How to make a natural repellent using essential oils

Repellents and fumigators are essential products for every summer season. A couple of sprays and no bloodsucker is scary. Convenient and seemingly safe, but not quite. The main active ingredient in repellents that you can buy in a store is DEET (diethyltoluamide). This substance was once developed by the Americans for the military, because it was simply necessary to repel insects in the Vietnamese jungle.

However, studies have shown that DEET can penetrate the skin into the bloodstream, cause problems in the nervous system and cause allergic reactions on the skin. The substance is recommended to be applied exclusively to clothing, but many people ignore these recommendations, including repellent manufacturers. They often do not indicate this information on their products. DEET is not used in Australia, Japan, or even the United States. In our country, you can even find this substance in children's repellents.

All this does not mean that you have to choose either the toxic effect of an industrial repellent or mosquito bites. There is an alternative - natural repellents based on essential oils. They are easy to make, and the effect is no worse than from industrial ones.

Essential oils from mosquitoes: a selection for your home

Essential oils are a whole cocktail of various substances. Some of them are designed to repel insects, because this is how plants protect themselves. This means that these properties can be used to your advantage.

Most of all, mosquitoes do not like the aromas of:

• citronella or in other words lemongrass,
• geranium,
• cloves,
• eucalyptus,
• lavender,
• thyme.

It is better to use the listed oils not in a mono version, but in a mixture. This will be more effective.

Mosquitoes also do not like cinnamon, all conifers, mint, bay, patchouli, vetiver, tea tree. Mosquitoes also don't like citrus fruits, but it's better not to use them during the day because of phototoxicity.

But mosquitoes don't like vanilla so much that they don't care whether it's essential oil, extract or even synthetic fragrance. Even vanilla fragrances can be used to fight mosquitoes. However, make sure they are hypoallergenic.

How to make a natural repellent with your own hands

Essential oils are very concentrated and it is contraindicated to apply them to the skin undiluted. Therefore, when making a recipe for a natural repellent, we need to add essential oils to some kind of base, this can be a base oil, silicones, emollients or water. But you need to remember one thing - all essential oils dissolve in oil, alcohol or special solubilizers (solvents). Therefore, if you add essential oils simply to water, they will float to the surface, and when applying such a mixture to the skin, you risk getting an inflammatory reaction. Therefore, read below about the options for making a natural repellent.

Oil and emollient based repellent

With the base oil, everything is simple, because essential oils dissolve easily in it. You can choose the base oil to your taste, it is important that it is:

• refined, then the mixture will be stored longer
• stable, that is, so that saturated fatty acids predominate in its composition
• light, which will not make the skin greasy.
• By the way, the oil can be diluted with volatile emollients, which replace silicones and allow you to create dry oils for the body: Gosulin IL and Cetiol RLF. Or you can use the volatile silicone Cyclomethicone. This way you will get a dry oil with repellent properties. Of course, you can apply it only to the skin, so as not to stain clothes.

For example, you can make a recipe consisting of:

• 50 g of Gosulin IL emollient
• 40 g of sesame seed oil
• 8 g of jojoba oil
• 2 g of a mixture of essential oils.

To stabilize oil mixtures, 1-2% vitamin E or 0.5-1% CO2 extract of sage and/or rosemary can be used instead of a preservative.

A repellent based on water and solubilizers

If you want to create a universal repellent that can be used on skin, clothes, a baby carriage, or even just sprayed indoors, it is better to use distilled water as a base. However, we repeat that essential oils do not dissolve in water and will simply float on the surface as a greasy puddle. This is not very convenient, not aesthetically pleasing, and not effective. To dissolve essential oils in water, you need to resort to the help of solubilizers. We talked about solubilizers in another article “Solubilizers in cosmetics or how to mix water and oil”.

Among the effective and affordable solubilizers you can buy:

• polysorbate 80,
• resassol VPF,
• water-soluble oils,
• PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil,
• pentylene glycol,
• propanediol,
• ethyl or isopropyl alcohol
• Polyglyceryl-4 Caprate and others.

In this case, you will get a homogeneous spray that is convenient to use, but most likely it will not be completely transparent. As for the proportion for good solubilizer: essential oil solubility, it must be selected independently based on the mixture of essential oils. Sometimes it can be 2:1, 5:1, and sometimes 10:1, that is, for 100 g of the finished spray, you will need to take 10 g of solubilizer, 2 g of essential oils and 88 g of water.

General recommendations for making recipes

1. The easiest way to prepare a natural repellent is to dissolve essential oils in base oils or natural emollients, but such a mixture can pack clothes.
2. alcohol is an excellent solvent for essential oils, the standard proportion is 10:1, that is, 10 parts alcohol and 1 part essential oils. First, dissolve the essential oils in alcohol and then mix with distilled water. However, all essential oils have different solubility, so each new recipe requires testing.
3. for effective repellents, the percentage of essential oils varies from 2 to 5%, that is, for 100 ml of the finished product, you need to add 2-5 ml of essential oils, and fill the rest with the base. But still, the safest dosage when applying to the skin for essential oils is considered to be an amount of up to 2%. This percentage can only be increased by testing the product.
4. to make a natural repellent for children, you need to study the tolerance of certain essential oils by children's skin, and also reduce the dosage of essential oils. Remember that essential oils, although natural, can easily cause allergies on sensitive skin.
5. when developing a recipe for a natural repellent, it is important to take into account the fact of phototoxicity, because the same citrus oils can harm your skin if used during the day when direct sunlight hits the skin.
6. when adding essential oils to water through a solubilizer, carefully read the recommended proportions for dissolution, as each solubilizer has its own. Thus, it is recommended to mix polysorbate with oils 1:1 or 2:1 and then add to water, but for the Resassol VPF solubilizer, the recommended ratio is 4-5 parts of solubilizer and 1 part of essential oil. You should also take into account the fact that to obtain a transparent solution, the amount of solubilizer needs to be increased.
7. another small nuance - if the essential oil is added to a heated solubilizer and then mixed with warm water, the solubility also improves. But do not heat all the components too much, it is recommended to work with essential oils at a temperature below 40 C.

Natural repellent: precautions

Remember that natural does not equal hypoallergenic, and essential oils are the components that most often cause an allergic reaction due to their highly concentrated composition. Make a small amount of the repellent for the first time, check if its aroma irritates you, because you will have to inhale it. Monitor your condition, whether the repellent causes a headache or irritation. Then do an allergy test on the bend of your elbow. If there is no irritation or redness, your new product can be used.

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