This Sunshine Candle Works pure refined palm oil is the soap-making ingredient that turns soft, fast-melting bars into the harder, longer-lasting bars commercial soap makers produce. Palm oil contributes the saturated fatty acid content that increases soap bar hardness — meaning a bar made with palm oil in the recipe lasts measurably longer in the shower than one made with only liquid oils.
For cold-process and hot-process soap makers, palm oil is one of the four standard base oils (coconut, olive, palm, and palm kernel) that form the backbone of most American soap recipes. Each oil contributes different properties — coconut gives bubbly lather, olive gives mildness, palm gives hardness, palm kernel gives both bubbles and hardness. Mix-and-match recipes produce the specific bar properties you’re looking for.
This is the base ingredient — buy in volume rather than per-bar quantities since serious soap making goes through significant oil weight per batch. Lehman’s catalog stocks the matching pure coconut oil from Sunshine Candle Works as well, plus the soap molds, fragrance oils, and color additives that complete a full soap-making kit.
