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So you'd like a recipe for making neem soap? No problem.
Learn soap making with neem oil: neem soap recipes for beginners and for the more experienced...
Would you like to do it the easy way, or do you want to make your neem oil soaps from scratch?
If you've made soap before you will be interested in the recipes below. But if you've never done any soap making scroll or jump down to the short cut version: how to make neem soap the easy way.
Making Neem Soap From Scratch
Proper soap making is quite a task and requires some good equipment. You need to handle some fairly dangerous ingredients (lye!), and you have to get the amounts just right. If you know what you are doing then go ahead and try the two neem soap recipes below.
If you are making neem soap from scratch for the first time, then use the detailed instructions here: Neem Oil Soap Recipes.
Neem soap recipe #1
This is a recipe for a mild neem soap that can be used daily. It is good for young people with oily skin, doesn't stress dry skin, it should clean up mild acne, prevent skin infections, soothe irritations, lighten moles and scars, and do all the other wonderful things that neem soap does.
- 176 grams olive oil
- 176 grams sunflower oil
- 50 grams coconut oil
- 40 grams palm oil
- 18 grams castor oil
- 40 grams neem oil
- 66 grams caustic soda
- 200 grams water
- 15 grams essential oil
Which fragrance or essential oil you use is your choice, but you want to make sure you mask the smell of the neem oil.
Neem soap recipe #2
This neem soap recipe is actually a recipe for a neem shampoo, but a solid one. A neem shampoo bar, so to say. You can use it daily. It is mild and good for all hair types. It leaves your hair shiny and strong, and if you have kids you'll be glad to know that it should also prevent head lice infestation.
- 125 grams coconut oil
- 125 grams olive oil
- 90 grams palm oil
- 35 grams almond oil
- 35 grams neem oil
- 90 grams castor oil
- an additional 3 tbsp castor oil to add at trace stage (the extra castor oil creates a really frothy lather, great for a shampoo)
- 71 grams caustic soda
- 200 grams water (infused with nettle, rosemary, fennel and melissa)
- 1 tsp each of rosemary, lavender, tea tree, and lemon essential oils
Obviously there is room for variations here. You may have your own preferences regarding ingredients and hardness, herbs and essential oils to add, according to your particular hair type or skin problem. But the amounts above are tried and tested and make a good neem soap bar.
Easy Neem Soap Recipe
There is an easier way to make neem soap. It's called melt and pour soap. The problem with this neem soap recipe is that you can only add small amounts of neem oil to your soap, about 5%. (Maybe 10%, at the very most, but that will result in a very oily neem soap bar.)
You still get a great neem soap for everyday use that will benefit your skin or hair a lot. What you can't do is produce maximum strength neem soap to treat parasite infections or other serious skin problems. Maximum strength neem soap has a neem oil content of at least 20%.
Then again, in my personal experience neem oil is so potent that you don't really need extra strength. Plus, there is another way to increase the medicinal value of your neem soap...
But first the basic neem soap recipe:
Ingredients:
Clear glycerin soap can be bought in large blocks. Craft shops sell it as "Melt and Pour Soap Base". You can cut it into chunks and melt it down.
When you buy your soap base make sure you get a good quality soap. The neem soap you're making will only be as good as the base you use. Make sure you get a very mild soap, with a good smell, made from real saponified natural oils, not with chemicals.
The only other necessary ingredient is neem oil.
Method:
- Cut off whatever amount of soap you want to use.
- Weigh it, and then weigh out 5% neem oil. (If you have a 500 gram chunk of soap you add 25 grams of neem oil.)
- Melt the soap in a bowl in the microwave or a double boiler.
If using microwave stir frequently and make sure it doesn't overheat or boil. - Stir in neem oil.
- You can also stir in colors, fragrances or essential oils.
- Pour into molds.
Simple, huh? Your soap is ready to use as soon as it is set. 20 minutes to an hour in the freezer should do.
And now to the additional ingredient I mentioned. A lady who makes soap to sell at a farmers market wrote that she once added dried neem leaf to her cucumber extract soap. The idea was to give the soap a nice green color. Of course the soap turned a hideous brown...
Undaunted she printed out some neem information, and sold the soap as neem soap. And wouldn't you know it, two weeks later a half hysterical lady approached her stall, raving about how the neem soap had performed a miracle and cleared up the eczema on her hands! She walked away with a whole box of the brown soap.
After that a lady from a neighboring stall got interested. The cortisone shots had done nothing for her eczema. So she tried a bar of the brown soap and sure enough, it helped her, too.
Anyway, both neem leaf and neem bark have healing properties as well. They contain the same ingredients as neem oil, just in different concentrations. Especially the neem leaf is valued in India, where neem originates. It's the neem leaf that is often used to treat skin disorders, wounds, sprains, even parasite infections like scabies.
So, if you don't mind the brown color, why not add some neem leaf or bark powder to your melt and pour neem soap?
Detailed Neem Oil Soap Recipes
More About Neem Oil
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