No Foam Face Wash

Hello Everyone!

I tried a sample of a face wash a while back and I liked it so much that I decided to remake it keeping most of the ingredients. The result is an extremely delicate face wash that makes close to no foam (but still does cleanse 😉 ).

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I find this kind of formula to work great with my face cleansing brush or sponge. The consistency is quite thick, a little less than syrup, but it is absolutely not sticky: on the contrary, it has a soft, velvety and cushion-like feel 😉 and the fact that it makes close to no foam for me is absolutely a plus!

[On a totally different note: for this formula I have finally decided to use the fragrance oil Osmanthus from Sensory Perfection and IT IS AMAZING! From the bottle it had a very strong scent and I couldn’t really understand if I liked it or not… well, now I know that I definitely do!!!]

FORMULA:

This formula has a unique phase, but the ingredients must be added in the order I write them (follow the instructions ok? 🙂 ):

Glycerin – 11% 
Water to 100% 
Hydroxypropyl Guar – 2% 
Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate – 12% 
Hydrolized Proteins – 0.4% 
Disodium Cocoamphodiacetate – 1.5% 
Phenoxyethanol and Ethylhexylglycerin – 0.6% (this is the preservative I have used, you can use another one, but then you need to check at which % it needs to be added and you need to be sure it is ok to be used with surfactants and also check at which pH it is stable)
Fragrance Oil – q.s. 
Food Colorant – totally optional (q.s.) 

HOW TO: 

  1.  Calculate the amount of water you need to add
  2. Measure glycerin and water in a beaker, heat it up a little, stir it fast with a spoon until the water forms a sort of cone/vortex.
  3. Pour the pre-measured guar powder inside of this vortex.
  4. The “difficult” part is finished: now add all the other ingredients and eventually mix with an immersion mixer just to have everything blended well.

 

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Well,hope you enjoyed this very simple formula! 😉
Let me know what you think about it if you try it!

 

 

39 thoughts on “No Foam Face Wash”

  1. Hello, I am making a diy conditioning shampoo with liquid Castillo soap, Coco glucoside, botanical extracts, silk amino acid, coconut milk, oils, guar gum, and citric acid. However, I am noticing that the mixture is separating after a few days. Please help? I tried to add a little polysorbate 20. But it is still separating. Please help. Carli

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    1. It is the Castille soap. I have many posts that explain how to formulate a shampoo and I have many formulas that you can try as well.

      Just on a side note: did you make the soap? Did you use sodium hydroxide?

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      2. Hello Ella!
        Thank you for your kind comment.
        I keep formulating but I tend to be more and more picky with my results so I wait longer time before I post a formula and after some weeks I start finding defects or things I would have loved to do better 😀 I think this is why!
        But it is in my intentions to post again 😉

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      3. I understand because your posted formulars are spot on and you have me hooked on your page.🖒🖒🖒🖒. How do i subscribe to get notifications when you post?

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      4. There should be a place where you can leave your email, on the main page. Or you can like the facebook page and add it to the priority pages so you will see any new post immediately 🙂

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  3. Hey I’m loving all your posts and I’m finding it very helpful! I’m attempting to make a face mask but unsure of the mixing process. I understand there’s different phases that need to be mixed separately these are the ingredients: polyvinyl alcohol, hyaluronic acid, polyethylene glycol, glycerin, propylene glycol, citric acid, sodium citrate, peg-90 glyceryl isostearate, fragrance, methylparaben, tocopherol,xanthan gum, water. I know it’s a stretch asking for help with this but I really don’t know how to mix these. I have the formula but I’d really appreciate your help with this! Please! 🙏🏼 If you’d prefer to email me you of course can at ablackstarco@hotmail.com

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    1. Hello Rebecca. I guess it is a film making mask? I have never used polyvinyl alcohol so I am not sure. I could try to find out but why do you want to make such a mask?
      Why wouldn’t you rather use more active ingredients? Why not make it a creamy mask?

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      1. It’s a peel off face mask. I’m trying to make a moisturizing peel off face mask for easy removal.

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      3. But my two cents are: peel off masks are not as performing as creams. If you think about it, they are made of ingredients that form a film on the skin once the water portion evaporates.
        Yes, they look cool and so they feel effective and therefore they SELL, but I believe that if you really wanted hydration, you would be better off with a simple hyaluronic acid serum (for example).
        Just my two cents 🙂

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  4. I just discovered this blog and it’s amazing! I love the information – where did you learn? I have been struggling to find courses in the UK – I have seen a few online but I prefer to have someone check what I am doing as I do it. Failing that, I think it would be cheaper to buy a book. The courses I have seen are £400+

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    1. The preserving system I am using here doesn’t work well in systems where the surfactant matter is high.
      Here it is very low so it doesn’t form any issue.
      Plus I always work following GMP and I make extremely small batches (in this case I made 200 grams). 😉

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      1. so from what % is it considered high? I am really interesting on how this preservative works, since it failed me recently on a cream with xanthan and lecithin among other materials

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      2. That’s a totally different formula and it might not work well in that formula.
        Lecithin already is difficult to preserve, really o its own. It also depends on the other materials. To make it really simple consider this: proteins, plant extracts, sugars… And so on are really yummy food for bacteria and fungus.
        If you want you can post the formula and I can tell you what might have been the issue… But lecithin itself is already a very tricky ingredient to preserve.
        I suggest you to get another emulsifying system which will also improve the overall stability of the formula.

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  6. Speaking of Face Wash – I use ‘Benefit, Foamingly Clean Facial Wash’ and it does seem to remove the early morning grease from my face. There is just something about foam that mentally makes me feel cleaner lol Unfortuntely it is £20 and I am wondering if I could make it myself. My biggest problem is always finding the ingredients here in the UK – just feels like I have a limited choice compared to the US. Anyway can I have your thoughts on the ingredients – I am gonna have an educated guess on % used and see if I can find similar ingredients from places like Gracefruit.com

    WATER (AQUA), GLYCERIN, PEG-32, PALMITIC ACID, STEARIC ACID, SODIUM LAUROYL GLUTAMATE, POTASSIUM HYDROXIDE, LAURIC ACID, MYRISTIC ACID, FRAGRANCE (PARFUM), GLYCERYL STEARATE, PEG-100 STEARATE, PHENOXYETHANOL, POLYQUATERNIUM-10, LINALOOL, TETRASODIUM EDTA, HEXYL CINNAMAL, LIMONENE, CITRONELLOL, BHT. N?? 05419/N

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    1. Foam doesn’t “mentally” make you feel cleaner: it DOES take away more grease than less foamy formulas (even keeping the ingredients all the same, if you increase the concentration of surfactant matter, the result is a more “degreasing” detergent).
      I believe you have a much wider choice than buying from UK only. There are so many shops in Europe that ship even worldwide.
      I personally don’t like PEG-32 (but it is not the devil, it is just my preference) and I don’t like using liquid soap on my face (palmitic, stearic, lauric acids with te potassium hydroxide mean that the base of this face wash is a liquid soap made with palm oil and palm kernel oil, probably).
      It doesn’t work well with my skin (too delicate) so I have never formulated anything mixing handmade liquid soap with other surfactants (like the sodium lauroyl glutamate).
      You would just have to experiment! 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Thanks for the response! It never crossed my mind it was a liquid soap. I can’t wait to have your level of knowledge, I feel so frustrated sometimes. I found one website called Skin chakra that seemed to have lots of ingredients but they said postage to UK was £17 even if I buy one thing. 😦 I want to experiment just don’t have the ingredients.
        Do you by any chance know the difference between Sodium Lauroyl Glutamate and Sodium Cocoyl Glutamate? Google says one is coconut based and one is lauric acid. I am planning to buy some surfactants but still trying to figure out what’s going on lol sorry very amateur over here

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      2. I think they are very similar if not the same thing. 🙂
        Also I would like to buy from SkinChakra! They look like they have good ingredients and I have been stopped by the shipping expenses as well.
        However there are many other websites which are a little cheaper… OR you could find other UK based people who want to learn making cosmetics so that you can buy together and share the shipping! That’s what I did in the beginning! 🙂

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    2. Yes, I know they are hard to preserve!! I now changed that formula and used different emulsification system, hope I have no other problems. Excuse me for insisting, but from what percentage is somethig considered high in surfactants? So I use this preservative correctly when I make shampoo for example

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      1. It doesn’t work exactly like this: there are many factors which can make a formula more or less stable for other ingredients.
        Preserving is a very complicated subject.
        There are cosmetic chemists who are specialized in creating a suitable preserving system for each formula they are facing: so, as sad as it is, there is no possibility to think “this preservative is great so I use this all the time”.
        Some surfactants might have a stronger power in making the life difficult to the preserving system we are talking about and we have no way (unless we have a laboratory) to actually TEST our formulas. So there is NO WAY we can be really sure that our formulas are stable and free from issues.
        In the case of this specific formula,
        it has a very low concentration of mild surfactants and so I have chosen to use that preserving system because I know it has issues in high concentration of surfactants and I have kept the pH range which is suitable for this preserving system… but there is no way to be really sure about the safety of our cosmetics unless we properly get them tested in a lab.

        This is also why it is so ESSENTIAL (not sufficient, but essential) to follow GMP all the time: because it lowers the possibility of bad things happening.

        It is tricky to preserve surfactants, generally speaking, because they have the tendency to get in the way of the preservatives. This is a general statement, but it is true.

        When one cannot test the products, one has to have a good knowledge of ingredients, GMP and formulating.

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  7. Sorry, me again. I keep bothering you today. How do you calculate what % you need? Like how do you know you need 11% Glycerin? I am thinking to learn how to substitute and I’d like to try this recipe. I can’t find the Hydroxypropyl Guar (is that the same as Guar gum?) and
    Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate. I can however find cocamidopropyl betaine, coco glucoside, decyl glucoside and sodium cocoyl isethionate prill. Anyway are surfactants interchangable? Like can I swap one ionic one for another? Last message, I think I have bugged you enough today

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    1. I have chosen I wanted a high percentage of glycerin to copy a commercial formula I liked: it had very low foam and in the ingredients list glycerin was the second ingredient. So I figured it was going to be high (and it HAD to be higher than any other ingredient, after water).
      11% was just a guess which worked well. It could have been even 15% or 20% (I haven’t tried those so I can’t really say).

      Now to the surfactants: they are in theory interchangeable HOWEVER since not all anionic (or ionic) surfactants have the same way of working… you should know how the surfactants work in order to know with which you can substitute one.
      For instance: sodium lauroyl sarcosinate is anionic just like SLS or SLES, yet it behaves very differently from these two. It has a very different feel.
      Can you substitute Sarcosinate with SLS or SLES? You can, but you won’t get the same results. You will get a different face wash.

      ps. To know if Hydroxypropyl Guar is the same as Guar Gum, you should check the INCI on the MSDS. It might be the same thing, or it might be together with a quaternary Guar which is not what I have used here.

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  8. Stupid question of the day – is Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate a powder? Is it basically 12g of powder? (If making 100g recipe)

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    1. No it is not a powder, the one I use. It is liquid at approx 30%.
      If you have a different concentration, you have go make the proportions.

      I explained how in the post titled “On surfactants and formulation”

      It wasn’t a stupid question 😉

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      1. So from your post about the active surfactant matter calculation, is it the same with using a powder? So if the powder is 65% active – do I just recalculate? Or do i have to dilute it in water to make a liquid?

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      2. You don’t necessarily have to create a liquid to pour in the formula. The only issue with powders is that some are more soluble than others, some might need heat and so on… However you must do a little experimenting to find these things out, and this is why I find myself more comfy with pre-diluted surfactants (generally speaking).
        So you have to calculate how many grams of that powder at 60% will make up the same surfactant concentration of 12% of SLSarcosinate (at 30%). Then you add that amount to the formula and top up with water (so you reach, again, 100%). 🙂

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  9. Hi there,
    I like your blog so much. I was wondering if you have Patreon so people can donate for the beautiful effort on helping people with so much information.
    In case you do, I would like to contribute.
    Thank you, Alessandra

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  10. Hi. I appreciate all your post in this blog. It’s all awesome. But, for a beginner like me, I am overwhelmed by the amount of new ingredients or surfactant and thickener. I barely heard all of that. Can you please write down any book or good website for a beginner like me to understand a bit more about this whole new level. Thank you

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