Testing Natural Colorants
There are so many ways to add vibrant color to your cold process soap. While we love using micas and pigments in our projects and recipes, there are many benefits to using natural colorants and clays in your soap. We experimented with ten of the most popular natural colorants and filmed the process for you on our YouTube channel. You can also find a summary of our findings right here in this article!
What are Natural Colorants?
Natural colorants are herbs, botanicals and powders that are derived from nature, as the name suggests. Natural colorants can add beautiful hues to your products, and some also have added skin benefits. For example, clays are great for oil absorption and turmeric has anti-inflammatory properties. While they may not produce quite the level of vibrancy that you’d expect from a mica, you can still achieve beautiful designs with natural colorants.
We’re going to walk through ten popular colorants, how to disperse colorants in oil, usage rates and tips for making those colors really pop!
It’s important to disperse your natural colorant in oil before adding it to your soap batter. This helps prevent clumps and allows for an even, smooth color. To do this, mix 1 teaspoon of the colorant with 1 tablespoon of a lightweight oil like sweet almond or avocado oil. Add 1 dispersed teaspoon at a time at trace until you get a color you like. Normally, we would recommend about 1 dispersed teaspoon per pound of soap. For the purposes of this colorant demonstration, our test bars shown above are much more concentrated (2-3 teaspoons of dispersed colorant per 8 ounce of soap batter) We've listed all of our usage rates below.
Rose Clay
Rose Clay is a type of kaolin clay. It has a fine texture and it's suitable for dry and sensitive skin, as it provides gentle exfoliation. The clay is a light to medium pink shade, which comes from a naturally-occurring iron oxide. It can take on a deep pink, red or terracotta hue. This is a fabulous colorant to try if you’ve never worked with natural colorants and clays before, it also works wonderfully in melt and pour, face masks, and more. *Usage rate: entire dillution
Sea Clay
Sea clay originates from mud laid under the sea millions of years ago. It has a green, grayish color. It's commonly used in face masks and soap to cleanse the skin. Sea clay works well for normal to oily skin types, making it great for skin cleansing bars and face masks. The color payoff isn’t the most vibrant, it produces a greenish-gray hue. However, we still love this clay for its skin-loving properties! *Usage rate: entire dillution
Madder Root
Madder root has been used for centuries as a dye for textiles and cosmetic products. In soap, madder root powder produces colors ranging from light pink, deep red and mauve with speckles. Forcing gel phase is extremely important with all natural colorants in order to get a vibrant color, especially madder root. Learn more about gel phase.*Usage rate: 2 tsp
Alkanet Root Powder
Alkanet Powder creates a beautiful deep gray/purple shade that would be great for a dark, moody bar of soap or when working with a dark discoloring fragrance oil. *Usage rate: 2 tsp
Orange Peel Powder
Orange Peel Powder adds a nice subtle golden hue to soap while also providing light exfoliation and brightening to the skin. We love pairing Orange Peel Powder and Orange 10x Essential Oil, they work together beautifully. *Usage rate: entire dillution
Turmeric Powder
Turmeric is such a versatile ingredient! Not only does it add a beautiful golden orange hue to soap, it’s also antibacterial which can help prevent the growth of acne-causing bacteria. It works wonderfully in cold process soap, melt and pour, cleansing balms, and more. It can be tempting to add more turmeric to your soap to get a more vibrant orange color, but keep in mind that adding more turmeric will only turn your soap more brown. *Usage rate: entire dillution
Spinach Powder
We all know adding spinach to your diet is good for you, but did you know it also has skin benefits? Spinach Powder is made from ground, dehydrated spinach and creates a lovely light green shade. Spinach Powder is packed with vitamins like Vitamin A, C, E, K, B2, and B6. It produces a beautiful earthy, sage green color in cold process soap. *Usage rate: entire dillution
Activated Charcoal
If you’re looking for a dark black color, Activated Charcoal is the colorant for you. Charcoal is known for its oil absorption properties, which makes it awesome for oily and combination skin types. We love charcoal in cold process, melt and pour, face masks, and more. *Usage rate: 2 tsp
Natural Indigo Powder
Indigo Powder is one of the oldest dyes known to humankind, and it happens to be the only truly natural blue dye. We love Indigo Powder for a beautiful deep, dark blue shade. Again, it’s really important to force gel phase with this colorant, as it makes a huge difference for the final result. *Usage rate: 2 tsp
Annatto Seed
This colorant is a little different from the rest as it’s a seed instead of a powder or clay. The seeds produce a yellow-orange hue when they’re infused in oil. We infused our seeds in avocado oil for about a month which is an ideal amount of time to let the rich color develop. We added 1 tablespoon of infused oil to our soap batter to achieve our desired color, however other soapmakers prefer to use all of their infusion as part of their blend of oils. *Usage rate: 1 tbsp of infused oil
Natural colorants are a beautiful way to add color and skin-loving properties to your cold process soap. While they may require a bit more experimentation, the results are well worth the effort. There’s something deeply satisfying about working with ingredients straight from nature!
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