Aleppo Soap: What It Is and How to Make It at Home

Aleppo soap is a hard, olive oil bar made with laurel berry oil that traces back thousands of years to the Syrian city it's named after. It's often called the original olive oil soap, the ancestor of Castile and Marseille soap. If you've held a bar, you know the look: tan and weathered on the outside, deep green on the inside, with a stamped maker's mark on the face. This guide explains what Aleppo soap really is, why people reach for it, and how to make an Aleppo-style bar at home using olive oil, laurel oil, and the Soaply soap calculator.

What Is Aleppo Soap?

Aleppo soap is a traditional hard soap made from olive oil and laurel berry oil, saponified with lye and then aged for months before it's sold. It comes from Aleppo, Syria, and it's widely cited as one of the oldest soaps still made the same way today. The craft spread west along trade routes, and many soap historians credit it as the inspiration for both Castile soap in Spain and savon de Marseille in France.

What sets it apart from a plain olive oil bar is the laurel. Laurel berry oil, pressed from the fruit of the bay laurel tree, gives Aleppo soap its signature earthy, woody scent and its reputation for being gentle yet cleansing. A true Aleppo bar uses no synthetic fragrance, no added color, and no palm oil. It's about as short an ingredient list as soap gets.

What Is Aleppo Soap Made Of?

A classic Aleppo bar has just three working ingredients plus the water that carries the lye:

That's it. No fragrance oils, no titanium dioxide, no micas. The green color is natural, straight from the olive and laurel oils, and the tan crust forms as the outside oxidizes during the long cure. Because the recipe leans so heavily on olive oil, Aleppo soap behaves a lot like Castile soap, and our best oils for soap making guide explains why high-olive bars turn out so mild.

If you want to understand the chemistry behind turning these oils into soap, our explainer on what saponification is breaks it down in plain language.

What Does the Laurel Oil Percentage Mean?

When you shop for Aleppo soap, you'll see bars labeled with a percentage: 12%, 20%, 40%, sometimes higher. That number is the share of laurel berry oil in the recipe, with olive oil making up the rest.

• Low laurel (around 5 to 12%): Milder, less expensive, gentle enough for daily face and body use. A good starting point.
• Medium laurel (around 16 to 25%): More lather and a stronger scent, often chosen for oilier or more troubled skin.
• High laurel (30% and up): Richer, more cleansing, and noticeably more expensive because laurel berry oil is the costly ingredient. Many people use these as a treatment bar rather than an everyday wash.

Laurel oil is pricey, so a higher percentage means a higher price tag. There's no single "best" number. It comes down to your skin and your budget. For a first homemade batch, somewhere around 15 to 20% laurel is a sensible target.

Is Aleppo Soap Good for Your Skin?

Aleppo soap has a long reputation as a gentle bar, and the reasons are easy to see in the recipe. Olive oil is one of the mildest soap making oils, producing a low-cleansing, conditioning bar that doesn't strip skin the way a high-coconut bar can. The laurel oil adds lather and a clean rinse without harshness.

People with dry, sensitive, or reactive skin often gravitate to it for exactly that reason, and it's a long-time favorite for anyone who wants a no-fragrance, no-dye bar. That said, be honest about the limits: Aleppo soap is soap, not medicine. It won't cure eczema, psoriasis, or acne, and laurel can be an allergen for a small number of people, so patch testing a new bar is smart. If your main goal is the gentlest possible wash, our guide to soap for sensitive skin covers how to formulate for that.

How Traditional Aleppo Soap Is Made

Authentic Aleppo soap is made by a hot process method in large quantities, and the rhythm of it has barely changed in centuries. Here's the short version of how the traditional process works:

1. Cooking. Olive oil is heated in a large vat and cooked with lye over a low fire, often for a couple of days, until it saponifies into a paste.
2. Adding laurel. Near the end of the cook, the laurel berry oil is stirred in. Adding it late helps preserve its scent and skin-friendly qualities.
3. Pouring and spreading. The hot soap paste is poured out across a large, lined floor and spread into a single thick sheet to cool and firm up.
4. Cutting and stamping. Once set, the sheet is cut into cubes with a roller and each bar is hand-stamped with the maker's seal.
5. Aging. The cubes are stacked in tall, airy towers and left to cure in storerooms for six months to a year or more.

During that long aging, the surface oxidizes from green to a golden tan, while the inside stays green. Snap an aged bar in half and you can see both at once. This hot-then-cured approach is different from the at-home method below, and our comparison of hot process versus cold process soap explains the trade-offs of each.

How to Make Aleppo-Style Soap at Home

You can't fully replicate a centuries-old vat process in your kitchen, but you can make a beautiful Aleppo-style bar with cold process soap making. Here's a beginner-friendly recipe to start from. Always run these exact oils through the Soaply soap calculator before you mix, because laurel berry oil has its own saponification value and your lye amount depends on it.

Sample Aleppo-style recipe (about 1000 g of oils):

Suggested settings: 5% superfat and a 33% lye concentration. Plug those oils and settings into the lye calculator and it'll give you the exact sodium hydroxide and water weights for this specific blend. Never borrow a lye amount from another recipe, since even a small change in the laurel percentage changes the math.

Step-by-step

1. Gear up and stay safe. Goggles, gloves, long sleeves, good ventilation. Read our soap making safety guide first if you're new to lye.
2. Mix the lye solution. Slowly add the lye to your water (never water to lye) and stir until clear. Set it aside to cool.
3. Warm the oils. Gently warm the olive oil. Hold back the laurel oil to add later, the same way the traditional process does, to keep its scent.
4. Combine and stir to trace. When both are around 100 to 110 F, pour the lye solution into the olive oil and blend. High-olive recipes are slow to trace, so be patient. Learn the signs in our guide to trace in soap making.
5. Add the laurel oil at trace. Stir in the laurel berry oil once you reach a light trace.
6. Pour and insulate. Pour into your mold, cover, and let it sit 24 to 48 hours before unmolding.

Because this is a soft, olive-heavy recipe, it firms up slowly. A tablespoon of sodium lactate in the cooled lye water helps you unmold a harder bar sooner, as covered in our sodium lactate in soap making guide.

Curing and Aging Your Bars

Cut your bars within a day or two of unmolding, while the soap is still firm but not rock hard. Then comes the part that makes or breaks a high-olive bar: time.

A standard cold process bar cures for four to six weeks, but olive-heavy soaps reward a much longer wait. Give your Aleppo-style bars at least six to eight weeks, and ideally several months, on an airy curing rack. The longer cure lets water evaporate and the bar harden, which means a longer-lasting, milder soap. You may even see the surface deepen toward that classic tan over time. Our guide on why curing soap matters explains what's happening inside the bar as it ages.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Skipping the calculator. Laurel oil changes your lye amount. Always confirm the numbers in the soap calculator for your exact percentages.
• Cutting the cure short. A high-olive bar used too early is soft and snotty. Patience is the price of a great Aleppo-style soap.
• Adding laurel oil too early. Stir it in at trace, not at the start, to protect its scent and skin feel.
• Expecting big bubbles. Olive-based bars give a low, creamy lather, not a fluffy one. That's normal, not a failed batch.
• Confusing laurel berry oil with bay essential oil. They're different products. You want cold-pressed laurel berry oil for the soap base, not a concentrated essential oil.

Recommended Supplies

A few items make an Aleppo-style batch much easier:

• Olive oil for soap making as your base oil
• Laurel berry oil for that signature scent and lather
• Sodium hydroxide (lye) to saponify the oils
• Safety goggles and gloves for handling lye safely

💬 Frequently Asked Questions

What is Aleppo soap made of?

Authentic Aleppo soap is made from just olive oil, laurel berry oil, lye, and water. There's no added fragrance, color, or palm oil. The green color and woody scent come naturally from the laurel and olive oils.

Is Aleppo soap good for sensitive skin?

It has a long reputation as a gentle bar because olive oil is mild and conditioning and the recipe skips synthetic fragrance and dye. Many people with dry or sensitive skin like it, but it isn't a medical treatment, so patch test a new bar first.

What does the percentage on Aleppo soap mean?

The percentage is the share of laurel berry oil in the bar, with olive oil making up the rest. Higher laurel percentages give more lather and a stronger scent but cost more, since laurel oil is the expensive ingredient.

How long does Aleppo soap need to cure?

Traditional Aleppo soap ages for six months to a year. A homemade olive-heavy version should cure at least six to eight weeks, and longer is better. The extra time gives you a harder, milder, longer-lasting bar.

Can I make Aleppo soap without laurel oil?

Not really. Without laurel berry oil you've made a plain olive oil bar, which is closer to Castile soap. The laurel is what defines Aleppo soap. If you can't source it, see our how to make Castile soap guide instead.

Ready to Build Your Recipe?

An Aleppo-style bar is one of the simplest soaps you can make and one of the most rewarding to cure. Decide on your laurel percentage, then open the free Soaply soap calculator, enter your olive and laurel oils, and get the exact lye and water amounts for a safe batch. From there it's just patience while those green bars age into something special.