Avocado Oil Soap Making

Using avocado oil for soap making will increase the conditioning properties of your finished product and add creaminess to the soap's lather. Avocado oil also has wonderful skin care advantages such as a high content of vitamin A, D and E.

Here are the fatty acid, Iodine, and SAP values for avocado oil:

Here are some of the characteristics that you will see in your soap when using avocado oil for soap making:

As you can see from the chart above, don't rely on avocado oil for hardness, cleansing or to produce a bubbly lather. I would personally always combine avocado oil with other soap making oils, such as coconut oil or palm oil to reach an appropriate balance for the structure of my finished product.

One great thing about avocado oil... it has an extremely high percentage of unsaponifiables - molecules that do not take place in saponification. In most cases, this is good for soap making because many of the beneficial components of this ingredient will not combine with the caustic lye to form soap but will remain intact throughout the soap making process and within the final product.

How much avocado oil should you use? Well, there's a pretty large range and as with most things in soap making, no steadfast rule. In fact, I know of a recipe where avocado oil takes up 45% of the oils used. At first I thought this would be too much, but apparently it turns out great! Obviously, you can also use much smaller amounts and still see its attributes within your soap.

Keep in mind that avocado oil is a relatively expensive oil for soap making. To save money yet reap the benefits of avocado oil, many soap makers choose to superfat with this ingredient by adding a few tablespoons to the batch after the soap has already reached trace. I add approximately 1 tablespoon per 3 pounds of oils when using this method to make avocado oil soap.