DIY Body Wash
Do you want to stop putting harsh chemicals on your body every time you take a shower? Or do you simply love to DIY your personal care products? Wherever you are, I’ve got a super easy homemade body wash recipe that you can customize to your preferences!
This DIY body wash recipe can be foaming, thick, thin, unscented, scented with essential oils, the list is endless! Start thinking about what your dream body wash would look like, and let’s get to work! But first, do you know what’s really in your conventional body wash?
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What’s Wrong with Regular Body Wash?
A lot, unfortunately. Since there are little to no regulations on what goes into our beauty and personal care products, companies can put pretty much anything in their stuff! That means that they want ingredients that are cheap and easy to make in mass quantities.
And guess what the cheapest ingredients are? Anything and everything that has been tested to be toxic on our bodies. It’s true that your body wash won’t land you in the emergency room, but it can contribute to serious illnesses later on in life.
This is something about your health that you can control! That’s why I’m so passionate about educating people about clean beauty products. If you could reduce your risk of getting a serious illness, would you do it? Of course you would!
Dangerous Ingredients in Body Wash
While there are hundreds of thousands of questionable ingredients in our daily-use personal products, here are the most common ingredients you can find in traditional body wash and why you should stay away from them. (source)
- Parabens—A preservatives that can be found in just about any beauty or personal care product. It’s typically called a massive word with “paraben” at the end. Such as methylparaben. They are a hormone disruptor because they mimic estrogen when absorbed into your body. This can cause anything from infertility to cancer.
- Phthalates—Pronounced “Faal-lates.” A softening agent to make cosmetics creamier and more luxurious. They are also a hormone disruptor and have been confirmed to cause birth defects.
- Fragrance—My personal least favorite ingredient! Seeing “fragrance” on an ingredient list is a coverup for hundreds of ingredients that a company isn’t required to disclose to anyone. It’s a loophole so companies can keep the secret behind what makes their products smell so good. As you can imagine, just about anything can come from products with fragrance on the list!
- Sulfates—Commonly found as Sodium Laurel Sulfate or Sodium Laureth Sulfate, these ingredients are usually what makes a product lather. The only problem is that they are too harsh of an ingredient to use on your skin and regularly causes irritation and rashes.
- Triclosan—A cleaning agent that has been proven to be so harsh that it creates resistant strains of bacteria. It’s also a hormone disruptor and has been banned in some (but not all!) personal care products.
Now I’m sure that you don’t want all that stuff on your body, right? That’s why you’re here. You want to eliminate all those toxic chemicals and reduce your exposure to questionable substances. And I’ve got just the thing for body wash!
How Do You Make Natural Body Wash?
Pretty much every natural homemade body wash will have you use three ingredients: Castile soap, raw honey, and some kind of nourishing carrier oil. That’s the base amount of ingredients that will work just as well, if not better, than traditional body wash.
Castile soap is pretty self-explanatory, because it provides the suds factor to the body wash. It’s a safer soap because it’s usually made from olive or hemp oil. Dr. Bronner’s castile soap is my personal favorite brand! They make and sell castile soap in several different scents so there’s something for everyone.
You can also get the soap in different quantities, which means that you can buy one container of castile soap and have it last you years! That’s what I’ve been doing and I love it. Not to mention you can get castile soap just about anywhere. I’ve seen it in Walmart, Target, or any grocery store!
As for the honey and carrier oils, those are primarily for moisture. Raw honey has great antibacterial properties, so it’s an ideal choice to help with body acne, as well as general moisture for the skin. Carrier oils also provide moisture to help with skin health, like anti-aging and elasticity.
What is the Best Natural Body Wash?
If all of this is sounding like it’s too much, or you’d rather like to buy your own body wash after all, no worries! I’ve got you covered. There are plenty of companies out there that sell completely safe and nourishing body washes.
Plant Apothecary on The Detox Market makes great body wash options! My personal favorite is the Calm Down Body Wash because I love the way it smells! It’s got essential oils of ginger and lavender, so it calms and centers me while waking me up at the same time.
I’ve tried other body washes, but I think this one is worth recommending because it suds up pretty well, even with all-natural ingredients. Some body washes won’t get as sudsy because of the lack of sulfates, buy hey, you win some, you lose some.
What Can I use Instead of Body Wash?
If you’d rather go soap-free, that’s another great choice! I actually didn’t buy body wash for the first few years of my clean beauty journey because it saved me a ton of money when I was a broke college student.
What I ended up using instead of body wash was a microfiber cloth. That’s it! Microfiber has an amazing texture to it that is designed to scrape off any dirt or grime without leaving your skin feeling stripped.
Because of this, I only used a wet microfiber cloth on my body and face, and my skin felt great! It felt exfoliated and clean, and my body acne went away too. I was floored! Literally nothing had been working on my body acne before this.
I recommend Norwex microfiber cloths because they are imbued with a special silver that keeps the cloths smelling fresh. Just to be clear, the silver doesn’t benefit your skin at all. It just makes the cloths last forever, which I can attest to. You can check out my thoughts on Norwex’s marketing in my honest Norwex review.
Now let’s make some body wash!
My Simple Homemade Body Wash Recipe
For this easy homemade body wash, you will need:
- 3/4 cup liquid castile soap of your choice
- 1/3 cup raw unfiltered honey
- ¼ cup carrier oil of choice, like Sweet Almond or Jojoba
- 30 drops essential oil of choice, like lavender or rosemary
- Clean, empty soap dispenser
- Funnel
To make this natural body wash, combine your honey and carrier oil in your soap dispenser using the funnel, then add in your castile soap last. You want to add the soap in last so I doesn’t bubble up and out of the dispenser when you’re adding in the other ingredients.
Then add in your essential oils, give it a shake, and go! Just remember to shake your homemade body wash every once in a while before using it so the ingredients stay evenly mixed. You don’t have any preservatives doing that job for you!
Some combinations of homemade body wash could be rose castile soap with jojoba oil and lavender, peppermint soap with sweet almond and rosemary, or lavender soap with jojoba and eucalyptus. Feel free to experiment and find your favorite combinations!
How to Make Foaming Body Wash
If you want to have some extra fun and make this homemade body wash foaming, simply change the soap dispenser! You can find all kinds of foaming soap dispensers on Amazon. And yes, it should work with the honey and oils. I’ve tried it before with no issues. I actually prefer it because I feel like it evenly mixes the ingredients better than I could have on my own!
How to Thicken Homemade Body Wash
If you want a thicker body wash, there’s a DIY for that! I know that some of you really can’t let go of your thick gel body washes. This homemade body wash actually has somewhat of a thin, water consistency, so you just need to add something to thicken it up.
You can make your own DIY foaming body wash by adding two tablespoons of vegetable glycerin to this recipe to make it a thicker shower gel. Feel free to add more if you want it even thicker. Glycerin is great for skin care because it attracts moisture and gives products a creamier texture without all the toxic side effects.
Another plus is it’s unscented, so you don’t have to worry about it messing up your scent combinations. I’ve been using it in my DIY makeup setting spray for years and it works wonders for me!
Final Thoughts on This Homemade Body Wash Recipe
No matter how you decide to make your own body wash, you’re taking a huge step in reducing your chemical exposure! One tip I always give people who are just starting out is to replace all of the products that you use every day.
I’m assuming that you’re showering a few times a week, if not every day! That means that you should work on replacing the products in your shower first so you can reap the benefits of a clean beauty routine immediately.
Homemade body wash doesn’t have to be super complex, either! You can go unscented without essential oils, or you can try essential oil combinations for a nice aromatherapy session in your shower every morning.
What scent combination would you try for homemade body wash? Let me know in the comments below!