How to Make Lotion Bars: Melting, Setting and Keeping Them Firm

Quick answer: weigh equal parts beeswax, butter and liquid oil, melt the wax and butter together until clear, stir in the oil off the heat, and pour into molds. Let the bars set all the way through, which takes a few hours at room temperature or less in the fridge, and unmold them once they’re back at room temperature. A bar that’s soft, greasy or sweaty has more oil than its wax can hold, or it’s somewhere too warm.

The method

1. Weigh the wax, butter and oil.
2. Melt the wax and butter together in a double boiler, stirring now and then, until the liquid is completely clear.
3. Take it off the heat and stir in the oil.
4. If you’re adding fragrance or essential oil, stir it in now, at the rate your supplier gives for leave-on skin products.
5. Pour into molds while everything is still fully liquid.
6. Let the bars set until they’re firm all the way through, on the counter or in the fridge.
7. Take them out of the molds once they’re at room temperature.

For a first batch, try 100 g beeswax, 100 g shea butter and 100 g sweet almond oil. The lotion bar calculator scales that to your molds, shifts the ratio for a harder or softer bar, and converts it for candelilla wax.

What you need

Melting and pouring

The wax is what holds a lotion bar together, and it melts at a much higher temperature than anything else in it.

Butter figures are from supplier comparisons of cosmetic butters. Wax figures are from Wikipedia.

So the wax and butter go in the pan together. The butter melts long before the wax does and just sits there waiting. The oil goes in afterward, off the heat, because it’s already liquid and doesn’t need to be heated.

Keep stirring until the liquid is completely clear, with no cloudy swirls or pellets at the bottom. Wax that hasn’t fully melted ends up as hard specks in the finished bar.

Pour while it’s all still liquid. If you see it clouding or thickening at the edge of the cup, it’s starting to set, and the bars will come out with rough tops. Put it back over the heat for a minute until it clears.

Candelilla melts 10 to 15°F hotter than beeswax, so it needs longer in the double boiler. A thermometer saves guessing.

Setting and unmolding

Bramble Berry, a soap and cosmetics supply company, says lotion bars take several hours to overnight to set at room temperature, and less in the fridge or freezer. Small molds set faster than big ones, and a warm kitchen slows things down.

Chilling helps the texture as well. Shea butter that cools slowly can form tiny hard crystals that make a bar feel grainy. It’s the same problem the body butter guide deals with. A quick chill sets the bar before those crystals can form.

Let chilled bars warm back up to room temperature before you unmold them. Cold bars are brittle and can crack or tear on the way out.

With silicone, push up from the bottom and peel the sides away instead of pulling on the bar. If a bar is stuck in a rigid mold, put the mold in the freezer for ten minutes. The bar shrinks a little as it gets colder and usually drops out. Give it time to warm up before you handle it much.

A shallow dip in the middle of each bar is normal. Wax shrinks as it cools.

Why lotion bars go soft or sweat

A lotion bar is liquid oil held in a mesh of wax crystals. It goes soft, greasy or sweaty when that mesh can’t hold all the oil anymore.

Heat is the usual reason. Look at the melt points above: the butters start softening in the high 80s and 90s °F. A hot car, a sunny windowsill or a pocket in July will get there. The wax lasts longer, but a bar left in the sun will slump and leak oil. Keep bars somewhere cool, and ship them in summer with a cold pack in a sturdy tin.

If a bar is soft at ordinary room temperature, the recipe has too much oil for the wax. Raise the wax a little at a time. The calculator page shows how the ratio changes hardness, and covers adjusting for warm climates.

A white haze or powdery film on the surface is sometimes called bloom. It’s harmless and rubs off. Storing bars somewhere with a steady temperature, out of the sun, makes it less likely.

Grainy bars that melt smooth on your skin have shea crystals in them from cooling too slowly. Melt them down and chill them faster.

If you see beads of water on a bar, that’s condensation. There’s no water in a lotion bar, but a cold bar brought into a warm, steamy room collects water on its surface. Let bars come up to room temperature in their container before you open it.

Storing and using them

Keep lotion bars in a tin, a jar or a push-up tube, or wrap them in wax paper or parchment and put them in a box. Anything that keeps them out of the sun and away from heat works. Keep them dry too. A bar that sits in water, or gets used with wet hands, is letting in water it didn’t have.

With no water in them, lotion bars need no preservative, and nothing grows in them as long as they stay dry. They last until the shortest-lived oil in them goes rancid, which for most butters and oils is a year or more. The body butter guide lists the oils that don’t last as long. A sharp or sour smell means an oil has turned. Unrefined shea has a strong natural smell that some people say reminds them of crayons, and that’s normal.

To use one, hold it in your hand for a few seconds to warm the surface, glide it over dry skin, and rub in what it leaves behind. It’s best on hands, elbows, knees and feet. On wet skin it drags.

Common problems

Frequently asked questions