Easy Soap Recipes for Beginners (2024)

Three easy soap recipes that are simple to make and use all-natural ingredients. Includes cold process recipes for floral soap, herbal soap, and simple 3-oil soap, plus printable instructions. This is part three of the Natural Soap Making for Beginners Series.

In the first two parts of this series, you’ve learned about common soap making ingredients and equipment. Now it’s time to get to the fun part of making handmade soap! This piece shares three simple soap recipes that introduce you to working with herbs and flowers and an easy one that you make with just three main soaping oils. These are simple recipes to start you off making handmade soap! They’re each easy-to-make yet gorgeous recipes that make approximately six bars of soap.

Each easy soap recipe is printable, making it easier for you to refer to as you’re making it. You’ll also find printable recipes and a soapmaking checklist in the new Lovely Greens online soapmaking course. You can also use the instructions to make the free recipes below.

Small Batch Soap

Many of the soap recipes I share on Lovely Greens are for 1 lb (454 g) batches. These are GREAT for beginner soap makers because they’re small and relatively inexpensive to make. Many soap recipes are for larger batches, which can be expensive if you make a mistake. Making small, simple recipes that give you six bars at a time is more than enough. Even after over a decade of making soap, I still prefer small batches over large ones. They’re much more fun, less stressful, and a fantastic way to try out new ingredients and recipes.

As a beginner soapmaker, smaller batches give you the freedom to learn to make soap! Best of all, making one-pound batches is great for trying lots of recipes rather than just one big one. If you like any of my recipes and want to make larger batches, know that they can be doubled and tripled. A toggle in each soap recipe automatically calculates the ingredients for you if you’d like to do that. If you find a larger-size soap recipe that you want to try, you can use soap calculators to scale it down to a small batch.

Cold Process vs. Melt & Pour Soap

Before we go any further, I’d like to clarify that the easy soap recipes below are cold process recipes. It’s the most common way to make your own soap using ingredients such as lye, coconut oil, and olive oil. With cold process, you mix the ingredients together in a specific way, and they transform into soap through the saponification process. This is in contrast to melt and pour soap, a type of soap base you chop into cubes and melt in the microwave. Then, add a few extras, such as fragrance oils and dye, and pour the melted soap base into molds.

It’s as easy as pie, but melt-and-pour soap is not from scratch soapmaking. Making cold process soap is like making a loaf of bread using flour, yeast, and a few other ingredients. Making melt-and-pour soap is like buying the dough ready-made and simply putting it in the oven to bake. It’s a bit of a cheat and is usually filled with all kinds of additives, but can be fun to make! I have a few melt-and-pour soap recipes if you’d like to try them out.

Begin With Easy Soap Recipes

When starting out making handmade soap, you may feel that you need to use your own recipes. The issue with that is that beginners are generally unaware of why certain oils are chosen for soap recipes, and in what ratio. That’s why I believe that beginners should always use tried and tested recipes at first. Including the three further on below.

Just like a beginner baker will use existing cake recipes, so too should beginner soapmakers use already formulated recipes. If you don’t, the chances of your soap being too soft, too cleansing, or having poor lather will be high. There are other things that can go wrong, too, including creating soap that’s unsafe to use on your skin. If you’re curious to know what it takes to create a soap recipe, you can read about it in this piece on Changing a Soap Recipe.

Three Soap Recipes for Beginners

I’ve shared a few easy recipes for you to begin with below, including a floral soap, herbal soap, and one that’s unscented and uncolored. Make all three of the below recipes at around 100°F (38°C), and there’s no need to gel the soap. Gelling soap is an optional step that adds a deeper color.

You’ll find more easy soap recipes on this website, most of them being for small 1-lib batches. I’d also like to recommend the goat’s milk soap, honey soap, and peppermint soap recipes. Each demonstrates how to use a unique type of soap additive that improves lather, adds conditioning, and shows how to use herbs from the garden.

Natural Soap Making for Beginners Course

Before going into the recipes, please use the instructions provided as a general guide. Read the next part of this series for much more detail on the steps. If you’d like more guidance, I’d like to invite you to enroll in my Natural Soapmaking for Beginners Online Course. It’s made up of sixteen instructional videos, including step-by-step recipes. You also get printables and are shown exactly how to prepare, measure, and make handmade soap at home.

The Natural Soapmaking for Beginners Series

1. Soap Making Introduction
2. Natural Soap Ingredients
4. Easy Soap Recipes
5. How to Make Cold Process Soap

Simple Flower Soap Recipe

I give soap-making lessons in person, and most people end up making a variation of this recipe. It’s palm oil-free, colored with clay, and uses oils that will create a good hard bar with plenty of bubbles and moisture. You can also customize the recipe to include the floral essential oil(s) of your choice! The 14g of essential oil is based on essential oils that have a 3% usage rate in soap. If you’d like to use a different essential oil with this recipe, then please check it against these essential oils for soap making chart.

Simple Herbal Soap Recipe

If you grow your own herbs, this herbal soap could be the recipe for you! It builds on the base recipe used in the floral soap, but the soap additives are different. In it, you use a fresh infusion of peppermint that leaves speckles throughout the bars. You also scent it with a blend of rosemary, peppermint, and lavender essential oils.

Simple 3-Oil Soap Recipe

This easy soap recipe is for those of you who want an easy, sensitive, and inexpensive soap recipe. There are only three main oils and no added colors or scents. That means this recipe makes soap bars that are gentle on your skin and can be used by the entire family. It’s especially good for those with skin issues or delicate skin, like babies.

Although the other two recipes don’t include palm oil, I’ve introduced it for this one for three reasons. First of all, it creates a good hard bar with plenty of lather. Secondly, even the most expensive palm is less expensive than most other oils. The last reason is that I strongly feel that all of us should support the Sustainable Palm oil industry. If you’re still unsure about using palm oil, I have a simple eco-friendly soap recipe and more palm-oil-free soap recipes to use.