What gives soap its color?
A. There are literally hundreds of different types of soaps available today. Most of them come in luscious colors and once can only wonder how they achieve their pigment. Well for starters, most of the soaps sold in the market today are colored from oxides developed in laboratories. The FD&C additives that you probably have read on the ingredients label of your soaps are also colorants developed in laboratories used to gives soap its rich hues. Not all soaps are artificially colored though. There are many ways to naturally color soap. For instance, if you want to give your soap and dark shade, you would use tea or cocoa powder as a colorant. Red hues are typicall achieved bu using paprika while the yellowish tones are made from turmeric, saffron and carthamin.
