A face scrub is such an important part of your skincare routine. It’s something we all do once or twice a week, and it’s easy to forget it. However, did you know that a good quality face scrub is an easy way to get ultra soft, smooth, and radiant-looking skin?
It’s true, and to prove it I’ve made several face scrub recipes for you to try, one of my new favorites is the DIY charcoal face scrub recipe that I’m making today.
Introduction
DIY Cleansers are great at unclogging the pores. However, they won’t get rid of those pesky dead skin cells on the face. To deal with those, we need a good face scrub.
If we don’t exfoliate, those dead skin cells build up and up – leading to tired, dull-looking skin. If you suffer from dry skin, you may even find your skin becomes flaky… Definitely not something we want.
What’s In This DIY Charcoal Face Scrub
This homemade charcoal soap recipe is designed to gently exfoliate the face, and help keep skin blemish and pimple free. Our exfoliating agents here are baking soda and finely ground pumice stone. They’re excellent at their jobs!
Pumice may sound a little harsh, but providing you’re using extra fine you should have no problems. Baking soda is surprisingly abrasive on its own – despite already being so fine. So it’s actually doing most of the work in this recipe.
Clay and activated charcoal are excellent compliments to our exfoliants. Did you know that these two ingredients are fantastic at drawing out impurities in the skin? Our skin is attacked daily from different sources, the worst being pollution. These ingredients will help keep all of that at bay (You can explore more detailed info on activated charcoal here on healthline.com).
Last but not least, let’s chat about our essential oils. While you can use absolutely anything that works for and compliments your skin type, we’ve opted for peppermint and tea tree. These two provide excellent anti-microbial action – helping to keep the skin free of unwanted bacteria.
They also work wonderfully together as an aromatic profile. I won’t lie to you, tea tree essential oil doesn’t smell great on its own. But when partnered with the peppermint, it provides a fresh, invigorating fragrance with some nice herbaceous notes too. I’ve also found this fragrance to be wonderfully unisex.
OK, let’s make this charcoal face scrub
Activated Charcoal Face Scrub Recipe
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. If you buy via the links here I may earn a small affiliate commission at no cost to you, please read my affiliate disclosure.
Equipment
- Mixing Bowl (Glass, Aluminium or PET)
Ingredients
- 30 g Baking Soda (60%)
- 5 g Pumice Powder (10%) (finely ground for face)
- 12.5 g Kaolin Clay (25%) (or Bentonite)
- 2 g Activated Charcoal Powder (4%)
- 0.25 g Tea Tree Essential Oil
- 0.25 g Peppermint Essential Oil
- 1 Cosmetic Jar 4 oz (approx)
Video
Instructions
- Begin by measuring out all of your dry ingredients. This will include the baking soda, pumice powder, clay, and activated charcoal30 g Baking Soda, 5 g Pumice Powder, 12.5 g Kaolin Clay, 2 g Activated Charcoal Powder, 0.25 g Tea Tree Essential Oil, 0.25 g Peppermint Essential Oil, 1 Cosmetic Jar 4 oz
- Stir the mixture well
- Now we can add our essential oils. We’re using tea tree and peppermint for a fresh aroma and powerful antimicrobial action. Then mix thoroughly.
- Finally, transfer to your chosen pot, container, or jar to store. As we have included essential oils in this recipe, we must make sure our container is made of PET plastic, glass, or aluminum.
How To Use This DIY Face Scrub
Clay is very difficult to preserve and requires very strong preservatives to keep it bacteria-free after it has been mixed with water. But as it’s such an amazing cosmetic ingredient, we are mitigating our exposure to potentially harmful preservatives by not mixing it until we want to use it.
- Because we want to avoid using a preservative in this recipe, we will store the mixture as a powder in the pot until we are ready to use it.
- To use, simply spoon some into the palm of your hand, and then mix with a little water or oil to make a loose paste before applying to the skin in the usual way.
- The inclusion of clay and charcoal in this recipe makes it a fabulous face mask. Leave this on the face for about 5-10 minutes after exfoliating. This will help to draw out impurities in the skin.
Final Thoughts
When we tested this face scrub, we were blown away by the results. Immediately after the skin felt softer and smoother. After a few weeks, the skin was noticeably clearer, too.
Just try not to overdo it. It’s possible to have too much of a good thing. If you start exfoliating more than once or twice a week, you’ll start doing damage to your skin and we don’t want that.
I would also partner this with an excellent quality homemade facial moisturizer. Once we’ve stripped the skin of all its natural oils, replacing them is very important.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post, and you’ll enjoy whipping up your own DIY charcoal face scrub! Any problems, let us know in the comments and we’ll do our best to help you troubleshoot.
But this one is just so simple that we don’t see you having any problems!
