These pretty, citrussy Coconut Aloe Shampoo Bars are utterly lovely—between the fresh, summery colours and the bright, citrussy scent I’m quite smitten. It occurred to me a few weeks ago that it’d been ages since I’d made a straight-up shampoo bar. I tend to use my assorted all-in-one soap bars for everything (so… basically all my soap recipes…), and it seems I forgot about shampoo bars for a while. They’re not that different from soap bars, except they’ve got more castor oil (USA / Canada) than usual for loads of super-creamy lather. Anyhow, forgotten no longer, these bars are delightful (and also make great soap—no need to save them for your head!).
I love the way these bars smell; they’re wonderfully citrussy, but not a super juicy citrus scent as I’ve used lemongrass and litsea cubeba instead of a proper citrus essential oil. I find both of these faux-citrus essential oils stick around much longer than actual citrus essential oils, and the lemongrass was much better suited to pair with coconut milk at any rate (like a Thai curry for your scalp!).
To get that lovely turquoise colour I’ve used a new-to-the-blog ingredient; hydrated chromium green chromium oxide. If you’ve used chromium green chromium oxide before you’ll be familiar with it’s very straight-up green colour—the hydrated version is much more turquoisey, and I love it. Both TKB Trading (USA) and Saffire Blue (Canada) sell it. If you don’t have it, you could try blending a bit of chromium green chromium oxide with some blue ultramarine to strike a turquoise-y note, or try a mica that’s a similar shade (though you’ll need more as micas aren’t as potent as oxides).
If you are using this as a shampoo bar, don’t forget about your acidic rinse and conditioner! I’ve written an FAQ on how they’re different and why you definitely need the acidic rinse when you switch to natural shampoo bars 🙂
Well, that’s that. I definitely think you should give these beauties a go—they’re lovely!
Coconut Aloe Shampoo Bars
10% olive oil (pomace) (USA / Canada)
25% refined coconut oil (USA / Canada)
15% unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada)
35% beef tallow
15% castor oil (USA / Canada)Per 500g (1.1lbs) oils:
- 2 tbsp white white kaolin clay (USA / Canada)
- 7g | 0.25oz litsea cubeba essential oil
- 24g | 0.85oz lemongrass essential oil
- 4 teaspoons powdered coconut milk (USA / Canada)
- 1/4 teaspoon 200x concentrated aloe vera powder
- Hydrated chromium green oxide, as needed
Calculate to 5% superfat
Unsure about how to use SoapCalc? I made a video to walk you through it!
Kick things off by calculating out your recipe (unsure about how to use SoapCalc? I made a video to walk you through it!) for the amount of soap you’re making to get the finite amounts of the fats, lye, and water. Ensure you’re familiar with standard soap making procedure before diving in.
I love room temperature soaping, and while it’s not necessary for this recipe since the colouring bits aren’t too fussy, it sure does make for a much more relaxed soaping session as things move much slower. For this batch I tried something new; I gently melted the beef tallow and unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada) in my soaping pot over low heat on the stove top (since those two fats have the highest melting points), and once they were just melted I removed them from the heat and stirred in the olive oil (pomace) (USA / Canada), castor oil (USA / Canada), and coconut oil. The residual heat from melting the beef tallow and shea melted the coconut oil, and the added room temperature oils helped bring down the temperature of the melted oils. I used a potato masher to break up the coconut oil to help it melt faster; if you’ve only just barely melted the beef tallow and unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada), the coconut oil will need some encouragement. When you’re done you should have a pot of liquid oils that feel only just a wee bit warm/room temperature to the touch.
From there, mix up your lye water (taking care not to inhale any of the fumes) and add that to your melted oils. Break out your immersion blender (I’ve got one from Braun that’s still going strong after 5+ years) to bring the mixture to trace. You’ll want a trace that’s somewhere around kid’s pudding cup levels so you can create layers without the batter mixing itself together with its own weight.
Once you’ve achieved trace, blend in the clay, essential oils, powdered coconut milk (USA / Canada), and aloe concentrate, ensuring there are no lumps. Divide the batter into two, and blend some hydrated chromium green chromium oxide into one half with your immersion blender (the blender is necessary to ensure you don’t have any clumps of pigment) until you achieve a colour you like. Don’t go overboard; too much oxide will bleed out of the finished bar. Aim for a shade close to what you see in my finished bars 🙂
Now it’s time to pour! To get the pointy bits going in and out of the green core you’ll need a bent-up hanger to do a hanger swirl. It should basically be like a squared-off “U”, with the flat bottom bit being the same length as your mould, and then the sides going straight up to give you a handle. It won’t really look like a “U” because, well, it’ll still have a hanger attached to it, but I hope you get the general idea. Anywho, the straight across wire bottom bit is the part you’ll be dragging through the soap to make some pretty designs!
Roughly this, if you hired a toddler to draw it.
Start off by spreading half the beigey-yellow bit of the soap (so, one quarter of the entire batch) across the bottom of your mould. Top off with all the green, and then finish the lot off with the rest of the beigey-yellow batter. Firmly rap the mould on your counter to knock out any air bubbles.
Now, take your hanger and plunge it down through the soap in three “u” shapes, like this:
You could do more “u”‘s if you wanted to for more obvious swirls; these ones were definitely more subtle than I’d imagined.
After that, all that’s left is to use a spoon to press into the top of the soap batter on an angle to get a lovely sort of fluffy look on top. Cover it and leave it to saponify for 24 hours before slicing, and leave it to age for at least four weeks before using. Enjoy!
Looking for some awesome acidic rinses and conditioners to go with these shampoo bars?
Hey, these look fantastic and I’d love to try them! What would be a good substitute for the tallow?
Thanks 🙂
Hey Alisha! Check out this article for a rather long-winded answer 🙂
Marie, I’ve read your article about substituting tallow, my question is, what do you recommend for this shampoo bar, Palm oil or Lard? I don’t have problem using either one but, which one is best for this formula?
Thank you!
I would always choose not-palm over palm. Lard is lovely in all kinds of cold processed soap things 🙂
Thanks Marie I’ll make it with lard, right now!
Enjoy, and happy soaping!
Hi! I love the shampoo bars! Are they best suited for dry hair? I’m having a hard time finding a recipe for oily hair . . . .
Hey Lori! I find shampoo bars are really well suited for just… hair? They’re much more mild in terms of cleansing power than surfactant powered shop-bought shampoos so I can see why people might say they’re good for dry hair, but I find my shampoo bars get my hair nice and clean, even when it hasn’t been washed for days, or even a week. You’ll need to make sure you do a thorough job of washing (it took me a while to learn/remember to thoroughly work the lather through all my hair, and not just the roots), but unless you are doing some sort of an oil treatment before washing and thoroughly saturating your hair with oil, your hair will come clean.
When it comes to how quickly it’ll get oily again, that’s another matter. Have you looked at stretching out your washes with the help of some dry shampoo to help your scalp calm down on oil production?
I love your soap recipe! If you can make a video for it would be A+++ 😀 pls consider it
Hey May! I am considering it, stay tuned 🙂 Have you subscribed to my YouTube channel yet? 😉
I love getting your blog updates but am afraid I have no extra time to add yummy body product making to my repertoire! Any chance I could buy some finished stuff from you? The Coconut Aloe Shampoo bar sounds divine!! C.
Hey Chanel! I don’t sell anything at this time, but stay tuned 🙂
Lovely recipe
Love the colour
I had a quick question the lush shampoo bars when used don’t require an acidic rinse
What is different in them from your recipe
Marie Please make something like the lush bars that don’t require a rinse?
Already hair washing has two steps of washing and conditioning a third one of acid rinse takes a lot of time and strips colour i believe
Hey Nina! Lush shampoo bars aren’t soap; they’re detergent bars. They’re solid blocks of surfactants; mostly sodium lauryl sulfate, which is a known irritant and also the surfactant that likely powers your dish detergent. The bars I looked at from Lush have SLS as the first ingredient, meaning there’s more SLS in them than anything else.
All that said, because their bars are detergent bars, not soap, they are not basic, so you don’t need an acidic rinse to balance out the pH.
Have you looked at this two-in-one conditioner? It combines the acidic rinse and conditioning so there’s no extra steps or time 🙂
From my reading if you use citric acid to create your acidic rinse, and rinse it out rather than leave it in, it shouldn’t lighten hair or strip colour, but this is just from research—I don’t dye my hair, so I have no personal experience. There’s quite a lot of discussion of it here.
I would love to try this recipe with some modifications and would like your opinion.
1. What do you recommend substitute the tallow with?
2. I do have aloe vera gel. Can I use it to replace the water instead of using the powder? 50 water\50 aloe vera?
3. lemongrass + tea tree sounds right? I also have lemon myrtle on hand
thanks so much for your answer.
Sarah
Hey Sarah! I’ve got some articles for most of your questions: on using tallow, and on aloe vera gel.
For the essential oils; if you like the way that scent blend smells then that’ll work!
Using highly alkaline solutions on your hair (Bronner’s soaps, etc.) though it feels soft and manageable that is really the disulfide bonds in your internal hair structure being weakened by the alkaline solution.The colors and perms that are performed use this method to work, they “open up” your hair to deposit the color or permanent, then a clarifying shampoo is used to “close” your hair and lock the color or permanent in. To then bring your hair down to it’s proper pH a acidic solution (apple cider vinegar) when using an alkaline cleanser is used, this is called clarifying. This dual process is not healthy for your hair or your scalp. (…) This is why so many shampoos on the market advertise that they are pH balanced shampoos. Because that is very important. So forcing your hair to go up to an 8 or 9 and then forcing it back down to a 4.5 in a short period of time is very damaging.
I’ve read about this, but I haven’t seen any convincing sources on short exposure to a higher pH and a re-balancing being damaging. A perm or bleaching is obviously a significantly more damaging process, with much longer exposure than a regular shampooing. I know I’m a statistically insignificant sample size, but I’ve been washing my hair this way for over five years and it’s never been healthier. Do you have any scientific studies backing this up?
Love your website and these shampoo bars! Waiting for my oxide, coconut milk powder and essential oils to arrive so I can make them, they really do look so lovely. How do you wrap/present your soaps for gifts? They are so lovely as is, I would hate to wrap them, but worry about protecting them.
Hey Coreen! I usually wrap them in tissue (there are so many pretty varieties out there!) and then pair that with some twine or ribbon, or just toss ’em in a gift bag. It helps protect the bars, and helps make them a surprise, but they can still breathe if they happen to be left in there for an extended period 🙂
Thanks so much for replying! That’s a great idea to use tissue! I will be doing that. Appreciate all your timely advise!
No worries—enjoy the DIY suds!
Hi Marie
I just love your blog 🙂 So inspiring! I was curious what the white kaolin clay adds to the shampoo bar. I make shampoo/body bars myself and never thought of adding clay. Was it just for color or does it have some hair benefits?
Deb
Hey Deb! Thanks so much for reading 🙂 I love clay in my soap for added slip and a cleansing boost—plus clay makes the bar extra creamy feeling! I’m not sure if I can say for sure it’s great for the hair in one way or another other than it’ll boost the cleansing power of the shampoo (albeit gently) and makes for a shampoo that feels very creamy and luxurious when it lathers up 🙂
This sounds lovely! I found a tip on a YouTube video by Celine at Iamhomemade.com for using a wider swirling tool for this technique. The wider hanger creates a more dramatic pattern.
Thanks, Kat! I’ll have to fatten up my hanger and give that a go 😀
Instead of the concentrated aloe power, could you substitute some of the water for aloe juice?
Yup!
Please can get I use food color for soap making?
I’d recommend sticking with pigments sold for soap making as that way you can ensure they won’t morph during saponification. If you don’t mind colour roulette you can try them, though 🙂
These shampoos bars look fabulous. You mentioned you are searching for a variation or recipe for color treated hair, have you discovered one yet?
Stay tuned—mid February!
Hi
Have you a recipe for a shampoo bar that suits colour treated hair yet?
Nope, sorry. I have a version I will be testing on my upcoming trip to Europe, though 🙂
Hi Marie! What are your thoughts on using some plain old Doctor Bronners for this – I haven’t ventured into soap making yet and feels a little too out of my comfort zone. Thanks!
I wouldn’t recommend it—that’s sort of like finding a cake recipe you like and then buying a cupcake and trying to use the cake recipe on it, ha. You’re losing control of the vast majority of the ingredients by using a pre-made base, and the format is different as well. If you’re new to soap making this is a great recipe to start with—and then this one really isn’t much different 🙂
Hi Marie,
I love your site! I am just getting into it, and will donate to you once I have all the ingredients. Do I use the soap calc to figure how much much lye goes into your coconut aloe shampoo bars?
sharon
I do, SoapCalc is definitely my preferred soap calculator 🙂 Happy soaping and thanks for reading!
This looks so good! I love to make this kind of thing as a gift!
Thanks, Suzanne! Happy making!
Thanks for sharing! Do they last long?
Thanks for reading! You’ll find the answer to your question in my FAQ at https://humblebeeandme.com/faq/ Happy making!
Hello,
Love your site and I was especially glad to see your bar shampoo recipes as what a great way to do away with a heap of plastic commercial shampoo bottles. I would probably use a different tint for green though as:
Though chromium oxide green is not a serious health hazard, it can cause irritation of the skin and eyes and can cause nausea and other problems if ingested.
Chemical Name: Chromium(III) Oxide
Chemical Formula: CrO
Refractive Index: 2.551
I’m pretty sure soap itself can also cause “irritation of the skin and eyes and can cause nausea and other problems if ingested”, especially in large amounts 🙂 I’d encourage you to give this post a read—it really helps put this sort of thing in context! Happy making 🙂
Hi I want to know can we use soapnut in the shampoo bar if yes please tell me will it help for moisturising and shine in hair.