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Lip care
All Containers›Shop by use case›Lip care›The balm itself›The ratio, which is the whole formulaShop all lip care →
The balm itself

The ratio, which is the whole formula

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page5

Every lip balm is wax, butter and liquid oil in some proportion. Learn the proportion and you can build any of them; learn a recipe and you can build one.

Three numbers

Wax, butter, liquid oil, as percentages by weight of the whole, adding to one hundred before anything else goes in.

Flavor, color and vitamin E come out of that hundred rather than on top of it, which is the arithmetic people get wrong first.

Where to start

A conventional starting point is 1 part wax : 1 part butter : 1 part liquid oil by weight, or roughly 33 percent each. It is not the answer; it is the middle of the space, and you find the answer by moving from it.

Firmer, for heat or for a hard stick: 40 / 30 / 30.

Softer, for a pot or a glossier feel: 25 / 30 / 45.

All three are real formulas and none of them is right for every wax, which is why the ratio has to be tested with the material you actually bought.

Moving one number

Change one at a time and write down what you changed. The failure mode in this craft is four simultaneous changes and a batch that is better without anybody knowing why.

More wax: harder, more drag, higher melting point, less deposit.

More butter: richer, softer, more graining risk.

More liquid oil: glossier, softer, slides, and shorter shelf life.

And test at temperature. A formula judged in a 19 C kitchen tells you nothing about the same tube in a handbag in August.

Why it is a ratio and not a recipe

Because the ingredients are not interchangeable at equal weight. Swap beeswax for candelilla and the wax number has to fall. Swap shea for kokum and the butter number can fall too.

Holding the ratio while changing the materials produces a different product every time, which is why the formula worth keeping is the one recorded with the specific material, supplier and grade against each number.

One more constraint if you are going the monograph route: an active with a minimum of 30 or 50 percent does not fit inside a ratio chosen for feel. The active sets the number and the other two work around it.

References

21 CFR 347.10, Skin protectant active ingredients. A closed list at fixed concentrations, including allantoin 0.5–2%, cocoa butter 50–100%, dimethicone 1–30%, glycerin 20–45%, hard fat 50–100%, lanolin 12.5–50%, mineral oil 50–100%, petrolatum and white petrolatum 30–100%. ecfr.gov
Written from the federal regulation and FDA guidance named on each page, not from a laboratory or a legal practice. Whether a particular formula and a particular label make a cosmetic or a drug is a determination about your product, and this is not that determination.