Today’s DIY is ultra-simple; I designed it to be a safe and easy way to add essential oils to baths with some added bubbles. Putting essential oils in baths is really common, but can be problematic if not done properly. Essential oils are oil-soluble, so without some sort of emulsifier or solubilizer they won’t properly mix into bathwater—they’ll float on top, where they can contact the skin in high concentrations. Combine high concentrations with the magnifying heat of a hot bath and that can be bad news for your naked body 😬
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The key ingredient in this formulation is Caprylyl/Capryl Glucoside, one of my favourite surfactants. Caprylyl/Capryl Glucoside is a natural non-ionic surfactant that is also a great solubilizer. I’ve used it in many cleanser formulations because it’s gentle, has lovely lather, it’s mildly acidic, and its awesome solubilizing power means there’s no need for an additional solubilizer. Booyah!
In this formulation, Caprylyl/Capryl Glucoside is the ingredient that both solubilizes the essential oil into the bathwater and brings the bubbles. This definitely isn’t a bubble bath in that you aren’t going to get massive amounts of dense, long-lasting bubbles, but you will get some bubbling and foaming, and the essential oils will solubilize into the bathwater for safe, fragrant bathing.
I haven’t called for any sort of specific essential oil or essential oil blend for this DIY so you can customize things, but please please make sure you are selecting bath-safe essential oils. Nothing tingly or stimulating! Remember that these essential oils will be hot and in contact with your genitals so… yeah. Be smart! I used a pre-made blend from Essential Wholesale called “Bloomers” (it looks like it’s been re-blended since I got my bottle as mine has rosewood while the one on their website right now uses ho wood instead).
For storage and easy use, I recommend storing this DIY in some sort of bottle that will easily allow you to dispense just a few drops. I chose an HDPE bottle with a turret-type cap, but my top choice would’ve been a glass bottle with an eye-dropper cap—I just didn’t have any in the proper size when I was working on this.
You’ll want to add 5–10 drops of this Foaming Aromatherapy Bath Concentrate to your bath while it’s running, which ends up being about 0.5–1 drop of essential oil throughout your entire bath. It’ll be sufficiently fragrant and properly distributed throughout the bathwater. My bathtub, which I’d say is on the smaller side of the ones I’ve used, holds about 180 L (aka 180 kg) of water. Each drop of the mixture is ~0.05g, meaning 10 drops of this Foaming Aromatherapy Bath Concentrate in my bath is approximately a 0.0002% dilution, or approximately 0.000027% for just the essential oils. That’s pretty darn low, and should keep your skin safe and happy!
The finished Foaming Aromatherapy Bath Concentrate is crazy easy to make and customize so you can easily have lovely, safe aromatherapy baths. If you’re looking to learn more about safe usage of essential oils in baths I also recommend checking out this ebook. Happy making!
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Foaming Aromatherapy Bath Concentrate
17.94g | 89.7% Caprylyl/Capryl Glucoside (USA / Canada)
2g | 10% essential oil (please read pre-amble!)
0.06g | 0.3% Liquid Germall Plus™ (USA / Canada)Weigh everything out; you could weigh it into a beaker and stir, or you can weigh it straight into your bottle, cap, and shake to combine.
For packaging: this 20g batch will fill a 15mL (0.5 fl oz) bottle nicely. I recommend using a tinted glass bottle with an eyedropper cap for easy dispensing.
To use: add 5–10 drops to a running bath. Enjoy!
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this Foaming Aromatherapy Bath Concentrate contains some water (it’s in the surfactant), I’ve included a broad-spectrum preservative. Even with a preservative, this project may eventually spoil as our kitchens are not sterile laboratories, so in the event that you notice any change in colour, scent, or texture, chuck it out and make a fresh batch.
Substitutions
As always, be aware that making substitutions will change the final product. While these swaps won’t break the recipe, you will get a different final product than I did.
- As I’ve provided this recipe in percentages as well as grams you can easily calculate it to any size using a simple spreadsheet as I’ve explained in this post. As written in grams this recipe will make 20g.
- To learn more about the ingredients used in this recipe, including why they’re included and what you can substitute them with, please visit the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia. It doesn’t have everything in it yet, but there’s lots of good information there! If I have not given a specific substitution suggestion in this list please look up the ingredient in the encyclopedia before asking.
- Please don’t substitute the Caprylyl/Capryl Glucoside. If you don’t have it you could use an oil soluble solubilizer like Polysorbate 20, but you won’t get the same foaming experience.
- You can use other bath and skin safe essential oils. Do not use essential oils include peppermint, cinnamon, clove, chili, menthol, and black pepper.
- If you’re like to use a different preservative, please review this page.
Please get rid of the doTerra ads. I love your site especially because you don’t have MLM ads
Hi Diane! I don’t have any control over the ads on my website beyond restricting ads for things like online casinos, “adult” services, etc. The ads that show up on my website are generally customized to each viewer, so if you are seeing DoTerra ads it’s because some algorithm somewhere thinks you might be interested in them, probably just because I use essential oils in my formulations and they think anyone interested in this post might also be interested in those particular essential oils. If you click the “X” in the corner of the individual ad you’ll get the option to tell Google that you don’t want to see that ad ever again, though—definitely do that 🙂 It’s also worth noting that the selection of advertisements available to be shown on all websites has positively plummeted in the last month as companies all over the world are cutting spending, so we may well be scraping the bottom of the ad barrel at the moment with MLM ads :/ And yes, I’m 100% with you on the non-MLM thing! I will never promote MLM essential oils.
Hello. Would you characterize the bath concentrate as moisturizing for the skin? Or strictly for aromatherapy? Thank you.
Just pretty smells—there’s nothing moisturizing in here, and even if there was, it would be so dilute as to offer little to no benefit 🙂
Hi Marie, I was wondering if there was a way to add an ingredient that would offer some moisturizing benefit, like how could you add jojoba or olive oil? Or something that could offer a little something beside the lovely smelling little bubbles. Thank you in advance.
I wouldn’t bother doing that with this formulation as it’s designed to be so concentrated that you only use a few drops, and a drop or two of oil in a bath won’t offer any noticeable benefits 🙂
Hello, just wondering if I could use a fragrance oil that you can use in bath bombs/lotions etc instead of an essential oil or will that not work?
Thanks
That should work, though I suspect you will want to use even less of it in the tub since fragrance oils are usually even stronger than essential oils, so you might consider shifting the balance of this formulation to include less fragrance oil and more Caprylyl/Capryl Glucoside. Happy making!
Is there something you could add to this to also have the ‘dense, long lasting bubbles’ ?