Today’s Super Simple formulation is the most super-ly simple of the super simple formulations I’ve shared with just two ingredients! I’ve also shared two different variations and discussed how to customize it to make it as accessible as possible (and also to hopefully get you inspired to start formulating your own cleansing oils!). Let’s get started!
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What is an oil-to-milk cleanser/cleansing oil?
I think an oil-to-milk cleanser (or cleansing oil) is the simplest cleanser you can make. It’s basically just inexpensive oil (and/or oil-soluble esters) with just enough of a surfactant to allow the product to self-emulsify with water, making for easy and clean rinse-off. It is perfectly possible to make a cleansing oil with just two ingredients, but most products you’ll find on the market are more complex than that.
The oil base of the formulation is important because like dissolves like, so the oil in the cleanser dissolves the sebum on our skin and breaks down the film-formers that make products like makeup and sunscreen long-wearing. We then add an oil-soluble surfactant to the formulation so the oil (now mixed with excess sebum and eyeliner) rinses off easily, leaving the skin feeling clean.
Ingredients Overview: Essential ingredients
One of the biggest principles of ingredient selection for a cleanser is that the bulk of the ingredients should be inexpensive (or if they are expensive, stick to a low usage rate). Since cleansers are only in contact with the skin for perhaps a minute before being rinsed down the drain, including high concentrations of expensive ingredients is rather wasteful; I prefer to save my fancy ingredients for leave-on formulations.
Inexpensive emollients
This ingredient, or blend of ingredients, will form the vast majority of your Super Simple Oil-to-Milk Cleanser. We want something oil-soluble, lightweight, and inexpensive. For this Super Simple Oil-to-Milk Cleanser, I’ve selected fractionated coconut oil as it’s inexpensive, lightweight, readily available, and has a long shelf life.
I love to include around 10% castor oil in my cleansing oil formulations—it’s a hold-over from my days trying the OCM, and I find it boosts cleansing and leaves my skin feeling lovely. I haven’t included it here in the interests of super-simple-ness, but you could easily swap out 10% of the fractionated coconut oil for castor oil if you have it.
If you’d like to include a more expensive oil for label appeal you can easily swap 5%–10% of the fractionated coconut oil for a fancy oil. You could also take some inspiration from many commercial cleansing oils that use lots of ultralight esters for glorious skin feel (cetyl ethylhexanoate pops up in a lot of ingredient lists). C12-15 alkyl benzoate and isopropyl myristate (IPM) are two of my favourite esters to include in cleansing oil formulations.
How much should you use? Enough to make the formulation total 100% after you’ve selected all the other ingredients.
Oil-soluble liquid emulsifier
This is the ingredient (or ingredients—many commercial oil cleansers use more than one emulsifier) that makes the formulation oil-to-milk instead of just oil—it’s the ingredient that allows water to blend right into the cleanser and get all milky and lovely, making for beautiful rinse-off.
The two options I’ve presented today are polysorbate 80 and PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil, but those definitely aren’t the only options when formulating a cleansing oil! If you can get Cromollient SCE (Di-PPG-2 Myreth-10 Adipate), that’s really quite lovely. Other options I’ve seen in commercial products and sample formulations include PEG-20 Glyceryl Triisostearate, PEG-40 Sorbitan Peroleate, polyglyceryl-4 oleate (and many other polyglyeryl emulsifiers like Polyglyceryl-10 Dioleate, Polyglyceryl-6 Dicaprate, and Polyglyceryl-2 Oleate), PEG-8 Isostearate, PEG-12 Diisostearate, sorbeth-30 tetraoleate, and many more. If you’re looking at an ingredient list and you aren’t sure which ingredient is the emuslfier, start by researching the ingredients that have numbers in their names. You’ll likely have access to a few different options—what those options are will vary with where you live and where you shop.
You can’t use a water-containing surfactant in a cleansing oil formulation, which means surfactants like Coco Glucoside, Sodium (C14-16) alpha olefin sulfonate (Bio-Terge AS40), or Cocamidopropyl Betaine won’t work. I also don’t recommend using a solid surfactant like Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate (SCI) or Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate (SLSa)—they won’t dissolve in the oily base and they’ll just settle out of the formulation.
Polysorbate 80 and PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil are both oil-in-water emulsifiers, but not all emulsifiers used in cleansing oils are. I recently shared a formulation that used polyglyceryl-4 oleate, which is a water-in-oil emulsifier, as the rinse-off emulsifier. The feel of the finished cleanser is heavily influenced by the type of emulsifier used; I find oil-in-water emulsifiers create that oil-to-milk effect far more noticeably and rinse off more cleanly than water-in-oil emulsifiers. Meanwhile, water-in-oil emulsifier-powered cleansing oils leave the skin feeling softer and more conditioned. Those are pretty broad generalizations, though—if you make both the polysorbate 80 and the PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil versions presented here you’ll notice they are different from one another even though they’re both oil-in-water emulsifiers.
How much should you use? This varies with the emulsifier and with how strong you want your cleanser to be. I recommend looking for sample formulations for oil cleansers that use the emulsifier you’re formulating with, see what they use, and start there. If that’s too strong, use less. If it’s not cleansing enough, use more. If you can’t find any sample formulations, look at the recommended usage rate from your supplier, and start with around 5% (assuming that’s within the recommended usage rate).
Ingredients Overview: Optional ingredients
Antioxidant
It’s a good idea to include a small percentage (~0.5%) of an antioxidant to extend the shelf life of your oils, though if I’m making a small batch (100g [3.5oz] or less) that is primarily comprised of really shelf-stable oils/esters (like fractionated coconut oil, isopropyl myristate, or C12-15 alkyl benzoate) I’ll sometimes skip the antioxidant as I know I’ll finish the cleansing oil ages before it could oxidize.
Essential oils + Fragrance oils
A small amount (1% or less) of an essential oil and/or fragrance oil will add some scent to your product. I usually skip any sort of fragrance if I’m planning on using the cleansing oil to remove eye makeup. Whatever you use, make sure it’s safe to use on the face at whatever percentage you’re planning on using it at.
Oil-soluble extracts and other oil-soluble goodies
I’d keep usage rates low with ingredients like this; you can definitely include them, but they won’t have much of an opportunity to work on the skin in the mere moments they’re on your face before getting rinsed down the drain. I prefer to save these ingredients for leave-on formulations.
Does an oil cleanser need a preservative?
Because oil cleansers don’t contain water, they don’t need a broad-spectrum preservative. That said, it is important not to contaminate your oil cleanser with water during use, so make sure you choose a package/bottle that makes it easy to keep your product nice and dry.
Which version should I make?
Make whichever one you can get the ingredients for! If you can get the ingredients for both I highly recommend making both and comparing them to see what you think. I think I prefer the PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil version 😊
Packaging
You’ll want to package a cleansing oil in some sort of bottle with a cap that will reduce the flow of the liquid cleansing oil so you don’t end up with a huge sloshy palmful of product—after that, the only limit is your imagination! I’ve used bottles with disc caps, turret caps, flip-top caps, and cone caps. You could also just put an orifice reducer in the bottle and use a plain ol’ screw-on cap. Hylamide sells their cleansing oil in a bottle with a cap I associate with white glue, which is neat. If you want a pump top I’d recommend a treatment pump as they handle lower viscosity liquids better than a standard pump; you can also get airless pump bottles with treatment pump caps.
Whatever you choose, make sure the oil won’t easily spill when the bottle is opened, and make sure it would be next to impossible to get water into the bottle as you use the cleansing oil.
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Relevant links & further reading
- Polysorbate 80 in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
- PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
- Fractionated coconut oil in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
- Isopropyl Myristate in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
- C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
- Safflower Oil in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
- Preservatives + Shelf Life in the Humblebee & Me FAQ
- What grade (or type) of carrier oils do we use when formulating? in the Humblebee & Me FAQ
- How much essential oil can I add to this recipe? in the Humblebee & Me FAQ
- How can I incorporate X ingredient into a formulation?
- A Guide to Carrier Oil Substitutions
- More cleansing oil formulations:
- Cleansing balm formulations:
- Other Super Simple formulations:
Super Simple Oil-to-Milk Cleanser
Polysorbate 80 version
45g | 90% fractionated coconut oil
5g | 10% Polysorbate 80 (USA / Canada)PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil version
48.5g | 97% fractionated coconut oil
1.5g | 3% PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil (USA / Canada)Weigh all the ingredients into a small beaker, or directly into the bottle you’ll be storing the serum in.
For the PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil version: Prepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer over low to medium-low heat in a wide, flat-bottomed sauté pan. Place the beaker or bottle into the water bath until the PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil has melted, and then remove it from the heat.
If you used beaker, stir to combine. If you went straight for the bottle, cap and shake.
That’s it! I packaged mine in a 50mL (1.69fl oz) airless pump bottle from YellowBee (gifted).
To use, massage a dime-sized amount of the cleanser into dry skin and remove with a damp microfibre cloth.
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this cleansing oil is 100% oil-based, it does not require a broad-spectrum preservative (broad spectrum preservatives ward off microbial growth, and microbes require water to live—no water, no microbes!). Kept reasonably cool and dry, it should last at least a year before any of the oils go rancid. If you notice it starts to smell like old nuts or crayons, that’s a sign that the oils have begun to oxidize; chuck it out and make a fresh batch if that happens.
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 formulation 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 50g.
- To learn more about the ingredients used in this formulation, 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.
- You can substitute another lightweight oil like sweet almond, grapeseed, or sunflower seed. You could also use a lightweight ester like C12-15 alkyl benzoate or isopropyl myristate (IPM) instead of 20–30% of the fractionated coconut oil.
- If you’d like your cleanser to be stronger, simply increase the % of the emulsifier and decrease the % of fractionated coconut oil to keep the formulation balanced.
- If you would like your cleanser to be milder, simply do the opposite—use less emulsifier and more oil.
- If you’d like to incorporate an essential oil, please read this.
Gifting Disclosure
The 50mL (1.69fl oz) airless pump bottle was gifted by YellowBee.
Hi Marie, I was wondering if I can substitute the base oil with mineral oil (I have fungal acne so didn’t want to use any oil that’ll trigger it) and use 10% emulsifying wax NF as the emulsifier instead? I have also read on reddit that polysorbate 80 does not mix with mineral oil alone and settles to the bottom and this irritated a lot of people’s eyes.
Also will adding Cetyl Alcohol turn this into a cleansing balm texture?
For all of this I recommend trying it and seeing what happens! FYI, though, fractionated coconut oil/MCT is fungal acne safe 🙂
I’ve made cleanser from mineral oil, emulsifying wax NF, and cetyl alcohol. Yes, it makes a great cleansing balm, and the addition of the cetyl alcohol seems to stabilise the mixture. Before that addition, it seemed to separate slowly and need shaking with every use.
Thanks for sharing!
Can it be done making it with avocado oil and polysorbate 80?
Hi Marie, awesome formulation! Been having peg 40 sitting around looking pretty! Would this be too thick for a spray pump? I am thinking it would come out shooting instead of spray like. What do you think?
Hmm… maybe? I was actually just thinking about trying it myself and if it doesn’t work, creating something that does! Great minds and all that 😉
Hey Marie! I love reading your blog and watching your YouTube videos. It is really relaxing.
Anyway, I wanted to share that Polysorbate 80 didn’t worked out for me because it doesn’t mix with all oils. For example I tried safflower, sunflower, olive oil, mineral oil but it always separates. And fractioned coconut oil where I live is pretty expensive so didn’t tried it.
Hi Marie.
First time I’ve tried an Oil to Milk cleanser and I loved it! I used FCO, Castor Oil, Polysorbate 80 and Isopropyl Myristate and its perfect. Thank you so much, as always. I’m looking forward to trying some similar formulations.
I’m thrilled to hear it! ❤️ Welcome to the wonderful (and rather addicting!) world of formulating your own oil cleansers 😀
Hi Bernie,
I am interested to know how much Isopropyl Myristate did you use? many thanks
Hi Seli! I find this quite surprising; I tried it with safflower oil after you left your comment just to be sure and it’s totally fine and homogenous. Are you confident your Polysorbate 80 is Polysorbate 80?
i real want to start making cosmetics but it’s been hard to find trustworthy places where I could buy the ingredients needed in my country (Brazil). customs also doesn’t really let us import chemicals either so I don’t really know what to do. any tips that could help? thank you so much, Marie!
I love this!! Can’t wait to make it!!
Hi Marie
Could I use polysorbate 20 instead of 80?
Thank you
Hi
Would you recommend adding vitamin e for a preservative in the oil cleanser.
Thank you
Lisa
Please read the paragraph under the header “Antioxidant” in the above post 🙂 (Vitamin E is an antioxidant).
Thanks for sharing this – so interesting post! I’ve found that this polyglyceryl-4 oleate works much better for me without any ester oils. I suppose it has something to do with the polarity of oils. For me plant based oils like sunflower, olive or castor oil boost the rinse off (and that oil-to-milk action) a lot. I often add a bit of MCT oil to make the oil cleanser more slippy, more stable and less drying (it still seems to affect on rinse off). Seems like the emulsifiers with high HLB (the one you mentioned above) are sometimes more flexible here. But what works for me, might obviously not work for other people. xx
Hi
I tried this formulation loved it, it gave me the best cleansing feel and removed makeup too but the polysorbate 80 kind of separated after a day.
Any ideas why this happened?
From what I was reading it was because apparently polysorbate 80 is more easily to be dissolved in high polar oils or something like that. It happened to me too when I used it with olive pomace oil. That’s why I’m wondering if it’d better with peg-40 hidrogened castor oil as emulsifier.
Hi Marie, i hope you’re well. I’m basing these questions on a few products/recipes i’ve found for oil to milk cleansers.
both contain water? above you mentions not to include that, are they then different formulas? i’ve never made a water based products- do you have an appropriate guide for something like this.
they both also contain both Cetearyl Olivate and Sorbitan Olivate. are these more ‘natural’ alternatives to emulsifiers? are two needed?
Thanks so much for this, Marie! I’m totally addicted to your blog and I’m excited to try this. Question, do you need to use a foaming type cleanser after this? Especially if acne-prone? Does it leave an oily residue, like most oil cleansing does, or does the emulsifier make it wash off cleanly? That would be amazing to have such a simple cleanser that could remove makeup without requiring an additional step. Thanks so much! I’m a new fan of yours. Most of my Christmas gifting this year has been based on your recipes… before this December I’d never even made a lip balm, and now I’m making all kinds of lovely things! And all your recipes have turned out perfectly!
Hi Robin! This is really a big “it depends”—what do YOU like? What works for you and your skin? It definitely has the possibility of being a one-step cleanser, but personal preference plays a bit role here 🙂 The emulsifier will let it wash off cleanly, and if you want an even cleaser rinse, simply use more emulsifier and less oil.
Thanks for DIYing with me (I’m thrilled to hear you’ve been making up a storm!!), and happy making 🙂
I wonder if I use peg-40 hidrogened castor oil and olive pomace oil, would it separated, like when I used polysorbate 80? I have a bit olive pomace oil, so I prefer to use it before buying fractionated coconut oil.
Hi Marie~
I did end up finding the solution from checking your cleansing balm, so i tried to make it as simple cleansing balm, apparently adding cetearyl alcohol & cetyl alcohol (as those the only thickening I had on hand) stabilize it.
Thank you ❣️ for the very informative encyclopedia.
I just made this but with a 1% EO taken out of the carrier oil but with the idea of using that to make it soluble in the bath. It seems to be working really nicely, scenting the bath without any bubbles! Just using one pump from a dispenser in the bath. Not sure what you think of this idea?
Hi Marie!
My PEG-40 is liquid so does it need to be melted in a water bath? I was wondering if I could just mix it with the FCO?
Thanks,
April
You definitely can! 🙂
Okay. So I had a brilliant idea some days ago for a alternative usage for my DIY oil cleanser (I use one with PEG-40). Well, one second I think “I’m brilliant” and give myself mental high-fives, but then I do a forehead slap and go “Duh! Of course!” …
I was doing some clean-up after having made a test batch of your transfer resistant foundation and some ointment, and was thinking of more efficient ways to get the remaining products off the beakers and equipment. Then I thought “How would I wash it off my skin?”. Well, with the double cleansing method of course. So, I put some oil cleanser on a paper towel and rubbed it on the equipment, and it worked REALLY well! It got off the remaining “stuff” very fast and efficiently.
I’m going to use this method henceforth after making very water-resistant things, like lip gloss.
Thank you Marie for a very informative and inspiring web site and youtube channel! ❣️
I have used oil cleansers in the past and was planning to start making my own. My question is whether regular coconut oil would work or if it needs to be the liquid form only. I have several different butters and oils in my supplies so I do not want to add another one unless necessary. Obviously everything would need to be melted first so that it can combine, and of course clean dry hands would be used to use the cleanser… But it will probably solidify a bit afterwards – is this an issue?
Hi Marie.
Thank you again for sharing your knowledge. I recently commented on your youtube video of this formulation and have ordered polysorbat 80 from my norwegian supplier to try out this recipe. I however have a question (that my supplier can not answer) and was hoping maybe you have some information or tips to share for me. I usually tro to avoid ingredients that are not natural or from natural sources to minimize skin irritation and potential allergic reactions. However some products are difficult to make with only waters, vegetable oils, bees wax, herbs and essential oils. I have tried to avoid polysorbat 80 as some people in norway reacted with allergy when they had the astra zeneca vaccine against covid, and they think it is because it contains polysorbat 80. I have tried to ask my supplier about the source of this product. In the product information sheet he shared, with the case number of the product it is only written that the product is not made form animal og vegetal origins. I then wonder if it is 100% syntetic formulation. I can not find any research about this and allergy in cosmetics. But before I start experimenting too much with it, I was wondering if you have the time to share the origin of this product / from what it is made, and why this is a lovable and safe option to use in ones oil to milk cleansing product?
Sending warm winter regards from Norway.
Viviann Alexandra Knutsen. (And my website is still “under production”, so you´ll only find me on instagram.)