Lighter colour soft oils?

[DMack]

I’m starting to play with colour and pattern but I’m struggling to get white soap. A fairly common problem which I can go some way to fixing by changing my recipe. I currently use
SOA 29%
CO 5%
castor oil 1%
palm oil 30%
Shea butter 10%

which are all fairly light but then it all goes yellow in a big way with RBO

anyone use RBO and manage lighter colour soap so blue mica stays blue? Not turn Green. i put a tsp of TD in my latest batch but I’m wary of adding more as I also use a tsp of white kaolin clay

or what other soaps could sub for RBO? i use at 25%

my overall recipe is lovely, lasts quite a while and has a great lather but perhaps I need to change it about or simplify it

thanks

Deb

 

[Zing]

I’m starting to play with colour and pattern but I’m struggling to get white soap. A fairly common problem which I can go some way to fixing by changing my recipe. I currently use
SOA 29%
CO 5%
castor oil 1%
palm oil 30%
Shea butter 10%

which are all fairly light but then it all goes yellow in a big way with RBO

anyone use RBO and manage lighter colour soap so blue mica stays blue? Not turn Green. i put a tsp of TD in my latest batch but I’m wary of adding more as I also use a tsp of white kaolin clay

or what other soaps could sub for RBO? i use at 25%

my overall recipe is lovely, lasts quite a while and has a great lather but perhaps I need to change it about or simplify it

thanks

Deb

Deb,
I'm not sure what SOA is. My base recipe uses RBO around 25% (and palm, coconut, shea butter, castor oil, avocado oil). I use white a lot in my soaps using TD. I disperse 1-2 tsps in 1-2 Tbsp oil. Depends on the volume but I'll dump in 1-2 tsps of dispersed TD per pound of oils. All the other colorants I use come out like the photos the vendors use on their websites.

If you want to see my soap colored white and uncolored, see Spring Clean and Rosemary & Lemongrass .

Also, if I may even tho' you didn't ask for recipe feedback , I don't think using any oil at 1% is worth the effort. I use castor at 5%. For other oils, I use a minimum of 10%.

Good luck!

 

[DMack]

Deb,
I'm not sure what SOA is. My base recipe uses RBO around 25% (and palm, coconut, shea butter, castor oil, avocado oil). I use white a lot in my soaps using TD. I disperse 1-2 tsps in 1-2 Tbsp oil. Depends on the volume but I'll dump in 1-2 tsps of dispersed TD per pound of oils. All the other colorants I use come out like the photos the vendors use on their websites.

If you want to see my soap colored white and uncolored, see Spring Clean and Rosemary & Lemongrass .

Also, if I may even tho' you didn't ask for recipe feedback , I don't think using any oil at 1% is worth the effort. I use castor at 5%. For other oils, I use a minimum of 10%.

Good luck!

Thank you. Always appreciate constructive feedback. I’ve not really been soaping that long so I’m always grateful to anyone with more experience who takes the time to write. I was considering simplifying my recipe so perhaps dropping the castor oil and increasing coconut oil by the same amount is a good place to start. I was also thinking of ditching the clay so could sub more TD in its place. Only using clay to stick the fragrance. Could you mix the FO with TD do you think? Then add the oil to disperse it?

Deb,
I'm not sure what SOA is. My base recipe uses RBO around 25% (and palm, coconut, shea butter, castor oil, avocado oil). I use white a lot in my soaps using TD. I disperse 1-2 tsps in 1-2 Tbsp oil. Depends on the volume but I'll dump in 1-2 tsps of dispersed TD per pound of oils. All the other colorants I use come out like the photos the vendors use on their websites.

If you want to see my soap colored white and uncolored, see Spring Clean and Rosemary & Lemongrass .

Also, if I may even tho' you didn't ask for recipe feedback , I don't think using any oil at 1% is worth the effort. I use castor at 5%. For other oils, I use a minimum of 10%.

Good luck!

Oh I see my mistake I got my letters muddled! SAO is what I meant

 

[Mobjack Bay]

High oleic sunflower is very light, but it’s not always easy to find in the grocery store and perhaps impossible right now. I gave up trying to get white soap with RBO. I don’t like to use a lot of TD because it causes some acceleration in my recipes. Are you using enough mica, and a type made for cold process soap? If I want to make light blue soap using a base recipe that tends yellow or beige, I use the high end of the recommended range.

 

[AliOop]

Are you able to get soy wax there at a reasonable price? It is very white and brings some nice things to the FA profile, too. You could try @KiwiMoose's Princess PolyOil recipe from this thread.

 

[KiwiMoose]

How white do you want it? I use RBO at 20% and OO at 20% both yellow oils ( I get the palest OO than I can though) and everything else is more on the white side - CO, Shea, Soy Wax, Castor, Avocado ( I use a very refined one from the supermarket which is surprisingly pale). Let me find some pics of blue/white soaps I've made. I do always add TD if i want it white:

You can see that it's more ivory than white, but to me it suffices.

 

[Zing]

Thank you. Always appreciate constructive feedback. I’ve not really been soaping that long so I’m always grateful to anyone with more experience who takes the time to write. I was considering simplifying my recipe so perhaps dropping the castor oil and increasing coconut oil by the same amount is a good place to start. I was also thinking of ditching the clay so could sub more TD in its place. Only using clay to stick the fragrance. Could you mix the FO with TD do you think? Then add the oil to disperse it?

Deb,
I'm a castor oil fan, here! It was a gamechanger when I added it to my basic recipe. It's in an oil class by itself and I like its effect on lather. I love coconut oil because of the bubbles and can tolerate in the high 20s -- many people find it too drying and stripping and stay in the teens. I recently dropped my CO to the low 20s and add sugar to my lye solution to boost bubbles (do a search here, there's many additives to boost bubbles).

I'm all for simplifying and wish I could go to 4 or 5 oils but I've finally found a base recipe that I like so am sticking with that.

I have no experience with clay so can't help you there. Also I use essential oils for scent and I don't have any experience with fragrance oils. Others here will weigh in, I'm sure.

( @KiwiMoose 's stuff is stunning. Hard to believe it -- but she used to be a beginner too!)

 

[DMack]

High oleic sunflower is very light, but it’s not always easy to find in the grocery store and perhaps impossible right now. I gave up trying to get white soap with RBO. I don’t like to use a lot of TD because it causes some acceleration in my recipes. Are you using enough mica, and a type made for cold process soap? If I want to make light blue soap using a base recipe that tends yellow or beige, I use the high end of the recommended range.

Are you able to get soy wax there at a reasonable price? It is very white and brings some nice things to the FA profile, too. You could try @KiwiMoose's Princess PolyOil recipe from this thread.

Yes we can. My OH has loads for making candles as well

How white do you want it? I use RBO at 20% and OO at 20% both yellow oils ( I get the palest OO than I can though) and everything else is more on the white side - CO, Shea, Soy Wax, Castor, Avocado ( I use a very refined one from the supermarket which is surprisingly pale). Let me find some pics of blue/white soaps I've made. I do always add TD if i want it white:
View attachment 67532View attachment 67533View attachment 67534View attachment 67535View attachment 67536
You can see that it's more ivory than white, but to me it suffices.

They are gorgeous. I have soap envy
I don’t expect nor am I aiming for pure white esp if I don’t change my oils. The lightest I got was a creamy yellow so I’d like lighter than that or maybe I should say less yellow toned. I can increase the amount of mica I use as I’m only just starting on colour so I’m a bit wary still

The first I wanted blue and white as it’s bluebell fragrance but I got pale yellow and aqua
The second worked well but they are deeper colours for lavender and mint

 

[Kimimarie84]

As far as fatty acids go, castor oil is the only oil that contains ricinoleic acid (and at about 90%). It’s an oil in a class all by itself, and I love it in soap. Castor oil is hydroscopic, which means it draws in moisture. It stabilizes lather, and it helps other oils high in myristic and lauric acids create more and bigger bubbles. It also adds to the creaminess of the soap lather. If I were going to do anything with the castor oil in your recipe, I’d increase it. I wouldn’t go above 10%, but I’d certainly go up.

Coconut oil and lard help make a white bar.

I never get white bars because I use goat milk in all my soap.

If you’re wanting a harder bar, you could look at adding more types of fat/oil that are solid at room temperature. These tend to be the saturated fats, which do lend themselves to harder bars of soap because their molecular structures fit more tightly together.

Lately I’ve been diving a lot deeper into understanding the chemistry of soap making, so if I’ve gotten anything wrong here, someone please correct me. I’m always wanting to learn more about soap making!

 

[Obsidian]

I use HO sunflower or safflower in my soap and its very white.
I've nit used almond or rice bran so I can't say how they compare

 

[Kimimarie84]

If it helps, when I soap, even before I put the goat milk in, my melted oils look pretty yellow. I have a few different recipes, and I use mixes of castor, coconut, mango butter, kokum butter, cocoa butter, sweet almond, olive, beeswax, palm, lard, and chicken eggs, and I’m realizing now that most of those don’t make white soap, so I think I was destined to have cream colored soaps no matter what.
But I do want to try my hand at a 100% CO with 20% SF at some point. For that, I may soap without goat milk just to see pretty white soap for once.

 

[KiwiMoose]

The first I wanted blue and white as it’s bluebell fragrance but I got pale yellow and aqua
The second worked well but they are deeper colours for lavender and mint

Please don't have envy of my soap! I envy everybody else soaps because they always look far superior to mine. I think we all just like to see what other soaps people have made, and they always somehow look better than our own.
Incidentally - when I switched to neon colours my whole colour-world changed. I used much less and get a good strong colour that doesn't get as affected by the oil colours.
Make sure OH's soy wax doesn't have naughty additives that shouldn't be in soap.

 

[DMack]

Please don't have envy of my soap! I envy everybody else soaps because they always look far superior to mine. I think we all just like to see what other soaps people have made, and they always somehow look better than our own.
Incidentally - when I switched to neon colours my whole colour-world changed. I used much less and get a good strong colour that doesn't get as affected by the oil colours.
Make sure OH's soy wax doesn't have naughty additives that shouldn't be in soap.

Thanks for the tip

 

[Sandiebrown65]

We made this soap in April. We used 40% OO, 20% PO, 20% CO, 10% Coco Butter, 5% Castor Oil and 5% Sweet Almond Oil. We used Honey Myrtle, a stunning but rare-ish EO, 1 tspn ppo of kaolin clay and the same for TD. Also added 1 tspn (total) of icing sugar.
I know it looks a bit creamy against the white background but it is a beautiful white soap.
I have started using it and I am very happy with the creamy lather I get and the EO is just the most delicately beautiful scent.

 

[earlene]

I have found that soap with RBO tends to be more tan than white, and always mutes the colors to a more tan shade than one may expect from the dry mica. Pre-mixing the mica in some of the RBO held back from the formula gives a truer indication of the shade that it will produce in the finished soap.

I find that premixing TD into the soap batter and then later adding a mica color, only lightens the shade of the mica, making it more pastel than I desire. But that's me, you may be fine with a pastel shade of blue and there is nothing wrong with that. But for me, RBO turns TD tan & not white unless I want a lot of glycerine rivers in my soap (looks like crackles in soap.)

If you are getting a more yellow shade when you add your blue, but like your soap formula for the feel of the soap, what you can do is some color testing. It can be a bit of a complex process, but can give you a way of sticking with a formula you like and help you identify the mix of micas to get the shade you desire.

If not married to the formula with RBO, perhaps try subbing Soy Wax (I use GW415 - a partially hydrogenated soybean oil) to give hardness and whiteness.