Is "Lye Soap" really different from "store bought"

First, we need to clear up some confusion. What most people call "lye soap" refers to handcrafted bars. They are soaps made using a cold or hot process, mixing lye (sodium hydroxide) and oils to get soap. The reason we do not call them "lye soap" (unless we really want to) is because all soaps have lye, that's right, all soaps. Even your shampoo and dish liquid. Go ahead, pick it up and look at the bottle. You will see an ingredient called "sodium palmate", "sodium tallowate" or something similar. Sodium palmate is self explanatory, it's palm oil mixed with sodium hydroxide (lye), which creates a sudsy soap base. Sodium tallowate is the same, it's tallow (animal fat) mixed with sodium hydroxide (lye). They take this mixture

and then add a ton of other ingredients to it, making for a very cheap product that can be made in bulk and last forever.

In handcrafted soap, we choose different oils and butters for each bar to accomplish different things. For instance, olive oil is very moisturizing but it makes a slimy bar, so you can add castor or coconut oil for a good sud and added benefits. Every oil works different, looks different, gives a different texture and so on; we can decide what the purpose of our bar will be and start the recipe. After deciding on the perfect oil, we can leave it alone or add essential oils or fragrance. These have purpose as well. Finally, we decide how moisturizing we want our bar to be by the lye to fat ratio. For

dry skin, you would want to add more fats than usual but for things like poison ivy soap, you want it to be the perfect ratio. These are the reasons handcrafted "lye" soaps always seem to work better and are loved so much. Everything in them was put there to make a great bar of soap, not to make it cheaper, last longer or add the ability to make claims that aren't true.

So, are "lye soaps" different?

No. Because everything is a lye soap.

Are "handcrafted soaps" different?

Yes. Very.