Take a look around the internet and you can find a number of recipes for home-made lotions.  While it is great to see so much interest in these personal care applications, as a small business you might be wondering, “how can I make a lotion that lasts”?  

There is no way we could cover every combination of ingredients for such an extensive personal care industry.  However, most professional lotions start with six basic ingredients that serve the vital functions of making a lotion stable, long-lasting and consistent.  Those ingredients are:

• Water
• Oil
• Emulsifying agents
• Preservatives
• Chealating agents
• Polyol

So, what does each ingredient do?  Let’s break them down individually:

Water, no surprise, is the base of a formula which helps it mix and flow.  But don’t select just any water! De-ionized water is the best place to start.  With a highly pure water, you can minimize the heavy metal content of the water.  Metals allow for the start of bacterial growth (think mold), because they attract the right sort of biological reaction, especially at room temperature or in warm settings.    

Next, you have an oil, which can be either synthetic or natural.  Oils control all sorts of features, from the overall texture and appearance of the lotion, to the skin absorption, to the actual performance as a moisturizing or healing agent.  The selection of the proper oil for your application can take significant testing and review, but a lotion is simply not a lotion without oil!

Now that you have oil and water – and your early childhood lessons taught you that oil and water don’t mix – what comes next?  This is where an emulsifying agent, or also called a surfactant, is key.  Emulsifying agents help oil and water mix and stay stable in a homogeneous solution.  These agents can all work different, which will allow for a more “oily” or more “dry” feel to the lotion.  There can also be primary and secondary surfactants used in many lotions to fully control the long-term stability of the oil and water blend.

After the oil and water are fully stabilized into a solution, the next question of shelf life comes into play.  There, the first issue to solve is bacterial growth.  Preservatives and chelating agents are both used to prevent any type of mold or decay.  A preservative can work through a variety of methods: antimicrobials block the growth of bacteria, molds or yeasts; antioxidants slow the oxidation of fats and lipids that lead to rancidity; other types fight enzymes that promote natural ripening in food-products.  Chelating agents, by contrast, bind to heavy metals so that they can’t react with other elements (remember above where we looked at water purity – this is critical because the water will always be a source of heavy metals, even if they are in very low concentrations).  So, with both preservatives and chelating agents working to reduce the growth of bacteria – you now have a lotion that will be shelf stable for a much longer period of time!  (nothing lasts forever, but by controlling the original cause of product decay, you can certainly create a product that works for a good long time).

That’s 5 total ingredients if you were keeping count…so what the heck else is needed?  Well, how do you keep the product from surviving extreme temperature shifts?  For instance, that nice sunscreen that is shipping over the mountains and just happens to be sitting in sub-freezing temperatures for two days while on the way to a sunny location?  That is where a polyol comes into play.  A polyol acts as an anti-freezing agent for your lotion.  This will keep the product very consistent over wide temperature swings.  In addition to the shipping example above, other cases might include products that get packed in your suitcase during a long flight, lotions that you might keep in your car throughout the year, or just that meddling child who likes to hide your favorite hand cream in the refrigerator!

Once you’ve achieved a baseline of these six common ingredients, you can expand with options such as fragrance, anti-aging elements, moisturizing agents, probiotics or many other silicones or rheology modifying agents to build the perfect lotion for your customers.  

Let’s work together to make your masterpiece.  Find some of our most common personal care ingredients here.  You can also learn more about our history or ask questions within our forum to build a network with others.