Substitutes for soap

Avocado oil substitutes in soap

Avocado oil behaves much like olive oil, and in the bar below olive oil is the closest thing to it, so leaving avocado out and giving its share to the olive oil changes almost nothing. High-oleic sunflower, rice bran and hazelnut oil come next. Avocado’s wide saponification range is the one thing to watch: the calculator uses the middle of 170–202 mg KOH/g, and the others sit in narrower bands.

The bar they are tried in

Avocado oil20 %
Olive oil35 %
Coconut oil25 %
Shea butter20 %

NaOH · 1000 g · Superfat 5 % 138.4 g

The bar: 20 % avocado oil, at a 5 % superfat, for 1,000 g of oils. The rest: 35 % olive oil, 25 % coconut oil, and 20 % shea butter. As it is, it needs 138.4 g of sodium hydroxide.

Open the bar in the lye calculator

The substitutes, closest first

Substitute	Sodium hydroxide, g	With the lye left as it was
1Nothing in its place: olive oil takes its share	139.0	5.4 %barely moves
2High-oleic sunflower oil	138.7	5.2 %barely moves
3Rice bran oil	138.9	5.3 %barely moves
4Hazelnut oil	139.4	5.6 %recalculate
5Macadamia oil	139.7	5.8 %recalculate
6Sweet almond oil	139.7	5.8 %recalculate

With the lye left as it was: the superfat when the sodium hydroxide weighed for the bar as it is goes in with the substitute, planned at 5 %. Each lye figure opens that bar in the lye calculator, which works out the lye for it.

What each does to the bar

	Hardness	Cleansing	Conditioning	Bubbly lather	Creamy lather	Iodine value	INS	Linoleic and linolenic acid, %
As it is, with avocado oil	38	17	57	17	21	59	145	9.4
Nothing in its place: olive oil takes its share	38	17	58	17	21	59	146	8.8
High-oleic sunflower oil	36	17	60	17	19	59	146	8.1
Rice bran oil	39	17	57	17	22	63	142	12.8
Hazelnut oil	37	17	60	17	19	60	146	8.6
Macadamia oil	37	17	55	17	20	58	148	6.8
Sweet almond oil	36	17	61	17	19	62	145	11.2
Usual range	29–54	12–22	44–69	14–46	16–48	41–70	136–165

Closest means the smallest total change across these figures, each counted against the width of its usual range, as the lye calculator’s swap suggestions count it. It is a convention, not a verdict on the bar: a butter that matches on paper can still melt lower, crack or smell, which the note above and the guides cover.

Guides

The soaping oils: what each one brings to a bar

Substitutes for other oils

Where these numbers come from

Every figure here is worked out from the oil records, each with its sources on its own page: