Infusing oil with herbs is a great way to add color, scent, and beneficial properties to natural skin care and soap recipes. As the basis of home skin care recipes starts with good quality oils, adding herbs allows you to enhance the oils and design customized and unique recipes for massage bars, bath melts, lotions, soaps and more. Using homegrown herbs harvested from your own organic garden is a fun way to personalize your products, but you can also purchase bulk herbs from reliable sources that will be just as effective. No matter how you do it, adding herbs to oils make your beauty products uniquely herbalicious!
It All Starts with the Oils
Infused oils can be substituted in most recipes for natural beauty: soap, body butter, lip balm, and scrubs. Some good choices for oils to infuse are:
- Coconut oil – nourishes and hydrates skin, good for sun-damaged skin
- Sweet almond oil – moisturizing and skin softening
- Grapeseed oil – easily absorbed into skin; light, non-greasy feeling
- Olive oil – greasier but very moisturizing, can clog pores so not for the face
- Jojoba oil – closest to the skins own sebum so it is a great carrier oil and cleanser
Adding Herbs for Healing
Herbal Oils vs Essential Oils
Three Ways to Make Herbal Oils for Natural Beauty Recipes
My journey and infusing oils started when making calendula and chamomile oil for really gentle bum balm for my son’s diaper rash and I’ll admit that it’s expanded to a bit of an obsession. It’s quite fun to try new recipes with different herbal infusions to see the benefits and the natural colors that are produced.
Simply soaking herbs in oil isn’t enough to infuse the oil; it needs to be heated. Luckily, there are a few ways of doing this so you are sure to find one that suits your needs. The following describes how to infuse oils using the stovetop, a slow cooker, or the sun!
The common thread to all methods is to pack as many dried herbs as you can fit into a container, and then pour over the oil so that the herbs are completely submerged. Choose herbs that are completely dry (moisture and oil don’t mix). When the infusing is finished, strain the herbs from the oil with a fine sieve once, then pour the oil through a coffee filter or cheesecloth-lined fine sieve. Store the oil with a tight-fitting lid in a cool, dark place. Generally, infused oil will last up to the best before date on the original package label. Olive oil should last for 2-3 years and coconut oil will last for many years, although spoiling could happen more quickly if contaminants were introduced in the infusing process.
Stovetop Oil Infusing
Use a double boiler to slowly heat the oil and herbs. Pack a handful of herbs in the top of a double boiler, and pour oil over. If you are using coconut oil, which is solid at room temperature, then melt the oil first before adding the herbs. Fill the bottom pot with an inch of water and set the double boiler on medium-low heat to warm up, then turn down to low for a few hours or until the oil becomes aromatic.
Slow Cooker Oil Infusing
The slow cooker method takes longer but it requires less attention than the other methods. Just set it and forget it!
If you have a small slow cooker, or you are doing a large amount of oil, you can add the herbs right into the ceramic bowl and set it on the lowest setting for 8-12 hours.
Note: When making her herbal oils in a crock pot the biggest thing to watch out for is condensation from the lid of the crock pot. If condensation drips into the oil, then it can introduce mold and bacteria. If you’re putting the oils and herbs directly into the crock pot then leave the lid off while you infuse the oils.
To do a number of different herbs in separate oils, you can put the oil/herb combination in mason jars and set those in the slow cooker. Put a lid on each of the jars and leave the lid off the slow cooker. Infuse for the same timing: 8-12 hours on low.
Sun-Infused Oil
Pack herbs into mason jars and pour oil over them. Screw on a lid and set in the sun for 8 hours. The summer sun can be very hot, so this method is best used in cooler months and with large jars. Overheating the oils can remove some of the beneficial properties and this method is one you will have to watch more closely. It doesn’t use any power beyond the sun so you can infuse oils right out in the garden as you harvest your herbs!
Hi Stephanie,
I just finished heat infused oil with calendula, plaintain leaf, chamomile, lavender. Any suggestions on what to do with the herbs waste. Can it be used on something else instead of discard them?
Hi Jeni, some herbalists will use it a second time, but it has much less of the properties. I also don’t add oil into my home compost, so I send it to the city’s hot composting. It’s so hard to throw them away, I know, but thank they for all they have offered and enjoy their beauty in the oils.
Hi there, I’ll be harvesting my own arnica this week. Drying it seems counter productive? Should I harvest then let it wilt for a few days then pack in jars to infuse? I’m hoping to get making salves soon so I’d like to get using what I harvest though I’ll try dry some too for winter. Thoughts?
Hi Nikki, great question! I answer that more thoroughly in this post about lemon balm oil https://gardentherapy.ca/lemon-balm-soap/. I recommend that most herbs are dried because any additional moisture is the window for bacteria. The best bet is to wait for the arnica to dry first, then make the oil. If you are in a hurry, you could make a small batch with wilted herbs to use right away as the shelf life will be less on that one.
Hi there ive used a recipe using fresh rose petals in oil and niw my oil is cloudy ive found your site trying to research im new to this shoujd i have dried out the rose petals to crumbling before soaking in oil im wanting to make body oils and worried im wasting my garden roses xx
Hi this is unbelievable. Is it really that simple? A jar with a lid, pack dry herbs leaving enough room for the oils to cover, tighten the lid… set 24-72 hours or slow cooker for overnight. Do you add water to the slow cooker or just sit the jars in dry? I really wanna try this process for my soap.
You can add water but it might head the oil too much. I usually just set them on a tea towel.