Having an enriching and effective shampoo is an important part of personal care, especially if you deal with dry hair, split ends, or scalp issues. Rather than waste time and money searching through salons and department stores looking for a shampoo that fits your needs, why not take matters into your own hands and make your own?

With only a handful of natural ingredients like coco glucoside, xanthan gum, and your essential oil of choice, you can craft your own high-quality shampoo that is tailored specifically for your needs. Even if you have never made any kind of homemade soap or shampoo before and don’t know the first thing about chemistry, it’s easier than you think to take a formula and make it come alive.

The following tutorial will walk you through the process of making your own moisturizing shampoo, while also helping to explain the benefits of homemade personal care products versus the kind of products you may be used to using. We’ll also cover some of the ingredients in-depth in order to provide more insight into why certain shampoos are more effective than others.

What Are The Benefits of Making Your Own Shampoo?

Why even bother making your own shampoo when you could just go out and purchase the kind you need? There are plenty of shampoos that claim to have moisturizing and other helpful properties that you can find in your local supermarket, so why go through all of the trouble to formulate your own?

There are actually several worthwhile reasons to make your own personal care products, and it’s not just because it’s quite fun and rewarding once you get the hang of it. If you are concerned about the actual effectiveness of the products you use and want to make sure you are nourishing your hair and scalp instead of detracting from it, making your own product is the only way to have full control over the situation.

When you make your own soaps, body washes, or shampoos, you get to decide what goes inside the product. This can be incredibly empowering because rather than a bunch of synthetic chemicals, fillers, or questionable byproducts making their way into your shampoo, you can plainly see each and every component that goes into the formula, so you know that the end product is safe and composed of truly beneficial ingredients.

One of the other key benefits of making your own products is being able to control their effects better. Sure, any product in a store can make a claim, but how many active ingredients does it actually have, and are these active ingredients present in high enough quantities to make any sort of real impact? Often, to cut costs, mass-market soaps and shampoos will include the smallest amount of an ingredient possible to be considered effective in order to save money, no matter how it may affect the product itself. It’s enough for most products to provide basic cleansing and moisturizing properties when they could be doing so much more.

You don’t have to wonder if a product actually has enough of a certain ingredient or will actually be beneficial to use when you make your own. Not only can you decide how potent a product is, but you can hand-tailor its effects. The shampoo we will be crafting below has specific moisturizing benefits, but you could just as easily re-formulate it so that it is more effective for oily hair instead. You could also change the fragrance or consistency, once you understand which ingredients do what and how much you need to use in order to get the desired effect.

Another benefit of crafting your own is that you can make how much or how little as you want in a sitting. All you need is to have enough of each ingredient on hand and you could whip up a massive batch if you and your family go through a lot over the course of a small amount of time. Likewise, if you want to make small batches to create for friends or use only on occasion, you can do that as well. You get to control all aspects of your personal care, which is worth the time it takes to learn how to put a formula together!

What is Coco-Glucoside Made From?

In our shampoo recipe which we will be going through shortly, coco glucoside is featured prominently as our surfactant of choice. If you aren’t already aware of what a surfactant does, it’s an important part of products like shampoos and body washes that helps make certain ingredients more “wet.” Surfactants reduce the surface tension between two liquids and may act as a foaming agent, like in this formula.

Coco Glucoside is an all-natural surfactant that is known for being quite gentle and safe for all skin types. It’s created by mixing coconut alcohol with natural sugars and is easy to use in a wide variety of different personal care products. It is sulfate-free and contains no parabens or diethanolamides. In terms of finding a high-quality product to use in your homemade shampoo that is vegetable-based and ultra-gentle, you can’t go wrong with this ingredient.

What makes this ingredient specifically useful for our purposes here is that this gentle surfactant has a nice foaming property to it, especially when combined with coco betaine, another enriching surfactant that we will be using. For an extra foamy and luscious formula, combining these two ingredients yields great results. As a bonus, they both possess natural cleansing characteristics that make them a perfect choice for inclusion in a shampoo.

The Moisturizing Power of Avocado Oil

Many plant-based substances have natural moisturizing properties, which is why we’re seeing more and more of these ingredients make their way into soaps and shampoos everywhere. Consumers want safe and natural ingredients that will actually benefit their skin and hair and provide lasting benefits and effects. Aloe vera, coconut oil, and similar plant-based ingredients offer effective moisturizing properties and are also safe and gentle, which greatly reduces the need to use any kind of synthetic moisturizer.

Avocados are a vegetable known for their rich assortment of beneficial nutrients, including fatty acids and vitamins, that have burgeoned their popularity as of late. More than ever they are appearing in recipes, and it’s not just because of how tasty they are. These little green vegetables are considered a superfood because of how many nutrients they contain, so it’s no wonder that they also can be used in matters of personal care.

Specifically, avocado oil is a nourishing moisturizer that contains potassium, Vitamin E, and a number of beneficial fatty acids, making it an excellent choice to include in any kind of skin care or hair care product. When you need to bolster the natural moisturizing abilities of a particular product, this vegetable oil is just what you want. These nutrients will actually help improve the condition of your skin by providing it with what it needs in order to be healthy, which is always the better choice compared to the forced effects of synthetic ingredients.

How to Make Your Own Natural Shampoo

The time has come to gather your ingredients and craft your own nutrient-rich all-natural shampoo right in your own home. This is a simple recipe that only requires a few important ingredients, which are listed below:

Ingredients you will need include: xanthan gum (5g), kosher glycerin (10g), coco glucoside (50g), coco betaine (40g), avocado oil (2g), dl-panthenol (5g), patchouli essential oil (2g), jasmine essential oil (1g), and distilled water (80g).

Step 1: Start by mixing your xanthan gum and kosher glycerin together in a glass mixing cup.

Step 2: Slowly mix all of the other ingredients together separately in a similar cup.

Step 3: Add the first mixture into the water.

Step 4: Slowly incorporate the second mixture into the first. Remember to mix slowly and methodically until the mixture looks completely homogenous. You can also use sodium chloride to adjust the thickness if need be.

Step 5: You can add your essential oils into the second mixture or into the final mixture, and adjust accordingly depending on the specific aroma you are trying to create.

As you experiment with making your own shampoo you might want to play around with the ratios a bit to get a consistency that is most desirable for you. The wonderful thing about making your own shampoos and other personal care products is how easy it is to change them and adapt them to your specific needs. This includes adding additional ingredients that can lend other properties to the formula, or increasing one specific ingredient slightly to help amplify its effects.

In the case of this specific recipe, you can easily substitute out these essential oils for others that are more to your liking. However, jasmine essential oil has been known to be beneficial for dry skin, and patchouli gives off a rich earthy fragrance that goes well with this kind of shampoo. These ingredients go well together and would provide a great starting point in case you don’t want to get too experimental with your formulas right off the bat.

What’s great about a shampoo like this is that it is simple to make and is far better for your hair than the vast majority of products you will find on the shelves in your average supermarket. Free of harmful sulfates or abrasive chemicals, and full of nourishing ingredients like plant oils, a simple moisturizing shampoo like this will not only help keep your hair full and vibrant, but your scalp will also benefit from it as well.

It’s more important than ever to switch over to products that are not only good for your body but good for the environment as well. This is so much easier to do when you can source each of the ingredients individually so you know that they are high-quality and that they are actually good for your body and are biodegradable too. Your personal care products should actually positively impact your skin and hair and not contain harmful chemicals. When you craft your own shampoo and other products at home, you don’t have to think twice about the quality, because you know exactly what went into it and how potentially helpful it will be.

Get All of The Ingredients You Need Right Here

If you are ready to start making your own shampoo, all you have to do is pick up the necessary ingredients and tools and you will be well on your way. However, no matter what kind of product you are crafting, whether it is a soap, shampoo, bath bomb, lotion, or anything else, it’s always worth investing in the highest quality ingredients you can get, that way the formula will be most effective and good for your skin and hair.

You don’t have to go far out of your way to get all of the ingredients you need in order to formulate your own shampoos. While it may be difficult to find some of these ingredients in a drug store or market, you can easily find them all online right here at makeyourown.buzz. Our online store has everything you need to put together your own beneficial shampoos or anything else you need to enhance your personal care routine.

As you browse through our extensive selection of ingredients, you will see that our dedication to quality is second to none. We make sure our products are all top grade and well-sourced, and always affordable. We also offer our products in bulk in case you operate your own shop and want to start making your own shampoos or other products. Here at makeyourown.buzz, we make it as easy as possible to jump into the world of shampoo-crafting and soapmaking.

If you are looking for a specific ingredient or want advice on which of our surfactants, emulsifiers, dyes, fragrances, or oils is right for your project, simply give us a call at (888) 583-7738 and we will be glad to help you find what you’re looking for so you can start crafting!