The Danger Of Using Volume in Measuring Ingredients in Soap & Cosmetic Making

Good morning guys.. today we will be talking about why you always have to use weight to measure your ingredients as compared to volume.

Cooking VS Soap Making

If you see in the internet; most people / bloggers uses cups or spoons to measure their ingredients. Its understandable why someone would do that because they probably think that skincare making is like cooking; but its NOT

When cooking; you would use ratio instead of real ‘percentages’ so it works for cooking (or the worst case scenario the taste will be ‘off) but for soap and cosmetic making; this can get dangerous because the worst case scenario in this may ‘burn’ ur skin!

Whats the difference between volume & weight?

Remember in school; when you were asked this question? Which weights more; 1kg cotton or 1kg rock? During that time; the pictures will show lots of cotton and few rocks? Well; if you may have noticed; the answer was always; it weights the same. But the rock had smaller volume than the cotton. And thats the same when it comes to soap & cosmetics or skincare making too.

Water is the only ingredient that the volume & weight is the same ( means 100g water = 100ml) but everything else is not the same. All this depends on the specific gravity of the ingredients. The specific gravity of water is 1; but the specific gravity of coconut oil is 0.925. Which means 1L of coconut oil is just 925g. And it makes sense; thats why coconut oil always floats on top of water; coz its lighter!

And so because of that; when you use cups or spoons to measure; even though the volume is same; you wont get the same weight. 9Take note that most suppliers when they sell something thats packed in bottles; we usually sell in volume and not g as most bottles comes in volume sizes and not weight.)

The reason why i wanted to point this out is because many people when they come to SoapLab; they would have learned some recipes elsewhere and used cups and spoons to measure. And when they see soaplab’s recipes thats mostly in weight; they automatically ‘convert’ it into cups and spoons. But that is not safe! 

Imagine if you are making cold process soap; and you measure everything in spoons; you may get a soap thats with ‘over’ sodium hydroxide; causing your skin to burn. Same goes with essential oils; if you use drops (without counting the weight before) you may be putting in either below therapeutic amount; or over. Now whats the use of putting in essential oil if it doesn't do what it does?thats expensive! Cosmeceuticals, extracts; they are the same too!

So the next time you make your skincare; make sure that your recipes are in weight and not volume. If its in volume; just dont follow the recipes. The volume of the cups and spoons they will be using is not the same as what you have in your house so the measurement will be way off!

What if i wanted to measure something ‘really’ small?

I understand that sometimes; you need to measure very minute amount and your weighing scale cant measure them. So heres what we do in SoapLab. Imagine you need 0.5g of hyaluronic acid; and your weighing scale can only measure 1g above; you could get a measuring spoon (the one thats for ‘baking’ and measure 10g of hyaluronic acid. Count how many times the spoon is filled up. If lets say you need 20 spoons to get 10g of HA; then you know that you will require 1spoon to get 0.5g. Same goes with essential oil. In SoapLab; based on our hole opening for the essential oil bottle; 20drops of essential oil = 1g. (It wont be the same for all suppliers so do your own test).

Hope this article guides you slightly. You have joined SoapLab Family now; so make sure you make your products effectively & most importantly; safely

Thank you for reading;
Nisha