How to Make Facial Toner with Essential Oils

Elizabeth Starns
How to Make Facial Toner with Essential Oils
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What is Facial Toner?

Toners are fantastic for cleaning the skin, closing the pores, and tightening the complexion. They are best used after cleansing the face and before moisturizing. The toner prepares the skin to soak up moisture in any other treats you choose to pamper the skin with.

Benefits of Facial Toners

A facial toner aims to gently refresh your skin without stripping any natural moisture. They are astringent but gentle enough to avoid irritating sensitive skin or making it drier.

Some cleansers can strip away the fine layer of sebum from the skin, making it drier. Using toner restores that balance and stops it from getting too dry. In addition, an excellent facial toner's cooling and soothing sensations are refreshing and invigorating.

Also Read: How To Do a Facial Massage

Is Applying Toner Good for Your Face?

One of the key takeaways I hope regular readers of this blog will have grasped by now is that if you put too much oil into the skin, the sebaceous glands switch production down and make the skin drier. The secret to beautiful skin is hydration, so the skin needs water. Toners are water-based, encouraging other water-based products to adhere to them.

When Should We Use Toner and how Often?

A good skin routine includes two tonings a day. First, cleanse, tone, then moisturize the morning and evening.

Also Read: Best Essential Oils For Face Treatments

How to Use DIY Toner

Tissue your toner all over your face to enjoy the freshness and remove any excess oiliness left on the skin.

What can I Use as A Natural Toner?

One of the benefits of learning how to make facial toner with essential oils is that natural botanicals are gentler and kinder to the skin. These are gorgeous if you have sensitive skin.

One of the loveliest ways to make a natural toner is to use simple hydrolats (called hydrosols). A dab of rosewater or orange flower water is blissfully cooling and does a great job.

Another older worlds natural favorite is witch hazel. Unlike other plants with oily components trapped through distillation, all the constituents of this pretty winter tree remain in the water, making it gentle, astringent, and healing.

Also Read: What Are The Best Carrier Oils For Face?

Does Toner Fix Discoloration?

An excellent facial toner can reduce redness and rosacea—the more inflamed the skin, the gentler the oils you need to choose. See recipes.

Is Apple Cider Vinegar Good for The Face? 

Apple cider vinegar has good antimicrobial ingredients and is reputed to soothe skin flare-ups. However, it is very fierce, and I would suggest that a hydrolat with essential oils would be better. 

What Ingredients Should I Avoid in A Toner?

The best ingredients will come from herbs, woods, and flowers. Spices may be a little spiteful to the skin. Citruses are a bit too.  Go for cooling; the gentler, the better.

Also Read: Best Non-Comedogenic Carrier Oils For Face

Is Rice Water A Toner?

Rice water can be used as a toner. It is both astringent and hydrating. However, it will have a shelf life, lacks the medicinal properties of essential oils, and doesn't have the same luxury as an aromatherapy toner. When you learn to make facial toner with essential oils, there is no return to shop-bought or rice water.

Best Essential Oils for Facial Toner

1. Geranium Essential Oil

Perfect for everyday or dry skins. Geranium is both nourishing and soothing. Of course, you could use rose oil, the luxury version, but geranium is doing the same job here. 

2. Ylang Ylang Essential Oil

The hands-down best-balancing oil there is. Ylang-ylang is perfect if you have combination skin. It reduces the greasiness and nourishes dryness. Plus, it smells like a piece of heaven! 

3. Jasmine Absolute Essential Oil

The heady Queen of Flowers is lovely if you have hot, dry, or reactive skin. It especially suits dark complexions or is gorgeous if you spend a lot of time in the sun. It is very soothing, cooling, and protective. 

4. Lavender Essential Oil

The perfect essential oil for greasy skin, but don’t be tempted if you have normal or dry skin. While it is beautifully soothing and refreshing, its superpower is secretly drying the skin when you least suspect it. Opt for chamomiles or yarrow if you want soothing oils for dry skin. 

5. Sandalwood Essential Oil

Lovely and exotic. Gorgeously nourishing and a great choice if you are wondering how to make facial toner with essential oils for a guy. Super sexy scented, and tremendously kind to rugged outdoor skins.

6. Cedarwood Essential Oil

Like Sandalwood, I love cedarwood for bloke’s skins but blend carefully, and it works well with flowers for women too. 

7. Frankincense Essential Oil

King of the ingredients for mature skins. Postmenopausal skins revel in frankincense oil. Again, this is another excellent choice for men’s facial toners for dry skin.

8. Palmarosa Essential Oil

Palmarosa is a bit of an interloper. She smells like a beauty treatment but is chock full of antimicrobial goodness. I like palmarosa for acne, especially that which has got infected. 

9. German Chamomile Essential Oil

This is a blue essential oil, so choose your oils accordingly. If you mix geranium, the brain doesn’t like it. I like Jasmine, German chamomile, and yarrow together.

Like a liquid anesthetic, the oil's blue is chamazulene's chemical constituent. Perfect for sunburned or overly sensitive skins and rosacea. 

10. Yarrow Essential Oil

Again, full of gentle azulenes, yarrow is a lovely soothing oil. Excellent for reactive skins. 

How to Make Homemade Facial Toner with Essential Oils

Materials

We’ll need water. Using a hydrolat, you could use simple distilled water or add to the magic of the essential oils.

Hydrolats, sometimes known as hydrosols or floral waters, are the byproducts of distillation (or sometimes they are made as the primary product). Like witch hazel, they keep water-based constituents and tiny amounts of essential oil.

You’ll need dispersant because oils and water don’t mix. Choose to rub alcohol or vodka.

One thing to be aware of is adding a preservative for any product where you use water in the recipe. Note, too, that if you choose oils high in limonene or linalool, these also deteriorate very quickly. So, a good all-rounder is Preservative Eco, which we use as 1% of the finished product.

Then, of course, we need our essential oils.

Tools 

    • Measuring beaker
    • 100ml Glass bottle (Essential oils tend to corrode plastic)

Instructions

The key to a good toner is to blend your essential oils into your dispersant first, then add your preservative and mix them. Finally, add your water. If you are savvy, you can simply do the oils, preservatives, and alcohol, then use the rest of the water to top the bottle up.

You will need to label your product, and as ever, be clever, choose some of the most commonly occurring constituents to place on there (you can find these by looking at the GC/MS reports on our product listing) or using the plant’s Latin name. Trade secrets, people. Don’t do all the hard work, then give them all away.

My Personal Homemade Facial Toner Recipe

For Dry Skin

For Oily Skin 

For Rosacea

    • 93 ml Helichrysum Hydrolat 
    • 5 ml Rubbing Alcohol
    • 1ml Preservative
    • 10 drops German Chamomile Essential Oil (Matricaria recutita)
    • 5 drops Rose Essential Oil (Rosa damascena)
    • 5 drops Yarrow Essential Oil (Achillea millefolium)

What is The Shelf Life of This Toner

The preservative should give these blends a shelf life of around 6 months.

Conclusion

Toning the skin differentiates between a good complexion and a great one. Make facial toner with essential oils and enjoy your complexion's extra hydration and brightness. Let us know how you get on.

Also Read: How to Make Face Serum with Essential Oils

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