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W/O Cream Formulation Tips?
I personally like thicker creams and have been experimenting with W/O emulsions, which seem to be wonderful at first but may “sweat” after a few months. Any tips on lower water % formulas? Any recipes I can try out and report on (simple recipes that don’t use silicones as I prefer not to have the sensorial bias of silicones at first)?
Thanks so much!
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7 Replies
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If they sweat it means they are unstable. What are you trying to achieve, a thicker formula or a stable formula? It’s possible to make very thick w/o with high internal phase.
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ngarayeva001 said:If they sweat it means they are unstable. What are you trying to achieve, a thicker formula or a stable formula? It’s possible to make very thick w/o with high internal phase.
Thicker and more stable for sure. What do you mean by “high internal phase”? Thoughts on how to achieve this? Thanks for your help!
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Have you tried searching the forum? There have been quite a few recently. Just start with “W/O”.
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@JPS if you have already achieved any results, post your formula. Don’t get me wrong, it’s totally fine to ask for a piece of advice and ask to help to fix your existing but poorly performing formula, but you should at least have a starting point or it’s getting too theoretical. How to make it stable? - it depends on million factors (what oils, what emulsifiers, what stabilisers, what process??). How to make it thicker? it depends on million of other factors.
Or as @Sponge has suggested, just search in this forum, I personally shared two well-performing water in silicones formulas that have not shown any visible signs of separation since July, and just recently provided a super detailed note on w/o stability. Search: foundation, w/o, w/si, water in oil, water in silicone. You can also read this: https://knowledge.ulprospector.com/306/pcc-ask-expert-water-oil-emulsion-unstable-can/ -
ngarayeva001 said:@JPS if you have already achieved any results, post your formula. Don’t get me wrong, it’s totally fine to ask for a piece of advice and ask to help to fix your existing but poorly performing formula, but you should at least have a starting point or it’s getting too theoretical. How to make it stable? - it depends on million factors (what oils, what emulsifiers, what stabilisers, what process??). How to make it thicker? it depends on million of other factors.
Or as @Sponge has suggested, just search in this forum, I personally shared two well-performing water in silicones formulas that have not shown any visible signs of separation since July, and just recently provided a super detailed note on w/o stability. Search: foundation, w/o, w/si, water in oil, water in silicone. You can also read this: https://knowledge.ulprospector.com/306/pcc-ask-expert-water-oil-emulsion-unstable-can/Very helpful. I’ll use those keywords to search the forum. This is the formula I’ve been working with:
Ingredients % Oils (Prickly pear, Meadowfoam seed, Jojoba) 20 Butters (Shea, Kokum, Mango) 28 Emulsifier (Glyceryl stearate 5%, Lecithin 1%) 6 Stearic Acid 3 Water Phase (herbal extracts: calendula, gotu kola, green tea, noni) 40 Fragrance (essential oil blend: neroli, rose) 0.7% Preservative (Gluconolactone SB 2%, Potassium Sorbate .3%) 2.3% total 100 -
1) Not the best emulsification system
2) Lecithin is utterly difficult to preserve and you are using not broad spectrum weak preservative
3) Leaving aside the preservative is weak, it’s in the cool-down phase. Preservative needs to preserve water, it’s less effective to add a preservative to the cool-down phase for w/o
4) Butters in w/o make it too greasy
5) You don’t have a stabiliser, add electrolytes. -
ngarayeva001 said:1) Not the best emulsification system
2) Lecithin is utterly difficult to preserve and you are using not broad spectrum weak preservative
3) Leaving aside the preservative is weak, it’s in the cool-down phase. Preservative needs to preserve water, it’s less effective to add a preservative to the cool-down phase for w/o
4) Butters in w/o make it too greasy
5) You don’t have a stabiliser, add electrolytes.Thanks for the great feedback! This is all so good to know! Do you have a simple w/o recipe I can re-create and learn from?
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