A few weeks ago I was scrolling through Instagram, and happened to notice a post from Lisa Eldridge (she’s probably my favourite makeup artist, she’s incredible!). She shared a shot of this lavender bath milk, along with “So happy to get my mitts on this divine milky, lavender bath treat again!” and a photo of Audrey Hepburn. Well. Colour me intrigued.
I looked into the original, and the ingredient list is quite short. Water, lavender essential oil, some emulsifiers, alcohol, glycerin, and some additional fragrance ingredients. The first thing I thought I could do was drop the water and turn this into a much more concentrated product that wouldn’t need any preservatives. I figured if I basically just mixed some lavender essential oil with a liquid emulsifier and a few great-for-skin goodies, I’d end up with a concentrated bath milk. Just a few drops would do the trick. Sounds good to me!
Now, the lavender essential oil you choose for this bath milk is important. It’s also important that you like lavender. If you don’t, you could totally choose a different essential oil—this recipe is crazy easy to customize. I’ve got about half a dozen different types of lavender essential oil, from everywhere from France to the Ukraine to Bulgaria. I’d recommend avoiding lavender 40/42 for this recipe as it’s been processed to balance the percentages of Linalool and Linalyl acetate esters. It’s not a therapeutic grade lavender, which is why it’s inexpensive and great for soaps, but I’d recommend choosing one of your nicer ones for this project. You could also create your own essential oil blend—try swapping out a gram of the lavender essential oil for some benzoin or rosemary for something a bit different 🙂
Once you’ve got the lavender essential oil, the rest of the ingredients are a snap. We’ll include a bit of silk (optional, but awesome) for its healing, hydrating benefits. An emulsifier (I’ve included three options in the recipe) ensures your bath milk properly blends into your bath water so you don’t end up with floating dots of lavender essential oil. Glycerin helps soften skin, and that’s that. Those are all the ingredients. Sweet!
Here you can see how the concentrate emulsifies straight into water, leaving it a wee bit cloudy, but with no floaty blobs!
Once you’ve assembled everything, this recipe is a simple measure-cap-shake-voila. Brilliant! You’ll end up with a wee bottle of super concentrated lavender bath milk that will quickly blend into bath water without any oily floaters. Bring on the relaxation!
Relaxing Lavender Bath Milk Concentrate
1/8 tsp silk peptides, powder, or amino acids (wondering about substitutes?)
5g | 0.17oz olivem 300 or Polysorbate 20 or Turkey Red Oil
5g | 0.17oz vegetable glycerine (USA / Canada)
6g | 0.21oz lavender essential oilUsing a small funnel, measure the silk, olivem 300, vegetable glycerine (USA / Canada), and lavender essential oil into a 15mL/half ounce glass bottle with a dropper top (an eyedropper is ideal, but I used one with the orifice reducer dropper top, and that works, too). It’s important to add the silk first, while the funnel is still dry, so it doesn’t stick to the funnel, but after that you can add the liquids in any order.
Cap the bottle and shake to combine. Voila!
To use, shake before use and add 5–10 drops to your bath as it’s running (the agitation will help blend the concentrate into your bath water). Enjoy your lovely, relaxing bath!
The “300” part of Olivem300 is important—do not use a different Olivem emulsifier in this recipe! Use one of the listed alternatives instead.
Remember, this entire recipe is in WEIGHT. You will need a scale to make it. That is why the ounce amounts do not add up to half an ounce, but they’ll fill a half-ounce (fluid ounce!) bottle.
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this recipe contains no water, a broad spectrum preservative is unnecessary.
Hello, that recipe sounds easy peasy but Devine. Why do you call it bath milk concentrate as it doesn’t contain any form of milk ?
Where Marie uses the word “cloudy” to describe the effect of the concentrate emulsifying straight into water, the traditional description would be “milky”. I think that is the origin of calling it “bath milk”.
Yup, thanks! 🙂
In the beauty world it’s pretty common to call anything with a cloudy/milky appearance a “milk”—cleansing milk, bath milk, etc 🙂 Really, we do the same thing with food… soak oats in water, that gets cloudy, and suddenly it’s “oat milk” despite nobody ever milking an oat 😛
This is an exciting recipe! I’m not a lavender girl, but the possibilities are almost endless. Oh, Christmas gifts! It could so easily be customized for each person. Love it.
Exactly! So much fun to be had 😀 Happy making!
This makes me wish bath tubs were popular in China! But I can see this as a foot soak! Especially with peppermint!
PS- I really like how you’ve begun writing various options for things like polysorbate and turkey red. I find it a good reminder that for the friends who prefer the more natural it’s a simple swap! I mean, I know it’s a simple swap, but usually when I’m done and admiring my latest Bee inspired project I think drats! Could have used this instead of this!
I bet you could get one on AliExpress! And thank you—the more I learn and the more ingredients I try, the more alternatives I can offer!
I wish I could get a bigger apartment for it! But the hot springs makes up for it! I live in the part of China where we have a ton of hot sulfur springs. Imagine swimming in your tub! Just need to get them to agree for me to bring my own stuff!
Oooh, that does sound divine! I’m about 90 minutes from the Banff hot springs but I haven’t been in years as it’s something like $20 to get in and it is usually infested with tourists haha.
I have used your amazing recipe for both shampoo and conditioner. From petsonal use and one or two clients their feedback is because they have highlights/ colour treated hair they find their hair becomes very very dry, difficult to comb through afterwards when wet. Do you have any suggestions to make both more conditioning? Have tried extra silk protein and B5 without much improvement.
Are you using an acidic rinse? Difficulty combing usually indicates a lack of one as the keratin scales that make up the hair haven’t been smoothed back down.
Tussah silk any good? I wonder if it dissolves in glycerin, will have to try.
Tussah silk is not an option. These are fibres, and you cannot solubilize them in glycerin.
The only way I coukd solubilize tussah silk is by adding a pinch of it to the lye solution I use when making soap. DO NOT attempt to do the same when doing this recipe! Lye is a very strong alkali (NaOH is the name of the chemical we dissolve in water), the solution is highly corrosive and dangerous for the skin in high concentrations (you will see Na OH as buffering agent in cosmetics, but used fir that purpose is usually 1-2 drops for 50-100 g product and it helps bring the pH up from a too acidic one to one more friendly with our skin or to a range in which specific actives or preservatives work.
Thanks, Simona! Also, I edited your comment a wee bit as it looks like autocorrect got you and changed “buffering” to “buggering”! Not quite the same thing haha!
haha :-))) but buggering is so cute!! ;-))))))
thanks for editing my comment! I was “mobile” and me and mr. Autocorrect have a love-hate relationship…
Sadly no, it isn’t nearly water soluble enough for a project like this.
Thanks Marie and Simona!
I can’t wait to try this. So relaxing and wonderful. By contrast, Weleda make a wonderful Rosemary bath milk so I think I will try switching out the lavender for rosemary too. The Rosemary one is great for waking up in the morning when you’re really tired – wash hands, face and feet in it and you’re wide awake.
Ooh, that rosemary version sounds wonderful! Thanks for sharing and happy making 🙂
I made this last evening Marie and was concerned that despite the shaking, I had several little floating thingies in the bottle, maybe the silk peptides not dissolving completely. This morning they were all gone. I used Turkey Red since that’s all I had for an emulsifier and it did make a lovely bath experience, not at all oily but I could definitely feel some moisturizing after the bath. This would definitely make an inexpensive gift. I was thinking of making it for some of my Yoga/TRX buddies.
Wonderful! I’m so glad you made it and are enjoying it 🙂 Thanks for reading & DIYing with me!
Hello, just want to say I really love this recipe and your blog! Also How can I make this into a bubble bath? Can I just add castile soap, water and coconut oil and turn it into a milk bubble bath? HAve you tried this?
Hey Cruz! Thanks for reading 🙂 Asking how to turn this into bubble bath is sort of like asking how to turn an omelette recipe into a souffle… it’s not a simple “just add” proposition. Adding soap, water, and coconut oil will give you an oily product that won’t emulsify and won’t lather well—not in a stable, high-loft, bubble bath sort of way you want. If you added enough soap to get good lather, your skin would not be happy with you. You NEED surfactants to make bubble bath, and specific ones at that. A few years back a reader shared their extensive experiments with creating a DIY bubble bath—it’s a good read!
So, if I’m correct, polysorbate 80 wouldn’t work here? I’d rather not add another ingredient to the shopping list if I don’t have to. This looks like a wonderful gift!
It would! Polysorbate 20 would, too 🙂 Happy bathing!
Okey dokey, thank you for taking the time to reply! <3
I am making a gift basket of bath milks, powders, and bath oils for my mother who loves nothing better than to have a good, luxurious soak, and I’m definitely including this one. (Of course, I’ll have to test the recipes on myself first!).
OOooh, how decadent! And yes, testing is definitely a must 😉
I’ve read all the comments and nobody has asked if lecithin is a good alternative to the emulsifiers listed. What do you think about using lecithin? Also, does it need a preservative because of the glycerin or does glycerin count as an oil and not a water?
Hi Melanie! This question is answered in the free Humblebee & Me DIY Encyclopedia entry on lecithin, but the short answer is that it will not work.
This formulation does not require a preservative because it does not contain any water. Glycerin doesn’t contain any water even though it is water soluble (like sugar—water soluble, but doesn’t contain water).