How to Formulate Natural Skincare Products at Home

Learning how to formulate natural skincare products may seem intimidating, but in reality, it is not. Formulating natural skincare products is easy when you have the right method.

The first step in creating a natural skincare product is making a recipe. Once you have the recipe written, you will need to formulate your natural skincare product.

Formulating natural skincare products is when you are creating a mathematical equation. This equation is what you need to make your skincare products. There are just a few basic steps you will need to go through. We will be using lotion as an example to help you better understand skincare formulation.

The Phases in Your Skincare Formulation

In each natural DIY skincare product are three phases. First, you have the water phase. All water-soluble ingredients will go in this phase. Examples of water-soluble ingredients are hydrosols, aloe vera, and distilled water. 

Next, you have the oil phase. This will be all of the oil ingredients you put into your skincare product. In this phase, you will add your carrier oil, butter, emulsifying wax, and other oils that you will be adding to the skincare product.

Before you start your third phase, it is important to note that you heat your water and oil phase on low. It takes about 20 minutes for both phases to reach 158 degrees Fahrenheit.

After they reach 158 degrees Fahrenheit, you will hold it at this temperature for 20 minutes. When the 20 minutes are up, you may move them out of the double boiler and pour the water phase into the oil phase.

If you are making a lotion, you will use an emersion blender or a coffee frother to mix the water and oil phase. You will continue to mix these phases till they enter the next phase in the natural skincare formulation, the cool-down phase.

The final phase in your natural skincare formulation is the cool-down phase. The cool-down phase happens after you have mixed your oil and water phases. In this phase, you will be adding your essential oils, preservatives, and other heat-sensitive ingredients.

Not every recipe has water, oil, and cool-down phase. If you are creating a lotion recipe, you will have all three phases. If you are making a body butter, you will only have the oil phase.

Understanding the different phases will help you know is what phase to write your natural skincare ingredients. After you have listed out the ingredients on your recipe card, you can write out the percentages of each item you will be using.

Know You Ingredient Percent Ranges

First, we must understand the percent range of the ingredients you are using. Finding the percent range will require some research or going back to the store that you purchased your skincare ingredients from and looking for the percent ranges. 

What is ingredients percent ranges? It is a way to know how much of an ingredient you can use in your product. For example, you can use up to 100% of Cucumber Hydrosol, but you may only use 4% of the preservative Leucidal SF Complete. 

If you use over 4% of Leucidal SF Complete in your skincare product, it is no longer healthy for your skin.

You need to know the percent range of each of your ingredients before writing out your recipe for a skincare product. 

Calculating a Recipe into Percentages

When creating a skincare product, you will begin by writing out your ingredients under your three different phases. These three phases are water, oil, and cool-down. 

In the recipe card, we will be formulating Cucumber Aloe Lotion. With all of the ingredients listed out, we will start listing in the percentages. 

You want it to always add up to 100%.

Why should everything add up to 100% in your natural skincare formulation? It will make it easier for a person to make larger or smaller batches when using this recipe. If you choose to have your lotion manufactured in the future, it is best to give the producer your recipe listed out in percentages so they can create a bulk skincare product. 

In this beginning example of the recipe card, you will see how each ingredient has a percent listed next to it. 

You can play around with some percentages. For example, if you want your lotion a little thicker, you can add some more oil or butter to the lotion. If you want it to be a little more liquidy, you can add more distilled water or cucumber hydrosol to the water phase.

Calculating a Recipe into Grams

The final step when you formulate your natural skincare products is converting the percentage into grams. This may seem like the most intimidating part, but trust me, it is super simple. 

An easy example would be converting a recipe into 100 grams. So, 8% of 100 grams is 8 grams. This means that 48% of 100 grams is 48 grams.

Pretty easy, right!

If we would like to create a 4-ounce container or lotion, we would need to convert this into 113.4 grams. To make it even easier, we will be doing 113 grams. The simplest way to convert all your percentages into 113 grams would be by asking google or using a percentage calculator. 

In the google search box, you can write, “what is 47% of 113 grams”. The answer is 53.11 grams.

Why do we want to calculate our recipe into grams instead of ounces? This is because grams will be more accurate when we weigh out our ingredients.

Conclusion

Creating and formulating skincare products will make you feel like a chemist. It will be different from when you were in high school or college because you are creating something that you love. 

Creating a formulation is the very foundation when making skincare products. You need to have the correct amount measured out every time. This is so that your skincare creations consistently come out correctly and the way that you want them to.

Happy formulating!