The Best Sources for Soap Making Supplies
Inside: a curated list of all the best places to buy soap-making supplies: everything from fragrance to molds to oils.

Soap making is one of those hobbies that can get expensive…fast.
The good news is, once you invest in basic tools and oils, you’re set for a while and can make dozens of bars. The bad news is the more you make, the more you’ll want fancy molds, new fragrances, and pretty colors!
That’s okay! Let’s go over the best places to get all of these things! A few items are essential for beginners, and you’ll find those marked with a star.
Table of Contents
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Soap Making Ingredients

Supplies
- ⭐️ A digital scale that can measure in ounces and grams (essential)
- ⭐️ A stick blender (essential)
- ⭐️ Safety gear, including gloves and goggles (essential)
- ⭐️ A mold of some sort (essential, but you can make your own)
A Word About Molds
You can use a box lined in parchment paper if you want to, but I recommend a basic 10-inch mold or 12-cavity bar mold for your first batch. Keep an eye on the batch size of your recipe.
- The recommended bar mold is available on Amazon (it requires more pouring work, but you don’t have to slice anything).
- Nice quality loaf-style mold (Easy to pour, but you’ll have to cut the bars)
If you find that you love this hobby, many beautiful choices exist. You can find silicone molds with imprint designs, solid wooden molds for making swirls, and much more.
Looking for the best soap-making books? Find a list of my favorites here.
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Best Lye for Soap-Making
You have a few options here. Lye typically comes in either flakes or little bead-like pellets. I find the pellets easier to pour and measure.
⭐️ Nurture is my preferred source for lye, as they carry the pellet form, and I can be sure I’m getting the right thing.⭐️ (Yes, lye is essential for making cold-process soap!)
You can also find lye at hardware stores, where it is sold as a drain cleaner. You must be sure you are buying pure lye (it might also be labeled sodium hydroxide).
Sourcing Bulk Oils
Do not order food-grade oils when you’re looking for bulk oils such as olive, palm, or coconut. They are extremely expensive, not because there is anything wrong with them!
The best Source for Affordable Bulk Oils
Nurture Soap is my favorite source of oils. They are affordable and have free shipping.
- Their coconut oil comes in two convenient sizes that aren’t too big but will still make dozens and dozens of bars.
- They also carry sustainably sourced palm oil at a competitive price.
Other Good Choices
- Brambleberry.com is more expensive and has expensive shipping, but its products are very good quality, and its customer service is wonderful. They also have a great selection of harder-to-find oils and butters.
- Amazon is a good choice for smaller quantities of things like castor oil or shea butter.
Finding Soap Bases
If you like melt-and-pour soap, you only need a base, a mold, and any additional products you want. Melt-and-pour bases can be pricey, but they are a great choice if you don’t want to deal with formula percentages, new supplies, and other somewhat complicated elements of soap making.
- Bulk Apothecary has a great selection of melt-and-pour soaps to customize, everything from goat milk to shea butter to clear glycerin soaps. They are purchased by weight, which can be a very affordable way to make a small bar size.
Where to Buy Fragrance Oils
The world is your oyster here! You can find fragrance oils on Amazon, in some craft stores, and, of course, from reputable soap-making companies such as Nurture Soap and Brambleberry.
You can often find collections of smaller fragrance sizes to test out what you like, or even email the companies and ask for samples.
Fragrance in soaps is optional but one of the most fun parts of the process.
Some personal favorite fragrances:
- Comfort and Joy, from Nurture Soap, is a complex Christmas scent I use all year.
- Mango Mango is my number one fragrance, a sweet, fruity fragrance that I add to my popular shower soap recipe.
- Sweet Pea, from Amazon, is a sweet floral that’s super-feminine but young.
- Awaken, available here, is a fresh citrus perfect for shower soap.
Colorants for Soap-Making
- Color is mostly my preference, but the micas found at Nurture Soap come through very well. You can order very small sizes and build up a library of colors to choose from
Other Body Supplies
Most soap-making suppliers also carry what you need to make lotions, bath bombs, homemade hand cream, and lip balms. Many of these ingredients will be used in all these products, so if you want to make homemade items beyond soap, don’t be afraid to buy them in bulk.
Remember that each company mentioned here is full of kind people who can help you with any specific question you have about ingredients or supplies, and you can always leave me a comment here.
Now What?
Start with some recipes! See what oils appeal to you, and go from there.
Some of my most popular:

By Katie Shaw
Katie lives in Virginia with her husband, three daughters, a chocolate lab, and over thirty chickens. She loves creating simple tutorials for sourdough, bread, and soap. Her recipes, articles, and YouTube videos reach millions of people per year.