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Pure neem oil is a cold-pressed seed oil. On its own it does nothing except sit in the bottle, so what it is “for” depends on what you make with it. These are the ways our customers use the Ourons 100 ml and 500 ml bottles.
Soap making
Neem is a hard oil in a soap recipe. It is high in oleic, stearic and palmitic acids, so it brings a firm bar and a steady lather when it is blended with lighter oils. Its saponification value is around 0.139 for sodium hydroxide, so run every recipe through a lye calculator before you start. Cold-process makers usually keep neem between 5 and 20 per cent of the oil weight; above that the smell takes over and the bar turns a pale green. Hot-process and melt-and-pour makers add it at trace, or stir it into the melted base at 1 to 5 per cent.
Candle making
Neem oil is not a wax, but a small amount blended into soy or rapeseed wax softens the set and carries the earthy scent of the seed. Keep it under 5 per cent of the wax weight so the candle still burns cleanly, and test the wick size, because added oil changes the melt pool. Neem is also a traditional lamp oil: it is burned neat in clay diyas, or blended with a lighter lamp oil for a brighter flame.
DIY oil blends
Because it is thick and strongly scented, neem is usually diluted into a carrier oil before it goes into any blend. Sweet almond, jojoba, coconut, olive and grapeseed all mix well with it. Warm the neem first so it pours, then stir it in. A common starting point is one part neem to nine parts carrier. Label the bottle with the date and the ingredients, because a mixed oil keeps for less time than a pure one. There is more on ratios on our carrier oils page.
Home crafts
Neem oil turns up in a lot of workshop recipes: in home-made wood and leather balms, in furniture polish blends with beeswax and turpentine, and as a natural colour and scent in bath bombs and melt-and-pour projects. Test on an offcut first, because neem darkens some woods and leathers.
A leaf-shine spray
Stirred into warm water with a little of our liquid soap, the pure oil makes a milky wash for wiping the dust off houseplant leaves. The recipe is on our leaf-shine spray page.
What is in the bottle
Ourons neem oil is pressed from the seed and bottled as it comes, with nothing added. A typical fatty-acid profile is:
- Oleic acid, about 53 per cent
- Stearic acid, about 21 per cent
- Palmitic acid, about 13 per cent
- Linoleic acid, about 2 per cent
- Other fatty acids, about 2 per cent
The figures vary a little from harvest to harvest.
Working with neem oil
- It sets solid below about 20 °C. Stand the bottle in a bowl of hot tap water for ten minutes and it pours again. Do not microwave it.
- The smell is strong: nutty and sulphurous, somewhere between garlic and roasted peanuts. It softens in a finished soap bar but never disappears.
- Keep the cap tight and the bottle cool and dark.
- Wear gloves when handling large amounts; it stains fabric.
How we sell it
Ourons pure neem oil is sold as an ingredient for soap, candles, blends and crafts. It is not sold as a food or a supplement.