Why Cold Process Soap Soft?

So you made soaps and you realize that after some time your soap is soft. Why? 

Heres some of the reason why this happens:

1) not enough ‘curing’ or drying time

If its the first time you are making cp soap; you probably are not aware of this whereby you need about 4-6 weeks for your soap to dry. 

Cp soap is made by using liquid to premix with NaOH. However, the ‘water’ is not important; therefore we will need to wait for the water to evaporate out. The more water you add, the longer time you will need for it to dry up

2) too much water

Similar to number 1; if you used a lot of water; you will need to wait longer for the water to evaporate out. Generally we use the amount of water similar to NaOH or maks i would go for x 2 only. You can add more but be prepared to wait longer for drying.

3) too much conditioning oil.

When making cold process soap i would like to have a balance of hard oils (like palm oil, shea butter, coconut oil) and soft oils like olive oil, avocado oil and so on.

Hard oils makes the soaps harder and so they are not too soft, while conditioning oil doesnt help in hardening the soap: it only moisturises the soap.

So make sure that you have a balance of this when you are preparing your soap formula. If you are not sure you can use our soapcalculator on whats the best formulation or oil combination to use.

4)  Humidity

Staying in Malaysia; we have erratic weather and our humidity is generally very high (60-80% at times 90% during rainy season) 

This would make glycerin; thats generally found in conditioning oils; to pull the water from surrounding since they are humectants.

This in turn will make the soaps to be soft as it will take longer time for the soap to ‘dry’

5) added ingredients

Lastly: assuming everything else its fine, its probably due to the added ingredient. Some ingredient can make soaps softer (acidic items), or at times without knowing, you might be adding too much of liquid that softens the soap. 

I generally do not add more thb 5% of total extracts/ fragrance/ essential oil because of this fear of soaps not being hard.

Hope this helps and if you would like to watch a video on this; click here: 

Mengapakan Sabun Cold Process Saya Lembik?