How To Make Your Own Essential Oil Moisturizer

by Stephanie Chambers

As I mentioned in a previous blog Want To Try Making Something Special?, by making your own moisturizer you can avoid the harsh chemicals (mineral oils, mineral oil based synthetic preservatives and toxic additives) that many moisturizers contain. You can add the essential oils that you want to be absorbed by your skin for therapeutic reasons or purely because they smell nice to you.

Making your own moisturizer is pretty easy. There are various ways to go about it. What I did was bring some water to boil in a large saucepan and then put a mixture of shea butter, cocoa butter and coconut oil into a small saucepan and immerse this in the boiling water and swirl it until everything was melted (which only took a couple of minutes).

Then I took it off the heat and waited for it to cool a little (so it looks white instead of clear but don’t wait till it goes solid) before adding the jojoba oil and essential oils and mixing them together. If you want, you can put it in the freezer to speed up the cooling process.

Once it is mixed, you can then transfer it to the jar you want to use. In my case, I used a funnel to pour it into a moisturizer bottle with a pump that I had washed out for reuse. But if you would prefer to have it in a glass jar, you can even use this instead of the saucepan and save yourself an extra step.

The only thing I found a bit tricky was measuring the shea butter and cocoa butter. As they are hard clumps, they don’t sit nicely in the measuring cup, so it is hard to determine what is a quarter of a cup. A better way would have been to weigh it. A quarter of a cup is equal to 56.7 grams or 2 ounces.

The basic moisturizer recipe

½ cup of coconut oil (113.4 grams or 4 ounces or 8 tablespoons)

¼ cup of shea butter (56.7 grams or 2 ounces or 4 tablespoons)

¼ cup of cocoa butter (56.7 grams or 2 ounces or 4 tablespoons)

2 tablespoons of Certified Organic Jojoba Oil (you can use either the clear one or the golden one, but the clear one is a lot less expensive, so that was what I used)

Because I have dry skin, I used:

18 drops of Rose Geranium Essential Oil

18 drops of Palmarosa Essential Oil

4 drops of Jasmine Essential Oil (I used Jasmine Grandiflorum Absolute but Jasmine Sambac Absolute is similar)

This combination smelled wonderful. You could use up to 120 drops (4.8 ml) of any essential oil you like or any good combination of essential oils for a total of 8 oz of moisturizer.

On most essential oil pages, there is a tab called “Blends With” which tells you which other essential oils that essential oil combines well with. But make sure not to use any essential oil which has a tendency to be irritating or which doesn't suit your skin type, even if it does blend well with the other oils. You can also learn a lot by reading this page about How To Blend Essential Oils. You might also get some combination ideas from our Blend This With This section.

You may have to experiment a bit with the ratios to find a moisturizer with the texture you prefer. Some people like their moisturizer oilier than others. You can also try different oils in place of Jojoba such as Avocado Oil, Apricot Kernel Oil, Organic Rosehip Seed Oil or Organic Sweet Almond Oil. You can also see a list of all the base / carrier oils and their various qualities here.

I hope you enjoy making your own moisturizer. Please share your experiences as comments below so that all can benefit.

Disclaimer: The statements made in this blog have not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). They are not intended to diagnose, cure or prevent any disease. If a condition persists, please contact your physician or healthcare provider. The information provided is not a substitute for a face-to-face consultation with a healthcare provider, and should not be construed as medical advice.

Original Published: 2015-06-18 / Last Modified: 2021-10-11