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Need help making shampoo cushiony
Hi, I could sure use some
advice on how to get a cushiony feeling into my shampoo. I’m a DIY’er
making products just for myself and only have access to products from
suppliers like LotionCrafter, Formulator Sample Shop, etc. The
shampoo works fine and I can thicken it with Crothix but it’s really
missing that nice, cushy feeling that you get from store bought
products. My formula is shown below:Water 51.3%
Glycerin 9%
Bamboo Liquid Extract 3%
Date Palm Liquid Extract 3%
Honeyquat 3%
Panthenol Powder 2%
Vegekeratin Hydrolyzed
Protein 2%Fragrance Oil 0.5%
Liquid Germall Plus 0.5%
Tetrasodium EDTA 0.2%
SLeS 18%
CAPB 6%
Crothix, as needed
The formula is cold
processed and whisked together when the water & surfactant phases
are combined.I currently have the
following rheology modifiers:Aristoflex AVC
Hydroxyethylcellulose Powder
Sepimax Zen
Sepinov EMT-10
Siligel
Xanthan Gum Soft
Can anyone provide
suggestions on how to get closer to the feel of a store bought
product? If you could be specific about percentages and how/when to
add the rheology modifier(s) I would really appreciate it. If there’s
a better product for this purpose and it is readily available to a
“home cook,” I’d be happy to buy it. Also, if there are any
glaring mistakes in the formula, please shout ’em out!Thanks in advance for any
help you could provide. -
8 Replies
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To get closer to a “store-bought” product, you first have to get rid of the ingredients that are either doing nothing or actively making your product worse. Remover (or reduce to <1%) the following….
Glycerin, Bamboo Liquid Extract, Date Palm Liquid Extract, Honeyquat, Panthenol Powder, Vegekeratin Hydrolyzed Protein.
Make that formula first and then see how your needs to be improved. With the exception of Glycerin, the ingredients I listed above are what we call “claims” ingredients. They are just put in formulas (especially shampoos) to give the marketing people something to talk about. They don’t actually work to do anything in the formula.
You don’t include Glycerin because it depresses foam and provides no real benefit to a shampoo.
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Thanks, Perry. I’ll give it a shot today.
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Hi, Perry. I’ve revised my formula as follows: Water: 72.05%, Glycerin: 0.75%, EDTA: 0.2%, 18% SLeS, 6% CAPB, 0.5% FO, 0.5% Germall, q.s. Crothix. I tried the new formula today but am still hoping to find out what will give me the nice, cushy feeling that store bought shampoos do. If you have any suggestions, I’d appreciate any tips or tricks you’ve got. If you do make a suggestion, could you please include an ingredient % as well as the process required? Thanks so much! Sue
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Most shampoos don’t use a thickener like Crothix. Better would be something like Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose. That helps with foam. Or you can just use Salt to thicken and use a cationic polymer like Guar Hydroxypropyldimonium Chloride for foam stabilization and conditioning.
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When you say cushy/cushiony are you referring to the way the product itself feels or how it makes your hair feel? You should be able to use salt to thicken this formula as well, and maybe the addition of a cationic guar could help with some of the feeling on hair.
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My shampoo just feels thinner than a store bought product so it doesn’t feel as nice during the actual rub/scrub portion of shampooing. I’m using Crothix to thicken my product but there’s a fine line between thicker and gluey. I can typically walk the tightrope and it works well at thickening but it just doesn’t provide the good cushion that I think of when I think of shampooing.
I’m hesitant to use salt only because I haven’t mastered it yet. I’ve tried it on 3 different occasions and it hasn’t worked. Once I crossed the line and knew within a few minutes that I’d added too much. Two other times it seemed fine but within about an hour it started thinning. I add it in small increments and wait a few minutes between additions. Is there a rule of thumb to work with respect to the amount salt or is it a scale of experience? Thanks.
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The thickeners you have available are almost all “shear thinning” in behavior (not sure on the Crothix behavior but might be similar based on your perception )- also called pseudoplastic. It means when you scrub the product into your hair and apply more force, the formula gets thinner. At high levels each of those polymers might not shear thin as much, but as you noted they might start to feel too heavy/glue-like. Salt-thickened surfactant systems have more newtonian behavior- they flow about the same regardless on force you use. That might be the ‘cushiony’ profile you are used to in retail products.
As for how much salt to use, I’d suggest setting up a salt curve- Perry has a good explanation here (https://chemistscorner.com/salt-curve-analysis-how-to-control-cleansing-cosmetics/)
Since you don’t have a way to measure viscosity, just follow the first steps and keep small samples of you batch- one with no salt and a few with various levels, ex 0.2,0.5,1.0,2.0% . You can check those the next day or after a few hours and see which level works best for your system.
chemistscorner.com
Salt Curve Analysis - How to control cleansing cosmetics - Chemists Corner
When you formulate an anionic surfactant based cleansing formula, you don’t normally have to include a separate thickening system. This is because salt will thicken…
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Wow! Thank you SO much! It does indeed seem like it might be shear thinning at work. Plus, I never thought to set up an actual experiment with varying amounts of salt and observe them over time. I will give that a try for sure. I’m sure that doing that will also teach me a lot about working with salt in general. Thanks again and have a great day!
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