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Plant-Based Body Butter

Making Plant Based Body Butters for Skin & Hair

High-quality plant-based body butter is essential for hair and skin. Each type of body butter contains essential plant fats. These fats feature moisturizing, healing, and protective properties that restore and beautify the skin and hair. Creamy and smooth, plant-based body butters also create an ideal consistency for application onto the skin. They last for a long time, and they don’t leave any greasy residue behind. When you plan to make plant-based body butters, soaps, creams, or other products for you or someone else, here are some considerations to keep in mind.

Unrefined Versus Refined

Unrefined body butters retain their strong natural scents and their vivid colors. The refining process makes use of cheesecloth and other natural membranes to filter some of the sediments in the butter fats. This filtering process creates a refined butter that’s smooth, consistent in texture, and similar in appearance from one batch to the next. We offer unrefined shea and cocoa butter as well as naturally refined mango and kokum butter.

Texture

If you have sensitive, dry, irritated, or flaky skin, you may prefer a smooth, consistent texture in your plant-based body butter. The refining process removes some of the natural graininess of shea, kokum, mango, and cocoa butter. Another aspect of body butter to consider is the softness. Refined plant-based body butter softens at a slightly lower temperature. This makes it easier to warm the butter in your hands and spread it over your skin, scalp, or hair. If you prefer the grainy, natural texture of unrefined butter, you can melt the butter in a double-boiler on a low heat setting. Doing this makes it easy to spread onto your body.

Color

When you’re making a custom blend with your plant-based body butter, its color may be an important consideration. Unrefined butters have a yellowish or cream color. Shea and cocoa butter have the deepest natural colors. The refining process removes most of the color-causing pigments from plant-based body butters. If you choose a refined body butter base, it may appear nearly white to ivory or a light shade of cream. If you desire to change the color of the body butter with the addition of essential oils or other compounds, you’ll have more success with refined butters.

Scent

Plant-based body butters have refreshing natural scents that don’t require the addition of essential oils or other ingredients. However, the addition of essential oils allows you to customize your products and enjoy additional antioxidant and antiseptic properties. You can use body butter as aromatherapy and skincare at the same time. Mango butter has a light, fruity scent. Cocoa butter’s scent increases as it gets warm on your skin. It smells of chocolate. Kokum butter has a barely detectable smell with slightly nutty or earthy undertones. Refined shea butter has a subtle, earthy odor. The unrefined shea has a much stronger aroma that’s difficult to hide even with concentrated essential oils.

If you’re ready to put your DIY hat on and make some plant-based body butter, we have all the supplies you need to do that right here at Better Shea Butter. Order what you need online and then check out our youtube videos about how to do it right. Don’t worry if you mess up a batch. As you experiment, you’ll discover a body butter that you and others can’t get enough of!