Olive Oil
Saponification values, fatty acid makeup, and what this oil does in a bar of soap.
Use Olive Oil in a recipe → Added at 0%, you set the amount
Saponification values
Grams of lye needed to saponify one gram of olive oil. Multiply by your oil weight, then apply your superfat.
- NaOH (bar soap)
- 0.135
- KOH (liquid soap)
- 0.19
- Iodine
- 85
- INS
- 105
INCI: Olea Europaea (Olive) Fruit OilSaponified name (for labels): Sodium Olivate
Where to buy olive oil on Amazon → Affiliate link. It costs you nothing extra and helps keep Lye.rs free.
Fatty acid profile
| Fatty acid | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Oleic | 69% |
| Palmitic | 14% |
| Linoleic | 12% |
| Stearic | 3% |
| Linolenic | 1% |
Soap qualities at 100%
What a bar made entirely of olive oil would score. Almost nobody soaps a single oil at 100% - this is here so you can see what the oil contributes to a blend. The shaded band is the range most makers aim for in a finished recipe.
What that means in a recipe
Almost no cleansing contribution (0) against high conditioning (82). Gentle on skin, but a bar built mainly on this will be slow to trace, slow to harden, and low on bubbles without something to balance it.
Derived from the numbers above rather than written by hand, so it stays in step with the data. Tendencies, not guarantees - your oils, water, and technique all move the result.
Oils that behave similarly
Closest matches by fatty acid makeup - the usual starting point when you have run out of olive oil and need a substitute. Check the lye maths again after swapping: SAP values differ even between oils that behave alike.
- Olive Oil, pomaceSAP 0.134 NaOH
- Buriti OilSAP 0.159 NaOH
- Karanja OilSAP 0.13 NaOH
- Avocado OilSAP 0.133 NaOH
- Tallow, BearSAP 0.139 NaOH
Recipes using olive oil
- Castile 100%One hundred percent olive oil. Very mild, low lather, slow to trace. Needs six months or more to become the bar it wants to be.
- Bastille 70%Mostly olive, with coconut and castor for lather. Gentler than the trinity and far quicker to cure than pure Castile.
- Gentle Unscented Bar 60%Low cleansing, high superfat, no fragrance. Intended for sensitive skin. Give it a long cure -- mildness improves with time.
- Farmhouse Trinity 54%Olive, lard, and coconut in old-fashioned proportion. The best-balanced of the classic three-oil bars: hard enough to last, mild enough for daily use, and cheap to make.
- Gentle Grove 53%Olive and soybean with a generous slug of castor. Very low cleansing and very conditioning. A soft bar that traces slowly and wants a long cure.
- Unscented Dog Bar 50%Mild, high-superfat, and deliberately fragrance-free. Leave essential oils out -- several, tea tree especially, are toxic to dogs. Check with your vet before washing a dog with any soap.
Sorted by how much of each recipe is olive oil; 27 more recipes use it too. Open the calculator to load any of these from the recipe library.
Use Olive Oil in a recipe → Added at 0% - you set the amount