Surfactants

The second way to increase the viscosity of our surfactant-y creations is to increase the size of the micelles. (Please click here for a refresher on micelles!) We learned in the post about increasing mildness that increasing micelle size can reduce irritation, so you’re not only building viscosity, you’re decreasing irritation! (I love two-for-one processes!)...

We’re getting ready to do some formulating, but we need to take a few moments to look at how to thicken our surfactant based creations. There are three ways to thicken a surfactant based creation – increase the concentration of the surfactants, make the micelles larger, or create a gel. (There’s a brief summary about...

Surfactants, by their very nature, are irritating to our skin. The goal when creating surfactant based products is to reduce the irritation to our skin by using milder cleansers, creating blends that enhance mildness, and adding ingredients like cationic polymers, proteins, or emollients. When a surfactant comes into contact with our skin, it can bind...