Bar soap or liquid soap, which will you choose?
Yes we are asking you the age old soap makers question: Should I make bar soap or liquid soap? This question is similar to another popular question: "Is the cup half full or half empty?" Either way the cup has the same amount of water. In a similar way, both soap making methods will do the same job of lathering up, lifting away bacteria from your skin and washing it down the drain thus making you clean again.
The primary difference is that one soap is in a liquid state and the other is in a solid state. This creates advantages and disadvantages. Lets explore the differences between bar soap and liquid soap and decide which is best.
Bar soap will visually outshine liquid soap!
Soap bars may be solid or multicolored. You may see swirls or layers of colors. Soap artisans express their creativity similar to the way an artist paints on the canvas board. Bar soaps can showcase amazing colors for a deeply pleasing visual experience. If you master techniques such as funnel pouring, layering and swirling, you can achieve these amazing results in your soap bars.
Now, contrast this with liquid soap. Liquid soap must stay in a bottle in order to stay together. Can you hold several ounces of liquid soap in your hand? I would venture to say most likely not very long. Since the bottle holds the liquid soap, your only artistic expression is limited to the bottle itself. You can create a unique and vibrant label for the bottle or special order customized plastic bottles.
Shaping your soaps with a mold.
Another great advantage of bar soap over liquid soaps is that you can create a mold to shape your soap. Not only can you make a bar of soap but you can make an octagon, a circle or a triangle of soap! There are so many soap molds out there that make things such as a cell phone soap, a cartoon character soap or even little animal soaps. There is a mold for almost anything you can dream up in your mind.
Now in stark contrast to that, liquid soap stays in liquid form. Just like water, you cannot shape it or form it. The only way to form liquid soap is to have a plastic bottle designed and formed into a unique shape of your design. These unique bottles if you choose to have them made can be a part of your branding.
Which retains scent longer, bar soap or liquid soap?
Using essential oils at a rate of 3 to 4%, you will notice that after six months to a year, your soap bar scent will dissipate. At that point, the soap will smell neutral with no scent whatsoever.
There is a way to fix this, use a fixative! There are various clay's to fix your soap bars and help them to retain scent longer. Popular clay choices are bentonite or kaolin clay to choose from. The essential oil myrrh is also known to be a preserving agent. Use these fixatives to help preserve the scent in bar soaps.
When making liquid soap you won't need to use as much essential oil to achieve your scent level. That said, liquid soap scent will dissipate as well, but not as quickly as the bar soap rate. I've read more complaints of bar soaps losing scent over time than liquid soap. The sealed container of liquid soap may help to retain scent slightly longer. I believe liquid soap has the advantage here even if it's a very slight advantage.
Which will physically last longer?
Find out! Do this simple test. Cut one of your soap bars and weigh it to exactly four ounces. Then take a measuring cup (tare to zero on the scale) and weigh out four ounces of liquid soap and pour it into an empty liquid soap bottle.
Wash with your bar of soap (in the shower) every day as you normally would. Then mark the number days the soap bar lasted. Next, do the same with the liquid soap. Use it every day (in the shower) until there is nothing left. Count the number of days that the liquid soap lasted. Tally up the results to see which lasted longer.
In my experience, when lathering up with bar soap, it yields exactly the amount of soap needed to get clean. The liquid soap had to be squeezed out of the bottle on a daily basis. It was hard to get a consistent amount of liquid soap each time. Often times more was squeezed out than was necessary. So with my results, bar soap did in fact last longer than the liquid soap.