I love dropping a bit of lavender essential oil on my pillows at night before I go to sleep, but in drop form you end up with small drops of highly concentrated scent, which manages to be both simultaneously overwhelming and underwhelming, depending on where your nostrils end up.
Solubilizer is an awesome ingredient that lets you emulsify oils in water. Emulsifying wax also emulsifies, but it requires a 75% water/25% oil ratio, and will always give you something with lotion-y consistency as the wax thickens things. Great for lotions, but I don’t always want everything to be nice and creamy. Especially if I’m planning on spritzing it on my pillow. Ew.
So, solubilizer lets you emulsify oils in water without creating a creamy concoction. This makes it great for things like toner and room/linen sprays.
For this sleepy time pillow spray I choose essential oils of chammomile and lavender. Both are calming, and happen to smell wonderful when combined.
I no longer recommend making this recipe—it’s quite old and no longer lives up to my quality standards.
Sleepy Time Pillow Spray
7g solubilizer
4g lavender essential oil
3g chamomile essential oil10g distilled water
Broad spectrum preservative of choice (why?)
Stir the solubilizer together with the essential oils in a small dish.
Pour the water into a small glass bottle that you have a spray/atomizer lid for. Pour in the solubilizer mixture & preservative, screw the lid on tight, and shake.
Et voila! Pillow spray!
Do you subscribe to the Mountain Rose Newsletter? I do, and it arrived the other day. Somewhere in that newsletter was a recipe for a Winter Blues Spray. It sounded nice. It contained Chamomile EO, Mandarine Orange, Lavendar I think, I have the recipe saved on a file on my computer if your interested. I think I’ll make some, but include some of my own faves, including Sandlewood, and an EO blend my sister gave me called Happy Time.
Ruth
I don’t subscribe to that newsletter, Ruth—that recipe sounds lovely, though! The best thing about these room/pillow sprays in general is how versatile they are; you can always mix it up to include your favourite scents!
Where would you find the solubilizer? I have never heard of it before, but I have bought some Scentsy room spray. It is somewhat similar to what you are talking about. My favorite one is no longer available. Tangerine Tango. I would love to make my own anyway. Thank you so much for this information!
I get all of my ingredients from New Directions Aromatics. They have an excellent supply of oils, EOs, fragrances, and other materials!
Hi Marie,
I want to make some pillow spray in my 50 ml glass bottle from NDA. I am curious about how you know, or where to begin – when deciding what strength to make a pillow blend…if my math is correct you did a total of 140 drops of essential oils in 10 mls of water, making that a 70% blend? So if I want to do a 50 ml bottle and I multiply the amount of EO’s by 5 then I end up with 700 drops?? I know this is just a guideline, and of course I could use less, but it seems like so much – however I really do want a strong pillow spray! Sometimes I just wish I had a great referral for understanding strengths and percentages for products, I never know where to start! Many thanks!
Sarah—I don’t really work in drops as 700 is A LOT of counting to do! And it’s not very accurate, either. Anyhow, for this spray I broke down 25mL into approximate halves, keeping in mind that I would need as much solubilizer as I would EO. So, I did 10g of water and 7g/7g for the solubilizer/EOs for a total of 24g, and approximately 24mL. I knew this would be pretty strong (it is), but since I wanted to spray it through an atomizer, I figured that would be one squirt, and that I wouldn’t have to soak my pillow to get the scent in.
50mL is double 25mL, so you’ll just want to multiply everything by 2—so that would be 280 drops of EOs, not 700. Anyhow, I would recommend making the original amount (25mL), which is quite strong, so if it’s too strong for you, you’ve got 25mL of room left in the bottle to add more water and dilute the scent.
This is really lovely and you can combine anything you prefer!! thanks for the tip on the solubilizer stuff…
I really need to order some of the solubilizer. I have been wanting to make some room sprays for a good while now.
Do it! I had a few ideas when I bought it, but as soon as I had it I started finding all these amazing uses for it! It’s great to be able to incorporate just a little bit of oil or essential oil into water-based concoctions like toner!
Enjoy! Let me know which scents you end up trying 🙂
do you have to have solubizer to make this??? Just wondering
No, you can leave it out, but you will have to shake the bottle vigorously before each spritz as it will not emulsify.
Hi Marie,
I just found this recipe when doing a search on sprays as I just took delivery of a beautiful dark green spray bottle from ND, but now I have forgotten what I was going to make. Ha! You have developed so many products it is easy to overlook some of these wonderful solutions, but I am glad to find this one.
So my question is if I can substitute the solubilizer with high proof vodka to keep it fresh and mix the oils? If so, would I substitute 1 for 1?
Hi Jess! I’ve done the same thing many times—got a new ingredient in the mail and entirely forgotten why I ordered it 😛
You can use a high proof alcohol instead of solubilizer, but I would use 3x as much at least. Combine it with the EOs, cap it, and let it sit until the EOs have dissolved (time will vary with the strength of the alcohol). Once everything has dissolved, continue!
Gottcha…thanks Marie.
More stuff arrived today…gotta start using up this inventory, for no other reason than to make space in my fridge and office.
Too many things to do.
Fingers crossed for warmer weather and that my bees made it through this awful cold winter.
Space making sounds like a fun “chore” 😉
Fingers crossed for your bees!
Marie, how long will this spray last without a preservative? If I make it with the alcohol will it last?
Lynne
There’s really no solid answer to a question like this, it’s kind of like asking how long the soup you made yesterday will be good to eat. You can read more in the FAQ.
Hi Marie, could I use Polysorbate 80 instead of 20? It’s all I have at the moment! 🙂
Yup, I think that should work 🙂
Hello! Shouldn’t you add a preservative since this is a water-based formulation?
Yes, good catch! I’ve updated the recipe 🙂
where is the update? I don´t see the preservative in the recipe. Since it’s such a small batch that won’t last much time, do you think it’s necessary to put the preservative?
How odd, I definitely would’ve added it if I said I added it. Perhaps the page failed to save? Definitely do add it; you won’t use this batch in two days.
Hi Marie,
I was so looking forward to making this recipe but you don’t recommend it anymore,could I as why please? I really would like to learn.Thank you