Olive Oil Soap Benefits: Why 72% Matters
Every bar we make begins the same way: with olive oil, and a lot of it. Not as one ingredient among twenty, but as 72% of the bar itself. That number is printed on soap in the South of France the way a vintage is printed on wine, and it is the single best predictor of how a bar will treat your skin. This is why.
What olive oil actually does for skin
Olive oil is unusually close to what your skin produces on its own. It is rich in oleic acid, the same fatty acid that makes up much of your skin's natural sebum, and it carries squalene — a compound your skin makes itself and loses steadily with age. When a soap is built on olive oil, washing stops being a trade-off between clean and comfortable: the bar lifts away the day without stripping the thin layer of lipids your skin depends on to hold moisture.
It also brings antioxidants along for the ride. Olive oil is naturally rich in vitamin E and polyphenols — the same compounds that make it the heart of the Mediterranean table — and they survive into the finished bar. And because we keep the glycerin that forms during soap-making rather than extracting it to sell separately, every wash leaves behind a humectant film that draws moisture toward the skin instead of pulling it away.
The practical result is a soap gentle enough for the skin that objects to everything else. If your face feels tight after washing, if winter leaves your hands papery, if fragrance-heavy shower gels leave you itchy — an olive oil bar is usually the simplest fix there is.
Why 72% is the number that matters
The 72% standard comes from the great soap-making tradition of the South of France, where masters stamped the oil content directly into the cube as a promise: nearly three-quarters of this bar is oil, not filler. A century and a half later it still separates serious soap from the rest. Most commercial bars are built on cheap palm derivatives and synthetic detergents, with just enough plant oil to justify the picture on the wrapper. At 72%, the oil is not a marketing note — it is the soap.
Ours is organic olive oil, pressed for us in Provence, and we pair it with organic shea butter and glycerin — nothing in the base but ingredients you could name. The scents come from pure essential oils from Grasse, the hill town that has perfumed France for four centuries. No synthetic parfum, anywhere in the line.
Triple milling: the other half of the story
High oil content alone does not make a great bar — it has to be worked. Every Averal bar is triple milled, pressed three times so the oil, moisture, and fragrance are distributed evenly through a dense, uniform bar. That density is why a French triple-milled bar soap lathers creamy instead of slimy, holds its scent to the last sliver, and lasts four to six weeks of daily use where an ordinary bar dissolves in two.
At 72%, the oil is not an ingredient. It is the soap.
Where to start
The purest expression of everything above is our Olive Oil Soap Bar — the green bar stamped Huile d'Olive, and the one we hand to anyone who asks where to begin. From there, the whole collection is built on the same 72% base, so choosing is really a question of scent: Honey for warmth, Coconut Oil for a creamy, tropical lather, Vanilla for the scent that lingers longest. Skin that needs the most help should head straight for the extra moisturizing collection, where the shea butter does its heaviest lifting.
However you choose, the promise is the same one stamped into soap in the South of France for generations: 72% olive oil, three pressings, and nothing your skin does not need.
Avec gratitude,
Averal Provence