8 reasons fragrance oils are better than essential oils in soap

"Do you only use essential oils in your soap?"

We get this question all the time from our customers. And it comes from a well-intentioned place, though not always a well-informed one. Folks are worried about what they're putting on their skin, and that's their prerogative. But where things start getting concerning is that often the information they're using to make those decisions isn't actually as evidence-based as they think.

It's not their fault; we live in a media landscape that is completely saturated with companies pushing their messages as actual fact and even news. And nobody is better at pushing messages that are mostly just made of vibes than essential oil companies. So they've convinced most people that essential oils are great, fragrance is bad, and you should only ever buy their brand of essential oils because only their brand is guaranteed to be pure enough.

In reality, there are a lot of reasons why essential oils aren't all they're hyped up to be. Today, I'll outline 8 of those reasons, specifically related to soap-making, so that you can get some insight into why fragrance may be the better bet when it comes to your skincare products.

1. Predatory essential oil companies

I've already alluded to this above, but there are some very predatory practices going on in the essential oil community. Multi-level marketing companies (MLMs for short) are rampant in this space, so much so that it's easiest to assume that if you've heard of an essential oil brand, there's a good chance it's an MLM. 

And why is that a problem, you may ask? Well, because MLMs are dreadful. No, seriously, tons of MLMs have been sued, shut down for illegal activity and more (check out this Salon article on MLMs if you're curious to know more). This makes sense, though, if you understand how the structure works. Basically, you're told all sorts of nice things, like that you'll get to be your own boss and work whatever hours you need around your busy schedule, and then you buy the product up front to re-sell it. The trouble is that so many of these sales reps never do sell the product because there are often very high purchase minimums. Because recruitment is a big focus in MLMs, the local area will often be chock full of other sales reps also trying to sell the same stuff to the same people. So suddenly you find yourself in debt, with thousands of dollars worth of essential oils sitting in your closet and nobody to sell them to.

There's some real ethical questions here. But even beyond that—if we were totally callous and we didn't care at all about these folks—what kind of product is so hard to sell that this has to be the main marketing tactic of your business? Probably not a very good one, I'd wager. As my friend would say, "red flag city!"

That's why we're very selective about which essential oils we purchase and from whom. It's not that we never use them at all (check out our Lemon Lavender soap, for example); we just use them very sparingly and go through well-established, reputable wholesale companies to get them.

2. Essential oil production is extremely wasteful

Did you know that it takes 5000 kilos of lemon balm to make 1 kilo of lemon balm essential oil? It seems like a waste when lemon balm is a perfectly good herb that we can cook with and get any potential benefits that way instead.

To be fair, not all essential oils take that much plant matter to make. But the most generous plants are citrus, and it still takes 150 kilos of oranges to make a kilo of orange essential oil. Isn't it better to just zest and juice it into a nice smoothie or stir-fry or cake?

The name of the essential oil game is to make them hyper-concentrated. Now, that's great if we're talking about a laundry detergent or something, where the water is useless and costing a ton of carbon emissions to ship. But there's a lot more to an orange or cinnamon bark or eucalyptus than just their oil, and we can use them in so many ways. It's really not the same thing as reducing how much water we're shipping.

That's partly why, rather than using essential oils in our soap, we opt to use fragrance oils most of the time.

3. Endangered and rare plants suffer in essential oil production

Essential oils can be really hard on the plants we derive them from. Some oils continue to be made by irresponsible producers because they’re very lucrative. Sandalwood, for example, is very endangered and gets a high price. Frankincense is quite rare because it comes from a very small geographical region, and so it’s precious.

As we've seen, it takes a lot of plant matter to make only a little essential oil, which means it’s not a very efficient use of limited resources. So I'd argue harvesting endangered or rare species for essential oil production is a really bad practice in general. Reputable manufacturers tend to avoid making these types of oils, but they still exist on the market for exorbitant prices, so someone’s still making them for a profit.

Relatedly, but perhaps even more egregious, is that many of these same bad actors will dilute rare essential oils, so that a 15ml bottle may have only 3ml of actual essential oil in it, for example. It's very hard to know what you're actually getting.

If you're a buyer of essential oils who means well, make sure you're not contributing to the problem by seeking these same rare oils out yourself!

As soap makers, we only use two essential oils on a regular basis: lemon and lavender. These are both plentiful and aren't part of the unethical destruction of endangered plants, so we feel OK about using them so that our customers have an essential oil option.

4. Essential oils are much more expensive than fragrance oils

Knowing what we've just gone over, it won't surprise you to know that essential oils are quite expensive. Just think how much it must cost to purchase hundreds or thousands of kilos of plant matter to make a kilo of essential oil!

As a consumer, each of us has to consider what we can and can't afford, and some folks will prioritize essential oils even if they're more expensive. But we've also got another consideration: out customers and the price tag on our soap. Could our customers afford our soap if we used all essential oils? We're not so sure. We already use very high-quality plant-based oils (olive, coconut, almond, cocoa and castor) in our soaps to create a product that's luxurious and lasts a long time. And that comes at a price; our soaps aren't discount bars and we know it. But they're also better for it, and we never want to be a company that leaves a trail of disappointed customers behind it!

So we've made a choice to prioritize high-quality fragrance oils in our soaps for a much lower price tag, so that our customers can still have great soap even if they're not made of money.

5. Some essential oils are not skin-safe

As much as we're often told that natural is always better, that's simply not true. Not only does the dose make the poison (you can literally be poisoned by water, after all!), most actual poisons occur naturally in nature. Take cyanide, which we find in cherry pits, apple seeds and even the cassava root—a frequently-eaten food in many parts of the world. 

So it follows, then, that essential oils could be hazardous in such high concentrations. The effects are varied, but a number of essential oils aren't safe for use on the skin. In some cases, like with citrus essential oils, users can experience photosensitivity—a fancy word for getting a nasty rash from sun exposure—if they're too concentrated. (That's why we use a very small amount in our Lemon Lavender soap.) With other essential oils, including cinnamon and clove, the oil itself is corrosive to the skin unless it's diluted. Like, a lot. (So much that the most recent guidance tells us not to bother using it in soap at all because you'd have to use so little that you'd never smell it.)

As a manufacturing business, we take the safety of our product very seriously; we don't want anyone to get hurt from using our products. So we consider it our responsibility to protect our customers from effects like these due to essential oils. That's one of the main reasons we use a very limited number of essential oils, and at a very modest concentration.

6. Essential oils aren't regulated as tightly as fragrance oils

When we hear about something synthetic, often we feel a little uneasy. After all, isn't natural better?

Well, as it turns out, the government feels that way, too. That means anything synthetic has to jump through a ton of hoops to get approved, because we want to be very sure that this new thing isn't going to burn a hole in our skin (or the environment, for that matter).

That's one of the reasons I trust fragrance oils so much. Yes, they're synthetic, but they also come with a very detailed safety information sheet that outlines every detail about the oil, exactly how much can be used, any testing results, and which Thursday in May it was discovered back in 2018...

OK, that last one was an exaggeration, but the rest is 100% true.

Essential oils, on the other hand? They typically fall under something called GRAS: generally regarded as safe. That means the company doesn't have to prove anything, and no testing has to have actually been done. They can just assume it's safe and put it on the market.

You read that right.

Because it's naturally-occurring and comes from bay leaves or geraniums, for example, we assume it's fine at an extremely high concentration.

That's not the kind of gambling we like to do with our business! So we stick to phthalate- and paraben-free fragrance oil in our soap. The only essential oils we use need to come with just as much documentation from our supplier or we simply don't use them.

7. You have many fewer scent options with essential oils

I can't tell you how boring our fragrances would be if we could only rely on skin-safe, sustainably-sourced, cost-effective essential oils. Just accounting for those three factors, the options would be reduced so much that we'd probably only be able to offer 3-4 decent scents.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of scents that are off the table with essential oils:

• Coffee, tea and chocolate/cocoa
• Vanilla, coconut, honey, maple (most sweet things)
• Non-citrus fruits: berries, apples, grapes, pineapples, mangoes, melons, etc.
• Cinnamon, clove or anything else not skin-safe
• Nuts of any kind
• Any endangered plant species
  

On the other hand, there is a fragrance for literally anything. I once saw an actual dirt fragrance oil. And you know what? It smelled exactly like dirt!

Soap-safe fragrance oils are so varied and high-quality now that soapers are honestly spoiled! We've tried everything from wood smoke to fresh bread to tomato leaf fragrances, and every one has been a delight to our noses! Having these options means that our customers—many of whom disclose they have sensory issues—have tons of gorgeous scents to choose from. It means that even if you're super overwhelmed by florals, you can still find something spicy you like. (And along that line, remember how we can't use cinnamon essential oil? Thank you, fragrance!)

Honestly, we feel that our customers would be disappointed with what we could do with only essential oils. Our commitment to our customers includes accessibility, and part of that is making sure that folks with different scent needs have options. (And that's why we do offer one option with essential oils and a few unscented soaps as well.)

8. Essential oils fade quickly in soap

Every soaper knows the feeling: you make a gorgeous soap with essential oils, cut it the next day, and practically huff it because it smells so good! Then you set it to cure for the customary month and you come back, and—

"Wait, I remembered to add the essential oils, right?"

The scent is gone. Not a trace of it anywhere.

And part of the reason for this is that nature isn't designing for a specific industry. It doesn't care that the saponification (read: soap-forming) process is harsh and needs a strong oil to withstand it. It just thinks that lemons and herbs smell nice, you know?

But you know who is designing for a specific industry? Fragrance oil manufacturers. Soap-safe oils are made specifically to withstand this harsh process. Just think: all those oil molecules have to eat up that super alkaline lye, and it creates so much heat in the process. It's a lot of work, and it's tough out there! Only the strongest oils can survive it, and mostly those are fragrance oils.

And lavender, it turns out. Who knew? (Us. We knew. That's why we actually use that one!)

Every soaper who's had their scent disappear has been on the brink of tears. Essential oils, for all their expense and difficulty to source reputably and ethically, literally go up in steam as the soap is curing. It's like throwing money in the garbage and ending up with a boring-smelling product, you know?

This is something we understand intimately, and we've decided that we simply don't need that in our lives. But our customers need nice-smelling soap, so we use what works: fragrance oil.

The takeaway

There is so much misinformation out there around essential oils, and such poor understanding of how they work in soap. It's not the customer's fault; it's our job to educate them. (Hello, blog post!)

While ethically- and reputably-sourced essential oils are probably harmless in your potpourri, they're not really well suited to something you're going to be putting on your skin, and least of all soap. So if you're in the essential oil soap camp, maybe take in what we've covered in this post and ask yourself if there's space to learn more about other options. We're always happy to point you in the right direction if you're looking to do some more research and learn about fragrance oils.

And never be shy to reach out to us if you want to see the safety data sheets for any of the fragrance or essential oils that we use in our soap. We believe that information is power and we want an empowered, educated customer base that's making exactly the right choice for them!

Thank you for coming with me on this journey, and may you always find just the right scent when you need it!