, and that section of the course is one of the biggest reasons I recommend that course. I realized I’d been using essential oils in ways that increased chances of irritation and sensitization—yikes!
Spring 2023: Formula Botanica is offering a free formulation masterclass where you can learn even more about formulation! You can sign up here 🙂 I highly recommend it, especially if you're wanting to see how Formula Botanica works.
Research the specific essential oil you want to use to determine the maximum allowable usage rate of the essential oil you want to use in the type of product you’re making. I recommend the Tisserand Institute and the book Essential Oil Safety: A Guide for Health Care Professionals by Robert Tisserand & Rodney Young (this is my essential oil bible!).
Include essential oil(s) in the cool down phase of your formulations, reducing the total amount of distilled water to make room. I’d start with 1% (total, not per essential oil) or less.
These essential oils are generally safe to work with around 1%:
This is not a complete list, but it’s a good place to start!
Be careful with these essential oils (again, not a complete list!):
Formulation with an essential oil
Lovely Lavender Lotion
Heated water phase
73g | 73% distilled water
5g | 5% sodium lactate (USA / Canada)Heated oil phase
5g | 5% Ritamulse SCG (USA / Canada / UK / AU)
15g | 15% sunflower seed oil (USA / Canada / UK / NZ)Cool down phase
1g | 1% Euxyl™ k 903 (USA / EU)
1g | 1% lavender essential oil (USA / Canada)
Natural fragrance oils are made from the same aromatic chemical compounds that make up essential oils: chemicals like Benzyl Salicylate, Linalool, Cinnamal, Eugenol, Geraniol, and Citral. Essential oils are broken down into their constituent chemical parts, and then those essential oil-derived chemicals are professionally blended to create scents that don’t exist as essential oils.
The key difference between a natural fragrance oil and a regular/synthetic fragrance oil is the source of the aromatic chemical compounds. Natural fragrance oils are made from naturally derived aromatic chemical compounds, while regular fragrance oils are made from synthesized aromatic chemical compounds. I find the synthetic fragrance oils are typically stronger and longer-lasting.
Learn more: Natural fragrance oils from Bramble Berry
Check the IFRA documentation from your supplier to identify the maximum allowable usage rate of the natural fragrance oil you want to use in the type of product you’re making.
Include fragrance oil in the cool down phase of your formulations, reducing the total amount of distilled water to make room. I’d start with 1% or less.
Formulation with a natural fragrance oil
Rosewood & Citrus Lotion
Heated water phase
73.5g | 73.5% distilled water
5g | 5% sodium lactate (USA / Canada)Heated oil phase
5g | 5% Ritamulse SCG (USA / Canada / UK / AU)
15g | 15% sweet almond oil (USA / Canada)Cool down phase
1g | 1% Euxyl™ k 903 (USA / EU)
0.5g | 0.5% natural rosewood & citrus fragrance oil
The sweet almond oil was gifted by YellowBee.
The Euxyl™ k 903 was gifted by Formulator Sample Shop.
The natural fragrance oil, sunflower oil, and sodium lactate were gifted by Bramble Berry.
Links to Amazon are affiliate links.
In this post I’m going to teach you two ways to gently—and naturally—scent your lotion formulations without using essential oils. These scenting strategies are good options for new makers, those who have sensitive skin, and those who prefer more softly scented formulations. I’m starting with these gentler, easier strategies as they’re much more beginner friendly; my next post will look at some more potent (and slightly more challenging) scenting options. The formulations I’m sharing today are extensions of the formulation shared in this post, but you can easily apply these fragrant strategies to any lotion formulation, and with a bit of extra thought, many other types of formulations! As always, this post has a partner video. The partner video shows these strategies in action and teaches you how to adjust lotion formulations to use them, while this post contains lots of in-depth information and links to learn more. Make sure you’re watching the video and reading the post to learn as much as possible 🙂 Let’s dive in!
Body butters are a fabulous place to start your formulating journey. I started with lip balms and body butters and made a lot of mistakes along the way; I’m hoping this post can help save you from a few of them!
Make it Up: The Essential Guide to DIY Makeup and Skin Care is now available at booksellers all over the world!