Scenting Soaps


Voyageur has an extensive selection of wholesale essential oils and wholesale fragrance oils to give your soap the perfect scent.



Using essential oils or fragrance oils in soap - what's the difference?

It's up to you!

An essential oil is a natural liquid or resin that is distilled, pressed, or extracted from different parts of different plants - leaves, flowers, roots, berries, seeds, etc. All of our essential oils are 100% therapeutic grade.

A fragrance oil may contain essential oils as well, but they can also be a blend of thousands of natural and synthetic ingredients to make a scent that could not otherwise be produced from pure plants alone. The obvious advantage is a much wider selection of potential scents! All of our fragrance oils are safe to use on skin, however some aren't suitable for soap making.


More on Essential Oils...

Cold process soaps are traditionally scented with pure essential oils and they can be used and blended to create wonderful scents!

We recommend using anywhere up to 30ml of essential oils for a 4lb. batch of soap, adding them once the soap has reached trace. The amount of essential oils to use is only a loose guideline, as some people love a lot of scent whereas some love only a little. Some essential oils, such as those derived from citrus, tend to lose their scent faster than others.

Over many years of soap making, we've found that the essential oils of clove and bay may cause soap to come to trace very quickly and may seize the soap. If you want to try using clove or bay, we recommend adding them early, before your soap has come to trace.


... and Fragrance Oils

Body care fragrance oils are also used to add scent cold process soaps. Fragrance oils give you a wider range of scents, but the drawback is that there are a number of fragrance oils that can cause the soap to come to trace too quickly (cause the soap to seize).

When trying a fragrance oil for the first time, we recommend making your soap at a lower temperature (100 degrees rather than 120-130 degrees) and adding your fragrance oils slowly before trace, to allow you enough time to get your soap into the mold if trace is accelerated. We recommend using 15ml to 30ml of body care fragrances per 4lb. batch of soap.