Olive Oil and Your Soap

Is Olive Oil Required for Good Soap?

Surely by now you've been asked a hundred times if your soap contains olive oil.
And for good reason. Olive oil and soap have a long history. From Aleppo, Syria to Italy to the Castile region of Spain, they have long been connected to each other and to a tradition of quality.

But is it olive oil itself that makes good soap? What if there was something better...
Another way to ask this is, "Why is olive oil such a big deal?"


Keep reading if you've ever been asked about olive oil in your soap and need a simple answer...

The building blocks of an oil are called fatty acids (FA's). While there are a wide variety of fatty acids, only 5-6 matter for soap. They affect bubble size, bar hardness, and the drying or moisturizing aspect of lather. One of these important FA's is Oleic Acid. When converted into soap, oleic acid creates a moisturizing lather.

Olive oil is 80-82% Oleic Acid. This means soap made with olive oil tends to be more moisturizing. Thus, it has a reputation as a good soap oil.

At BeechTree, we source organic sunflower oil that averages 81-85% oleic fatty acid, but at a much lower cost than organic olive oil.

In other words, from a chemistry perspective, we can give our soap the same moisturizing building blocks of olive oil for far less.