Honey makes a surprisingly beneficial ingredient in natural skin care products. Honey is naturally packed with anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties making it a helpful addition to acne, combination skin, and sensitive skin formulations. It also helps to soothe, soften, and tone skin, making it a great ingredient in masks and facials.
Honey is a water soluble ingredient which naturally contains a small amount of water. This makes formulating with fresh honey somewhat challenging. It cannot be mixed into lotions, balms, or oil based formulas without the use of an emulsifier and although Honey has natural anti-bacterial properties, it is not resistant to all forms of bacteria and microbes.
Dried Honey Powder and Honey Granules offer a more stable way to include Honey in your products. Both dried Honey products are water soluble but can be easily incorporated into dry products such as dry mask mixes, body powders, milk baths, bath teas, and more. Honey makes a great component in soap free cleansers. Try combining Honey Powder with Fine Oatmeal and your favorite Hydrosol for a quick and easy natural facial cleanser.
To incorporate the aroma of honey into your products you can either add a synthetic Fragrance Oil or Floral Water, such as our Honey Original Fragrance Oil or our Lemon Honey Floral Water, or you can incorporate Honey Absolute. Honey Absolute is a solvent extracted, oil soluble derivative of real honey. It is extremely thick and sticky, more so than natural Honey. It has a texture comparable to that of molasses or caramel, and a light, but delicious aroma.
I love adding honey to use immediately treatments (like masks) and have wondered about adding it to lotions in its liquid form. Can you suggest a way for me to do that? Above you had mentioned an emulsifier. Thanks.
You can definitely add honey to lotion recipes. Since honey is water soluble, it can be dissolved into the water phase of your lotion before you begin. You can use Honey Powder or fresh honey. Recipes that don’t include water, such as scrubs or lip balms, adding fresh honey can be a little trickier. You can try adding an emulsifier to a scrub, such as polysorbate or liquid soap, but you’ll need to also add an extra preservative that accounts for the presence of water in your formula. You can also just use honey powder instead of fresh honey in your scrub, in which case you probably won’t need an emulsifier or special preservative.
For lip balms, use Honey Powder by dissolving it into the oil portion of the recipe. It’s very difficult to use fresh honey in lip balms, so I wouldn’t advise it.