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Soap makers and candle makers

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What they share What a soap maker needs to know What a candle maker needs to know So the product page has to answer both The colour question also splits And only one of the two is a cosmetic Which means the same jar of mica carries two stories Serve both, document separately References

One fragrance oil, two completely different technical questions.

Fragrance oil, colour, and a willingness to buy supplies in small quantities from a specialist rather than in drums from a distributor. That shared buying behaviour is the business.

What a soap maker needs to know

How the fragrance behaves in a high-pH environment, whether it accelerates trace, whether it discolours, and what usage rate works. Cold process soap is chemically aggressive and many fragrances misbehave in it.

What a candle maker needs to know

Flash point, how much the wax will hold, whether the scent throws cold and hot, and how it interacts with the wick. Completely different questions about the same bottle.

So the product page has to answer both

Or be explicit about which craft it is written for. A supplier serving both and documenting for one is leaving half their customers to find out by experiment.

The colour question also splits

A soap colorant has to survive saponification and a candle colorant has to dissolve in wax without clogging a wick. Mica does one of those well and the other poorly.

And only one of the two is a cosmetic

Soap on the body is in cosmetic territory unless the exemption applies. A candle is not a cosmetic at all, so the colorant approval question largely falls away for it.

Which means the same jar of mica carries two stories

For the candle maker it is a pigment. For the soap maker it is a color additive with a regulatory status. Selling it to both without saying so is how a customer ends up making an unsupported claim.

Serve both, document separately

One product, two sections on the page. It costs a little more writing and it removes the single most common support question a supply business gets.

References

21 CFR 73.2496, mica as a color additive for use in cosmetics: "Mica is safe for use in coloring cosmetics generally, including cosmetics applied to the area of the eye, in amounts consistent with good manufacturing practice", conforming in identity and specifications to 73.1496(a)(1) and (b), bearing labeling in accordance with 70.25, and exempt from batch certification because "certification of this color additive is not necessary for the protection of the public health". law.cornell.edu

21 CFR 701.20, the soap exemption. A product is excluded from the definition of a cosmetic only where "the bulk of the nonvolatile matter in the product consists of an alkali salt of fatty acids and the detergent properties of the article are due to the alkali-fatty acid compounds" AND "the product is labeled, sold, and represented only as soap". A product that fails either condition is a cosmetic and carries cosmetic labeling. law.cornell.edu

Written from 21 CFR 73.2496 and 701.20, and from the catalog as it stood on 18 October 2026. Whether a given color additive is approved for a given use is a question about that additive and that use, and the answer is in the regulation rather than in a supplier description; nothing here substitutes for checking it.