How to Fix The Viscosity of Body Wash and Shampoo

Is your shampoo or body wash too watery? Or too thick?

Sometimes as we add ingredients such as essential oils or tinctures to a wash or shampoo, and it can become too thin or watery. Alternatively, products may become thicker than you want for your packaging and you’d like to thin it down.

In this blog post you’ll learn how to correct the viscosity of a wash or shampoo and bring it back to a gel or, conversely, make it thinner.

(Note: You can follow along with one of our expert formulators as she shows you step-by-step how to fix the viscosity of your body wash and shampoo. Check out the video and its transcript below.)

Equipment You’ll Need

• Kitchen Scale
• Stick Blender or high shear mixer

Ingredients For Thickening a Product

• Fine Sea Salt
• Cocamidopropyl Betaine
• Xanthan Gum

Ingredients For Thinning a Product

• Cosmetic Water
• Phenoxyethanol

Instructions for How to Thicken a Shampoo or Body Wash

Method 1: Add Salt to Thicken Shampoo or Body Wash

The first thing you can do to thicken up you wash or shampoo is to add salt to it. This may be enough to thicken your wash or shampoo back to a gel consistency.

Just be sure to never add more than 2% salt or you run the risk of thinning your wash or shampoo even further.

To calculate the amount of salt you can add, weigh out the amount of shampoo or wash you are correcting and multiply by 2%.

For example: if you have 5.28 lbs of shampoo, the math would be (5.28 * 0.02) = 0.1056. So you could add up to 0.1056 lbs of salt.

Method 2: Add Cocamidopropyl Betaine to Thicken Shampoo or Body Wash

If salt fails, you can use Cocamidopropyl Betaine.

We recommend adding 1% at a time until your wash is thickened.

You can have up to 8% of your final product be Cocamidopropyl Betaine (but you’ll probably get the results you want way before you reach 8%).

To calculate how much 1% Cocamidopropyl Betaine would be, simply weigh out the amount of shampoo or wash you are trying to thicken and multiply by 1% (0.01).

Add 1% at a time until your wash is thickened (up to 8%).

Method 3: Add Xanthan Gum to Thicken Shampoo or Body Wash

If your shampoo or body wash is still too thin, you can try adding 0.25% xanthan gum to thicken the product.

It’s important to add the xanthan gum in a very specific way to avoid clumping.

1. Weigh out the amount of wash or shampoo you are trying to thicken and multiply by 0.25% (0.0025) to calculate the amount of xanthan gum you can add.
2. Begin by high shear mixing your wash with your stick blender.
3. Slowly sprinkle in the xanthan gum while mixing. (Note: You may have to adjust your stick blender to increase speed as the wash or shampoo starts to thicken.)

Instructions for How To Thin a Shampoo or Body Wash

To thin down a Shampoo or Wash that’s too thick you will need Cosmetic Water and a preservative such as phenoxyethanol added at 1% to preserve your water.

It’s important to use deionized water so that you don’t see any reaction between ingredients in your Shampoo or Wash and the minerals in tap water. Distilled water might be effective, but deionized (Cosmetic) water is preferred.

1. Add 1% of preserved deionized water to your product.
   
   To get the amount of preserved deionized water you need to add, weigh out the amount of Shampoo or Wash you are correcting and multiply by 1%.
   
   For example: if you have 5.28LBS of Shampoo or wash,  the math would be (5.28 * 0.01) = .0528. So you would need .0528 LBS of preserved water.
2. If your Shampoo or Wash is still too thick, repeat the process until it reaches the correct viscosity.

Watch The Step By Step Video For How to Fix The Viscosity of Shampoo and Body Wash