When I first began making soap I wondered about what many people question: What are the three differences between facial soap bars and regular soap bars?
1. Facial soap usually has a lower cleansing level.
One of the many quality scores in soap making revolve around the cleansing number of the soap. Different oils produce different cleansing numbers. For example, a soap that has mostly coconut oil has a high cleansing number and will likely strip the skin of its natural oils, leaving it dry and sometimes inducing oiliness since your skin tries to over compensate for missing oil.
On the other hand, a hard oil like shea butter has a very low cleansing number. Therefore a soap made with mostly with shea butter will not strip the skin. In soap making for facial bars, you want to keep the cleansing number as low as possible. I ideally keep mine at zero. Now keep in mind, just because something is "low cleansing," doesn't mean it doesn't clean. It simply means that it strips less natural oils away.
2. Facial soap focuses on the skin properties of the face.
You're probably saying, "Well duh, hence the name Captain Obvious." But many people forget that the skin on their face is very different from their skin on their rest of their body. Facial skin has many more glands, is a lot thinner, and regenerates cells more quickly than the rest of the body. These factors make your face more oily and more sensitive to products. Hence why something that works excellently on your body, may be terrible for your face. Because of this you may be able to use a facial soap on the rest of your body, but not a body soap on your face.
3. Facial soap usually has ingredients geared toward specific skin types.
Similar to hair products, it is very rare that you find a product that truly works on all facial skin types, especially combination skin. As a result, great facial bars usually cater to specific skin types. A facial soap bar that works well for oily skin may be stripping for dry skin. Even people with similar skin types may need to try a few different facial bars to find one that works for them. Ingredients can play a huge factor including which oils were used in the handmade soap recipe. As mentioned before, different oils have different conditioning and cleansing levels. Great facial bars take all of that into consideration.
At The Body Buffet we handcraft all of our recipes and also test them (never tested on animals!). Check out our facial bars:
