DIY Face Moisturizers: Recipes for Every Skin Type and Concern

A good-quality face moisturizer is a must-have in any skincare routine – it protects the skin from environmental influences and nourishes it. However, good quality doesn't necessarily mean expensive – you can easily DIY your own face cream with natural ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen.

So, if you have extra time on your hands (and no extra dollars in your pockets), check out these recipes for cost-effective DIY face moisturizers and choose the one for your skin type and needs.

Essential Ingredients and Tools for DIY Face Moisturizers

Before getting into the recipes themselves, let's break down some essential ingredients and tools you'll need for making your face cream at home:

• Water phase: boiled water, distilled water or hydrolats, as well as hydrating ingredients or humectants (like aloe vera gel, glycerin, and others) and any other water-soluble ingredients;
• Oil or lipid phase: plant oils or butters and emulsifiers (combining oil and water base);
• Cool down phase: natural preservatives (plant extracts and antioxidants that prolong the shelf life of your cream); natural fragrance (adding fragrance is always optional, but if you want your DIY moisturizer to have a pleasant scent, you can add several drops of non-irritating essential oil);
• Tools: cooking dishes as well as mixing and measuring devices.

Choosing Oils and Butters

To choose the suitable oil base for your moisturizer, you first need to determine your skin type. So, if you have dry skin, you can select cocoa butter and almond oil, argan oil, or coconut oil for the oil base. On the other hand, those with oily skin will greatly benefit from kokum butter or mango butter as well as grapeseed oil and jojoba oil. And finally, if you have a combination or sensitive skin, go for shea butter and avocado oil.

Water or Hydrolats

For the water phase of your DIY face lotion, you can either opt for freshly boiled water, distilled water, or ready-made hydrolats (also called hydrosols), such as rose water, for example. Hydrolats are essentially water obtained from steam that occurs during the distillation processes. Even though the same process is used when extracting essential oils from various plants, compared to essential oils, hydrolats or hydrosols are much gentler on the skin.

Since making a hydrolat requires some skill, we'll use boiled water that has cooled in today's recipes (if you have distilled water, you can use that instead). However, if you want to use a hydrolat, we'd suggest going for the one made of chamomile as it's soothing, nourishing, and suitable for every skin type.

Natural Emulsifiers

Emulsifiers are substances that bind incompatible ingredients, such as oil and water. The molecules in emulsifiers expand and combine with other molecules when heated. In the cooling process, the bond between the emulsifier's molecules and the molecules of other ingredients becomes stronger. In our case, it helps build a smooth viscosity and stability to the DIY moisturizer.

One of the most common natural emulsifiers is lecithin which can be obtained from sunflower seeds and soybeans. It's an effective emulsifying agent with added emollient properties. However, if your skin is too sensitive to emulsifiers, you can use stabilizers or thickeners instead, such as xanthan gum, beeswax, carbomer, and sometimes even bentonite clays.

Suppose you want to avoid adding any stabilizers or emulsifiers altogether. In that case, you need to ensure your oil/lipid base and water base are well blended and mixed. If the ingredients start to separate at any point, have a designated spatula for mixing your cream before applying it to your face.

Natural Preservatives

Preservatives are always added to water-based skincare products to kill microbes and prevent mold and bacteria from developing quickly. On the other hand, antioxidants, such as rosemary extract and vitamin E, are also added to prevent butters and oils in the products from going rancid.

Some of the most commonly used preservatives in homemade skincare preparations are Leucidal SF Complete, Leucidal SF Max, Leucidal Liquid Complete, Amticide Coconut, and Willow Bark Extract, to name a few. These are combinations of various plant extracts (such as coconut, radish, and willow bark) and fermented Lactobacillus. Lactobacillus is a type of probiotic or good bacteria typically found in milk and the human digestive tract.

However, if your skin is easily sensitized and can't tolerate any preservatives, make smaller batches of homemade cream at a time, just enough for 6 to 10 applications. If you add a preservative, you should still make sure to keep your DIY lotion in a fridge and use it up in less than five months.

Choosing Essential Oils

If you suffer from acne or any other skin condition, or you simply have extremely sensitive skin, you should avoid using essential oils. On the other hand, if you tolerate them well, why not add some lovely-smelling essential oil to your DIY moisturizer and have that complete luxurious feel and therapeutic effect when using it.

Besides their pleasant smell, essential oils also offer specific benefits for the skin, such as anti-aging and nourishing. And so, you should choose the essential oil according to your skin type and concerns:

• If you have extremely dry skin, you'll love these oils due to their emollient and protective properties: lavender, myrrh, geranium, carrot seed, sandalwood, and cucumber seed oil;
• If your skin is predominantly oily, go for essential oils that will balance the natural sebum production of your skin, improve its texture, and calm any inflammation, such as tea tree oil, lemon, fennel, and rosemary essential oil;
• If you're looking for something with anti-aging effects, choose rose oil, sandalwood, lavender, frankincense, geranium, pomegranate, wild carrot, or clary sage essential oil.

Dishes and Tools

For cooking your own moisturizer at home, you'll need basic equipment. First, you'll need two stainless steel bowls or heatproof glasses for mixing, cooking, and melting your water phase and your oil phase separately. It would be good to have a small precise scale for measuring, but if you don't have it, a measuring cup will do the trick. And finally, you'll need a small whisk and a smaller eggbeater, immersion blender, or drill mixer to emulsify the ingredients into a smooth bend.

How to Make Homemade Face Moisturizers

First of all, you should choose the right combination of ingredients. The ingredients you want to go for, as we have already said, will largely depend on your skin type. Also, it's important to establish whether you want an all-natural night cream, day cream, or something that targets specific issues on your skin, such as wrinkles, hyperpigmentation, or acne.

So, here are some of our favorite DIY face moisturizer recipes for dry, oily, acne-prone, sensitive, and aging skin:

How to Use Your DIY Moisturizer

You can use your homemade face cream in the evening and in the morning. After washing your face with a gentle cleanser, apply your toner and serum, and apply the moisturizer last. This is because all of the formulas are oil-based, creating an excellent shield on your skin that protects it from the environment, but prevents other skincare ingredients from reaching your skin. In addition, these DIY moisturizers will strengthen the natural skin barrier and prevent transepidermal water loss.

If you have excessively oily skin or combination skin, use the formula created specifically for oily skin types, and apply it only before going to bed. Even though the DIY face cream for oily skin contains kokum butter and grapeseed oil, both of which are easily absorbed by the skin, it can still be a bit heavy for daytime use.

How You Can Customize the Formula

If you find your magic formula, we would suggest always sticking to it and periodically changing the ingredients to those with similar benefits you're looking for in skincare. Also, this way, you'll prevent your skin from getting used to a specific set of ingredients, and your DIY cream will always have the same efficacy.

Also, if you don't have some of the ingredients, such as glycerin, colloidal oatmeal, or aloe vera gel, you can leave them out and just add an extra milliliter of your water phase, be it boiled or distilled water, or a hydrolat.

In addition, if you want to boost the formula for some additional benefits, you can always add other ingredients. And so, for example, if you're struggling with hyperpigmentation, you can customize any of these recipes and add one teaspoon of turmeric powder. Turmeric contains curcumin and kojic acid that have exfoliating and skin-lightening effects, making it a perfect all-natural ingredient for hyperpigmentation.

How Long Will Your DIY Face Cream Last?

Once you make your natural face cream, store it in the refrigerator, preferably in tinted airtight glass jars or plastic containers, for no longer than four to five months.

Remember that natural cosmetics can quickly go rancid regardless of the preservatives we added. So make sure to wash the tools you're using for making it as well as the containers for packaging beforehand. Also, be sure to always wash your hands well before applying it to your face – or even better, have a designated plastic or metal spatula for taking the cream out of its container.

For this reason, it would be best to make smaller batches at a time, so you can use it up as soon as possible, before it goes bad or rancid, and avoid potential side effects, such as acne and other inflammatory skin issues.

Takeaway...

Nature has given us a large selection of incredible ingredients that can be used in your daily skin care. Simply choose the best ingredients for your skin type and needs and follow the basic recipe for preparing your DIY face moisturizer.

First, prepare the water phase and the oil phase separately. Then add all the necessary natural emulsifiers and preservatives, as well as essential oils if you wish. Have fun making a small lab in your kitchen, and experiment with different formulas until you find a perfect one for you.

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