Gloam is made for the evening, and it is made for all of you: hair, face and body, from one bar.

Start by running the bar under the water and wetting your skin and hair. Then take the bar straight to your skin. Massage it over your body, into your armpits and groin, anywhere you would normally wash, and work it into your hair. Many of our customers use Gloam as their shampoo, and it is one of the reasons they come back to it.

For a deeper clean, lather the bar onto a small organic cotton washcloth and scrub your skin with it. A loofah or any natural-fibre scrub works just as well. Take your time and clean yourself well.

Now the part that matters most: leave the lather on your body for two to three minutes. The organic oils, shea butter and botanicals in the bar carry nutrients that your skin can drink in while the soap sits. This is where the magic of Soap Therapy happens, so do not rush it.

While you wait, breathe in. Organic lavender is soft, floral and calming, the scent of a day winding down, and it settles the mind as much as the skin. The warm burgundy colour comes from organic madder root, a plant dye used for thousands of years and long valued in Ayurvedic tradition for its gentle, soothing character on the skin.

Then rinse well. If you used Gloam on your hair, rinse twice: once after washing your hair, and once more toward the end of your shower so nothing is left behind. Pat dry with a cotton towel.

A note on frequency. For a full-body wash, we recommend using the bar about three times a week, or every other day. Skin does best when it is not scrubbed clean every single day, and the days in between let its natural oils do their work. The face, armpits and groin are the exception: those areas can be washed with the bar every day.

A cold-process bar cured for two months is hard, dense and long-lasting, but it is still a natural soap without synthetic hardeners, so how you store it between uses makes a real difference to how long it lasts.

After each use, rinse any lather off the bar and set it on a coconut fibre soap rest. The loose, springy mesh holds the bar off the surface and lets water fall straight through, so the bar dries from every side and the fibre itself dries quickly too. It is a natural material, plastic-free, and can be composted at the end of its life. Avoid closed dishes or anything that lets water pool under the bar.

Keep the bar out of the direct stream of the shower. A bar left sitting in a puddle will soften and melt away far faster than it should.

Let the bar dry fully between uses. If two people share a shower, two bars on two rests will outlast one bar used twice as often.

Unused bars keep best somewhere cool, dry and dark, such as a linen cupboard, with a little air around them. Stored this way, away from moisture, a bar has no expiry date. It will keep curing and hardening slowly, and it will still be good to use years from now. The scent softens gradually over time, and natural botanicals can deepen slightly in colour; both are normal and neither affects the soap.

Cared for this way, a Ritual bar (160 g) lasts one person about a month to a month and a half, and a Practice bar (80 g) about half that. The Travel bar (40 g) is good for a week away from home.

Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil

The base of every Soap Therapy bar. Rich in oleic acid and squalene, it cleans gently and leaves the skin soft and moisturized rather than stripped.

Organic Unrefined Coconut Oil

Gives the bar its cleansing power and its rich, bubbly lather, and helps the bar stay hard and long-lasting.

Organic Fair Trade Unrefined Shea Butter

Adds a creamy, conditioning richness to the lather and leaves a light protective layer on the skin. Left unrefined so its natural vitamins and fatty acids stay intact.

Organic Extra Virgin Castor Oil

A natural humectant that draws moisture toward the skin and makes the lather silky and stable.

Distilled Water

Dissolves the sodium hydroxide so it can turn the oils into soap. Distilled so no minerals interfere with the bar.

Sodium Hydroxide**

The alkali that transforms the oils into solid soap through saponification. It is fully used up in the process; none remains in the finished bar.

Citric Acid

Fine-tunes the pH of the finished bar so it stays gentle on skin and rinses clean without leaving a film in hard water.

Organic Lavender Essential Oil

The soft, floral heart of Gloam. Calming and gently herbal, it is the scent of a day winding down and settles the mind as much as the skin.

Organic Madder Root Powder

A plant root used as a natural dye for thousands of years. It gives Gloam its warm burgundy colour without any synthetic pigment, and has long been valued in Ayurvedic tradition for its gentle character on the skin.