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Soap making mistakes are part of the learning process, especially when you’re just starting out. If you’re a new soap maker, it can feel overwhelming to manage ingredients, track temperatures, and follow safety guidelines—all while hoping that your first batch actually turns out right.
The good news? Most beginner mistakes are easy to avoid with a little preparation and a few key tips.
I still remember the thrill—and nervous energy—of making my very first cold process soap. I had read everything I could find, double-checked every measurement, and hovered over my mixing bowl like I was disarming a bomb. If you’re feeling a mix of excitement and anxiety, you’re in good company.
Soap making might seem complicated at first, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes second nature.
Soapmaking Mistakes
When you’re new to making soap, it’s easy to get intimidated by all the tools, ingredients, and steps involved. From working with lye to figuring out what “trace” actually looks like, there’s a lot to learn—and a lot of room for things to go sideways. But here’s the reassuring part: almost all beginner soap making mistakes can be prevented or corrected without losing your batch.
Beginner bumps are all part of the process, but with a little planning, you can prevent mistakes before they happen.
These are the most common beginner soap making mistakes:
Skipping Safety Equipment
Soap making involves lye, a caustic substance that requires proper handling. One of the most common beginner mistakes is jumping in without the right safety gear. Yes, it might feel like overkill—but safety glasses and gloves are absolutely essential.
Make sure you’re wearing:
- Gloves (chemical-resistant or even kitchen gloves)
- Long sleeves and pants
- Closed-toe shoes
- Safety glasses
- A mask or respirator while mixing lye
Even a small splash can cause a painful burn. A friend of mine once had a tiny drop of lye water hit her cheek, and it didn’t take long to realize something was wrong. Knowing her story, I never make soap without full protection—and you shouldn’t either.
Use a well-ventilated space (like a kitchen with the fan on and a window open) when mixing lye with water. The fumes fade quickly, and once they do, you can remove the mask and get back to soaping.
Measuring Ingredients Incorrectly
If you’re eyeballing measurements or using cups and spoons, stop right there. Soap making requires precision. Always use a digital kitchen scale and measure your ingredients in grams for accuracy.
Run every recipe—yes, even trusted ones—through a soap calculator before you begin. It only takes a few minutes and ensures your lye-to-oil ratio is correct. Mistakes in measurement are one of the fastest ways to end up with lye-heavy or failed soap.
Also, be sure to use distilled water, not tap water. Impurities or hard water can interfere with the soap making process, especially when you’re just starting out.
Making Soap in a Distracting Environment
Soap making isn’t something to do with kids or pets underfoot. A common beginner soap making mistake is trying to multitask or work in a chaotic space.
Choose a quiet, well-lit area with running water, and check off each ingredient as you add it. I like to make soap at night, after the house is quiet. Distractions can lead to missed ingredients or rushed steps—and that can ruin a batch.
Starting with a Complicated Recipe
It’s tempting to jump right into swirling colors and adding essential oils, but that’s one of the biggest mistakes new soap makers make. Stick with a simple soap recipe your first few times. No fragrance oils, colorants, or milk soaps.
Something like this Tallow Soap Recipe with just a few ingredients. If you’re not into tallow, you can choose a recipe from this list of beginner friendly soap making recipes.
Additives like essential oils can speed up trace or cause your batch to seize—meaning it turns into a clumpy mess before you can pour it. Learn the basics first, then experiment once you’re confident with the process.
Obsessing Over Temperature
Many beginner soap makers think the lye and oils must be exactly the same temperature before combining. Not true!
When I first started making soap, I spent hours fiddling with thermometers and cooling bowls just to get them within a degree. Now? I soap at room temperature.
I melt and mix my oils ahead of time and let both the oils and lye water cool naturally to somewhere between 90°F and 120°F. Once they’re in a safe range, I go ahead and combine. It’s simple, safe, and you know what, it works every time!
Our Grandma didn’t have fancy thermometers when they made soap. Aim for a safe range of 90 to 120 degrees for the oils and lye water.
Using the Wrong Tools
Lye is highly reactive with certain materials—especially aluminum and other metals. Use only stainless steel, heavy-duty plastic, or heat-safe glass for containers and utensils.
Avoid wooden spoons (lye will eat them over time) and never reuse soap-making tools for cooking. Label your spatulas, containers, and stick blender as “soap only” to keep your kitchen safe.
Here’s a basic list of soap making tools:
- 2–3 plastic or glass containers
- 2 silicone spatulas (one for lye, one for oils)
- Stick blender
- Thermometer
- Digital kitchen scale
A stick blender is a worthwhile investment and will dramatically reduce mixing time. I found mine at a thrift store and it’s held up for years—just make sure it’s used only for soap.
Handling Lye Incorrectly
Always, always pour lye into water, not the other way around. Pouring water into lye can cause a dangerous volcanic reaction. Mix slowly and carefully, in a ventilated area, and stir until the solution is fully dissolved.
Use a clear glass bowl if possible—it helps you see whether any lye flakes are sitting at the bottom. Undissolved lye can lead to harsh, lye-heavy soap that’s unsafe to use.
Once dissolved and cooled to a safe range, pour the lye solution into your oils—not the other way around—and blend to trace.
You’re Ready to Make Soap!
Every soap maker starts somewhere, and small mistakes are part of the learning process. Now that you know what to watch for, you can avoid the most common soap making mistakes and feel confident moving forward.
Still not ready to dive into cold process soap? Try making a simple melt and pour soap recipe first. Either way, you’re one step closer to creating beautiful handmade soap from scratch.
Soapmaking Resources
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Beginner's Guides
How to Make Soap ~ Soap Making for Beginners
I am interested in making soap for the first time but I don’t know that I want to invest in an immersion blender. How long does it take to hand-stir? I have a strong arm and am used to hand-stirring many things.
I would really recommend an immersion blender for soap making. You can get one for fairly cheap and it can sometimes take hours to stir it by hand.
Ok thanks for the advice! I’ll see if I can find a good used one.
I have an immersion blender but it is metal. Would you suggest getting one that isnt metal except for the mixing blade or will any stick blender work? TIA
If it’s stainless steel then it’s fine but I wouldn’t take a chance on any other metals.
So when you say you mix your lye into your emulsified oils – do you let your lye cool down a bit first?
I have never soaped at room temp but would like to try it.
I mix my lye first and then as it is cooling I weigh my oils and heat them up. Once the lye cools to about 100-110 degrees Fahrenheit, I add the lye solution to the warmed oil. I prefer to mix them when they are both at approximately 100-110.
Hello, I used lavender oil in my batch of soap and it turned brown (more of a dark tan color). Question: Is this soap okay and safe to use? I made it just for me.
Thank you and I look forward to your comment.
Rosann
I’m not sure what recipe you used but as long as you used the proper lye amount in the recipe then it should be safe to use. The color may not be what you were hoping for but it will not affect the safety of your soap.
I did not get my color mixed in correctly and I have dots throughout the soap. Is it ruined? should I rebatch it? It is multi colored soap.
It’s not going to hurt anything if your color didn’t get mixed in correctly If you know for sure that it is the color that caused the issue, then it is simply cosmetic and the soap should be perfectly fine to use.
The blog is really awesome, thanks for sharing with us…
Excellent post and wonderful blog, this sort of interesting posts I really like, keep it up…
Really sound advice regarding safety. The other day I came home and made up some lye. I had a new brand that was powder not balls and I poured it into the water too quickly. The whole thing exploded and all over me. Luckily I am a health care worker and was wearing the same PPE I was at work rather than discarding it. It was the PPE I wear when seeing a COVID patient.
Reflecting on the experience, I would now be in hospital and probably blind if I was not. Cover your eyes. A little sting does no harm but this was three litre of lye water splashed over me. It could have been very different
I am new in soap making but have made lots of batches of melt and pour and cold process soaps. I made my M&P few months age and then wrapped them. I unwrapped a couple of days ago and feel they are sweating a lot and I can see lots of glycerin all over. How do I fix my problem? Any help please.
We used potassium hydroxide instead of sodium hydroxide. Therefore we ended up with liquid soap. Is there a way to doctor this up and make hand soap or is it a complete loss?
I do not believe there’s a way to turn it into a hard soap at this point. Put the recipe you used into a soap calculator (with potassium hydroxide quantities) to makes sure it’s ok for lye/fats balance. If it is, then you should just be able to use it like liquid hand soap as is. Depending on the texture though, you may need to thin it out with water. Good luck!
Thanks a lot for this. But I want to know, how should the texture of the soap be before pouring it into the mold? Should it be thick or watery?
It should be thick. You want the soap to come to trace before you pour it into your molds. “Trace” means that the soap batter is thick enough to leave a faint, fleeting imprint when it’s drizzled across itself. Here is a post on a soapmaking for beginners that walks you through the process step by step. https://practicalselfreliance.com/how-to-make-soap/
Thank you Shannon. I was faffing about like mad with my first batch trying to get the temperatures just so. I read somewhere that it should be 40 degrees C. It went to trace so quickly that I barely had time to get it in the mould before it set!
Thank you for this important reminder. I’ve read and read and read different soap making articles and watched You Tube videos, and, yet, I read your tips on not making mistakes. I really think it’s important and can’t stress enough.
Hi, thank you for this post, really good information. 🙂
I must say that you can use metal with lye, for example stainless steel is great, but never use aluminium with lye!
Hello, I melted an already made soap with water on an aluminium vessel to make some liquid soap for home. Will there be a problem? It looks and feels fine to touch. No lye was involved. Please let me know. Thank you.
Yup, that works fine to make a liquid soap substitute and there’s no issue.
I will be retiring soon and want to make soap. I have watched so many videos and have read so many articles I cant think straight. I am still very confused about the lye calculator. I wish someone in my area would teach a soap making class which would help tremendously. I think I am just to follow a few recipes other people have suggested. Everyone uses olive oil and I dont want to use olive oil. Is there a reason everyone uses it? I really want to make my own recipes but I am not sure what oils will work together. Does anyone know of literature or books that tell you which oils you can mix and which oils you cant. I have seven sisters and we suffered all of our life with eczema. Thank goodness my grandmother used many of her down south recipes on our skin which helped tremendously. I would like to make a bar of soap for my grandaughter who already has very sensitive skin. I would like to make a bar of soap made from apricot oil, borage oil, aloe vera, shea butter oatmeal, honey an vitamin e. I am not sure if these can be mixed together and if it will make a good bar of soap. Does anyone have resources that could help me.
Here is a good soap calculator that you can use to help you in your journey.
http://soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcwp.asp
UPDATED Questions:
So my first batch of soap had coconut milk(risky 😂) it was fine(made sure it didn’t burn) then I added titanium dioxide(coz I simply wanted a white bar and not an off white soap) and it was still fine…until I used the fragrance oil and the world crumbled down! 😂 It seized and left it for few minutes and it became soft again but not really smooth…I poured it into the mold and accepted its fate. When I washed the utensils used, it was fun to see that the batter leftovers actually turned into soap and bubbled really nice(I was wearing gloves still so it didn’t touch my skin).
Q❓Since it seized in the first place and became soft then poured into the mold, is it safe to use if I still follow the cure time? Or I should have done the Rebatching and hot processed it instead since it siezed?
Right after it, I wanted to make it right so I decided to do everything again…but there’s a high chance that the second batch had miscalculations due to the scale acting up. I only noticed it when I was measuring the lye last. Now, I have a feeling that the whole thing is messed up or maybe it was just the lye. I guess there’s too much water or oil since the scale was acting up and didnt notice it..
Q❓In case it’s just the lye and in case I used not enough lye, how would I know? What are the signs?
Q❓If I used not enough lye, will the “soap” still be usable(not necessarily harden) like a soft lotion bar due to it having too much oil?
Q❓Or there’s no hope and rebatching or throwing the whole thing are the only true options?
-I got a nice trace and was even able to color and make swirly tops(no fragrance this time) so I’m not sure if the lye amount with water was fine or not. After 24 hrs after placing it in the freezer, I took it out and it looks like it’s sweating oils on top. I tried to wipe it but it started again after a few minutes. I checked again after few hours and it looks like they got absorbed back coz I barely see the droplets. Is that normal? Also, I used more coconut and palm than olive oil…my batch is still soft but not too soft…I just know I can’t remove it out of the mold just yet. It’s like semi hard. You think I just continue to let it “cure” if it’s gonna harden? Or it should have hardened already after 24-48 hrs?
I know I made a lot of risk for my first few attempts but I know how to fix them next time.
These are not problems I’ve ever personally experienced, but I did a bit of research for you.
This is a great article on soap seizing and how to save it: https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/soap-behaving-badly/
It suggests, “The work around: This batch had so many issues that it would be hard to salvage. If it’s not lye heavy, making it into rebatch is always an option (for more on rebatch, check out this tutorial or this Soap Queen TV episode). If you determine it’s lye heavy by doing a zap test or using a pH strip, consider making it into laundry detergent, which is easy to make and ensures no soap goes to waste. If the soap is fairly soft and fresh, Hot Process Hero is the way to go to salvage the batch. It’s a variation on the traditional hot process method that creates a rustic bar of soap.”
Since you don’t know if there was too much lye in the batch, here’s how to test for that: https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/test-ph-red-cabbage/
Given how much uncertainty you have here though, and you don’t know how much of anything went in it’s tricky to know what to suggest. With how many things went wrong with this batch, if it were my batch of soap, my inclination would be to toss it and start again.
Thank you for posting this article. It is very thorough and helpful to get new soapers started. Great advice all around.
I made a beautiful batch of goat milk soap yesterday to which I added lavender blossoms and lavender essential oil. It was smooth creamy white medium trace. About 3 hours after I poured it into my molds it turned an ugly brown. Any thoughts?
There’s a great article on soap browning here: https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/why-did-my-soap-turn-brown/
It sounds like lavender, along with lots of other fragrances, contains a compound can cause soaps to brown. The article above has suggestions for how to counteract that chemical reaction.
I’m thinking that your oils were possibly too hot when you added your goat’s milk and lye mixture. This can cause scorching of the goat’s milk. I always cool my oil and lye mixture to 150 before I add the goat’s milk.
I am grateful i read this article actually I have made batches of soap for 4 times and all keep having fault the last time I made it refused to get dried please what can I do because i don’t want to quit
Great advice. How do you deal with hard soap? I made a lemon one, no colorants just lemon fragrance and lemon juice per book and i was not able to cut the soap. Could it be over mixing? The lye and everything else were measured out as the book stated.
Two things that I know of that might result in a hard soap. The first, and most likely, is that the soap got overheated while you were making it. The second is that the percentage of butters, like shea butter or cocoa butter was too high. Since you were following a recipe, the second one doesn’t seem as likely.
Yes I agree with Kayla, glass, even toughened glass such as Pyrex should NEVER be used with lye. Lye will etch into glass and it could fail with possibly catastrophic consequences.
The only thing I would change is no using glass. The lye cab eat away at the glass and cause chipping and eventual breakage!
Thanks for the safety information. Am new in soap making, each time I tried out my recipe, l do have a stable and unstable results at different occasions.
Very good tips here. I wish I had read this before making soap many, many years ago! You also summed up my feelings perfectly the first time I made soap. Now that I am a seasoned soap maker, I still enjoy reading these types of articles as it never hurts to be reminded to be safe! Thank you for a great article.
Cheryl,
I hear you – I know I read a lot of misinformation in the beginning too. You’re so right – safety is always something I’m reminding myself of too. In a soap making group I’m in, one seasoned soap maker shared that a grain of lye bounced up and hit her eye. Right under her safety glasses! Crazy!!! Inspired me to get a pair of goggles instead of safety glasses. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment 🙂
Shannon
Boy am I glad I read this article !!! Another website/recipe did not mention that lye does not mix with metal !! My first batch could have been my last ! Thank You !!!
Oh my! That would have been terrible Romy. Glad you prevented disaster. Stainless steel is the only metal that is ok, personally I just avoid it to stay on the safe side. Have you tried making your first batch yet?
Shannon
Ive been using a blue canner on the stove to make my soap for 18 years and it works great. Just like my grandmother did! LOL!