Cold process soap is naturally alkaline with a pH of around 9-10. This pH helps to gently clean the skin. Everyone’s skin pH is different, with many factors (including gender, age, diet, health), so ‘balanced’ is different for everyone.  Soaps made with natural ingredients tend to have a higher pH but even water can increase our pH….and we believe that a natural  soap is more gentle and less drying than a ‘synthetic detergent’ cleansing bar which is ‘pH balanced’.

To make our soaps, we use the traditional recipe which is made of 3 ingredients:

• Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Distilled Water (evaporates during curing time)
• Caustic Soda (disappears during saponification)

Our soap bars are made of 100% Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil

At SAPOLEUM we’re proud to be cruelty free. So, absolutely not

Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye and caustic soda, is an inorganic compound with the formula NaOH. It is an essential ingredient for the saponification to take place.

Once the saponification is complete, the caustic soda and oil molecules have combined and chemically changed into soap.

All of the caustic soda is used up in the saponification process to turn oil into soap meaning there is no lye present in the finished soap bars. Therefore no lye remains in the finished product after saponification.

All our bars are made with caustic soda even though the words “sodium hydroxide” or “caustic soda” do not appear on the labels.

SAPOLEUM is a handcrafted soap. Our soap is entirely processed and cut by hand; thus no two bars will be exactly alike. Temperature can make color appear slightly different from batch to batch. Small pockets of air may form and it does not affect the quality of the soap. You may also witness “soda ash” which is a harmless powder-like substance that forms when new soap meets air or has a rapid drop in temperature. This will completely disappear with the soap’s first use.