So when I originally started this journey into making body products, my first handmade bar of soap had three ingredients. Shea butter, olive oil and Lavender petals. I melted that concoction down, threw it in a soap mold and thought i was the man! Little did i know, I was just rubbing shea butter on my skin. lol
Now that we have been actually making soap for the past few years, i'd say YES handcrafted soap is superior to store bought soap. (in my opinion that is)!
Handmade Soap Contains Glycerin. Glycerin is a natural skin emollient (skin softener) that attracts water from the surrounding air. Because of this, glycerin is highly prized in soaps, lotions and creams for maintaining moisture in the skin throughout the day.
During the soap making process, the fats/oils and lye blend together to form soap while the natural glycerin maintains its integrity as glycerin and basically settles in between the soap molecules.
Animal fats and vegetable oils contain between 7-13% of glycerin as a part of their natural chemical makeup.
Typical store-bought soaps have had all of the glycerin removed and placed into additional products such as lotions and creams. The reason is instead of buying one product that will clean AND moisturize, (such as handmade soap) a consumer now has to buy two products to serve the same purpose, thus, an increase in profit for the company.
When profit is placed as a higher priority than quality of life, the consumer is the one who suffers. By removing the glycerin, store-bought soap takes on a skin-moisture-stripping quality that will dry the skin and leave it vulnerable to cracking and flaking.
Now every handmade soap is not the same, so when your looking at the ingredients
make sure it does or does not have things you want on your skin. For instance animal fat. Although a lot of people do not want to soap with animal fat, animal fat make the best moisturizing and cleansing soap, it's where soap started. Vegetable soaps also clean well and moisturize but from my experience not to the effect that animal fat does.
Some soaps use essential oils for its scent, which also comes with added benefits. Some use fragrance oils in their soap which is not natural but not harmful if the soaper is using it correctly . Others come unscented and purley animal/vegetable fat.
A talented soaper can add skin loving properties to a bar of soap without adding chemicals that are used in store brands. If you want to make a vegetable soap more moisturizing, use shea butter, or if you want to create a nice rich creamy later they can add coconut milk, or even clay!
You will find an assortment of soaps at own it soap company. Animal fat soap, vegetable fat soap, soap for dry skin, soap for normal skin. Try one and I promise it will change how you think about store brand soaps!!