Substitutes for soap

Olive oil substitutes in soap

Olive oil fills most of a bar, so what replaces it decides how long the bar keeps. Pomace oil, extracted from the same fruit another way, moves the bar least, and avocado oil comes next. High-oleic sunflower oil is the cheap swap that keeps well: 6.7 % linoleic and linolenic acid in the bar below against 8.1 %, where rice bran and canola oil carry about twice as much.

The bar they are tried in

Olive oil45 %
Coconut oil25 %
Shea butter25 %
Castor oil5 %

NaOH · 1000 g · Superfat 5 % 138.4 g

The bar: 45 % olive oil, at a 5 % superfat, for 1,000 g of oils. The rest: 25 % coconut oil, 25 % shea butter, and 5 % castor oil. 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
1Olive pomace oil	137.6	4.5 %recalculate
2Avocado oil	137.2	4.2 %recalculate
3High-oleic sunflower oil	137.8	4.6 %barely moves
4Hazelnut oil	139.3	5.6 %recalculate
5Macadamia oil	139.9	6.0 %recalculate
6High-oleic safflower oil	138.4	5.0 %barely moves
7Sweet almond oil	139.9	6.0 %recalculate
8Rice bran oil	138.2	4.9 %barely moves
9Canola oil	137.6	4.5 %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.

Side by side: Olive oil vs olive pomace oil Olive oil vs avocado oil Olive oil vs canola oil Olive oil vs high-oleic sunflower oil Olive oil vs rice bran oil Olive oil vs sweet almond oil

What each does to the bar

	Hardness	Cleansing	Conditioning	Bubbly lather	Creamy lather	Iodine value	INS	Linoleic and linolenic acid, %
As it is, with olive oil	39	17	57	21	26	58	147	8.1
Olive pomace oil	39	17	57	21	26	57	146	7.8
Avocado oil	40	17	56	21	27	58	145	9.5
High-oleic sunflower oil	35	17	62	21	23	57	146	6.7
Hazelnut oil	35	17	62	21	23	59	147	7.8
Macadamia oil	37	17	50	22	24	56	151	3.7
High-oleic safflower oil	35	17	62	22	22	60	144	9.1
Sweet almond oil	35	17	63	21	23	63	143	13.7
Rice bran oil	41	17	55	22	28	66	138	17.1
Canola oil	35	17	62	21	22	71	132	16.7
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

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: