Among the many plant extracts that can be used as ingredients in cosmetic formulations, essential oils bring a host of benefits, the combination of which is unique. What other type of ingredient can give you both cosmeceutical and psychological benefits, while also smelling great? This article looks at the different aspects of using essential oils in skincare products (or in caring for your skin), from purely fragrance-forward, to therapeutic benefits. Naturally, one of the most important reasons to apply anything to your skin is to maintain and promote dermal health. This is a broad area though, and ranges from addressing an acute and localized issue such as a fungal infection or a burn, to everyday maintenance. There is also the perfume side of the spectrum, and everything in-between.

So let’s look at why we like to use various preparations on our skin, and why essential oils are perfectly situated to help. .

Why do we like to put “stuff” on our skin?

Applying oils, butters, waxes and other plant preparations to our skin is nothing new. We can trace cosmetics pretty much as far back as we can trace human culture, with ointments and anointing oils permeating ancient texts and practices. Historically, there has always been a blurred line between cosmetics, medicines and the cultural significance of topical preparations.

Interestingly, taking care of our skin isn’t even exclusive to humans. Many animal species engage in wallowing, a practice not dissimilar to clay face-mask application in humans, and water birds rely on maintaining well oiled feathers. There’s even a “tangerine-scented bird” species that lives off the coast of Alaska, and which creates it’s own “essential oil” for multiple purposes.

A Cape buffalo enjoying a mud bath

Whether human or animal, these practices have one common goal – making sure the outer covering of your body is performing as it is supposed to. For us it means ensuring that the barrier function of our skin is optimal, so that we are well protected from external influences (pathogens, chemical and mechanical threats).

For people more specifically, there is a wellbeing aspect attached to the routine of skincare. From anointing rituals, through bathing traditions to current skincare trends, tending to one’s skin serves a psychological purpose as well as a physical one. In our increasingly virtual world, applying a cream to your face or massaging an oil into sore muscles is one of the few domains that cannot be outsourced to an application, we simply have to use our hands and touch our skin!

Finally, there is the use of our skin as a medium for scent, as in wearing a perfume or using a chest rub. More on this in a moment. Essential oils can play a vital role in all of these situations, adding either their therapeutic benefits, their scent, or both, to enhance any and all skin-related applications.

Your body as a diffuser

One of the most impactful ways to use essential oils is simply by smelling them. Inhaled essential oils have proven benefits on our mental health (alleviating anxiety, improving mood, improving mental focus…) but what does inhalation have to do with adding essential oils to cosmetics?

Just think about the first thing you do as you apply a cream and massage it into your hands. Or how you even decide which hand cream to use. Whenever we test or use any kind of a cosmetic product, we experience its scent. You can think of your body as being your personal “diffuser” – you carry the smell of your creams and lotions with you, and many companies take advantage of this by creating a whole line with one unifying scent.

Of course, wearing a perfume works this way, too! As you apply the fragrance to your wrists or clavicles your body heat helps the volatile compounds fly into the air, creating a perfumed cloud around you. From an aromatherapy perspective, chest rubs are a prime example. We apply a eucalyptus-based ointment to our sternum not because we’re addressing a skin issue, but because it makes inhalation easy, accessible and personal.

Inhalation is an important way to address both respiratory issues and psychological ones. And so you can use the principle behind chest rubs and make, say, a “sleep well balm” to be applied to your sternum at bedtime. And as a bonus this will hydrate and pamper your skin, too.

You can also establish a new scent anchor – by associating a specific fragrance with a skincare routine that creates the feeling of calm, focus and embodied experience. Once the association exists, simply smelling the fragrance will evoke those feelings. I’ve seen massage therapists already do this by giving their clients a cotton ball with a sample of the massage oil used during their relaxing session.

Essential oils for healthy skin

Perhaps most obviously, applying essential oils to your skin can benefit the skin itself. We have a sizable body of research exploring the various effects of essential oils in this way (and go into great detail in this nine-lesson dedicated course: https://tisserandinstitute.org/skin-course/. This is a deep subject, but I will give you an overview of some of the most useful cosmeceutical properties of essential oils.

Barrier function and trans-epidermal water loss

Our skin has two principal layers – an outer layer, or epidermis, and a deeper layer, or dermis. Barrier function happens in the epidermis (moisture), while connective tissue forms the bulk of the dermis (plump skin).

The most important function of our epidermis is to act as a barrier, keeping our insides protected from the outside, and preventing toxic substances from passing through to the inside. We can measure how well it performs this function by looking at trans-epidermal water loss, or TEWL.

If we suffer from an impaired barrier function this goes along with drier skin, because the skin cells are not held together so tightly, allowing moisture to escape and allergens or toxins to get in. You may have heard of leaky gut, in which the cells of the gut are not held together tightly, allowing bacteria and toxins to leak into the bloodstream. Well, the same applies to the cells of the epidermis, but instead of calling it leaky skin, we call it disturbed barrier function. For the skin, patchouli oil and rose absolute can be very helpful in restoring optimal barrier function.

The skin’s connective tissue – collagen and elastin

Collagen and elastin are proteins that together, keep our skin plump and bouncy. As we age, we begin to lose some of this connective tissue, which leads to thinner, sagging skin and wrinkles. Essential oils can help slow, and partially reverse this process. Among the most effective in this regard are Coriander, Immortelle (H. italicum) and Turmeric. Adding them to your creams and serums either promotes collagen and elastin formation, or prevents their depletion.

Immortelle oil was found to inhibit collagenase, the enzyme that breaks down collagen, which supports the idea that Immortelle oil may be helpful in anti-aging products (Fraternale et al 2019). Incidentally, frankincense oil, often touted as anti-aging, had no effect on collagen I levels in an in vitro test, and actually depleted collagen III levels (Han et al 2017). So, forget Frankincense for anti-aging, use Immortelle! But please don’t use it undiluted – it will not do good things to your skin if you do – use no more than 1-2%.

Inflammation

Inflammation is a normal reaction of our body to a harmful stimulus, where our system mobilizes various processes to eliminate the threat and repair the damage. We see this redness as wounds heal. However, long-term inflammation is one of the most common hindrances to the skin performing its most important functions, and essential oils can be helpful in this area.

Many skin conditions involve a degree of inflammation, which can be caused by an actual pathological process (acne, reaction to an insect bite) or by an over-reaction of our immune system (allergic contact dermatitis, urticaria). To put it simply, whenever there is abnormal redness, there is inflammation.

A great many essential oils have shown a degree of anti-inflammatory action, though potency is key here as is the dose, and not all anti-inflammatory oils work well on inflamed skin (different mechanisms). And, even anti-inflammatory oils could irritate if you use more than 1-2%.  Essential oils with the strongest documented anti-inflammatory properties for skin include Coriander, Lavender, Palmarosa, Rose, Geranium and Patchouli.

Microbial balance

Many skin problems stem from an imbalanced microbiome. Bacterial overgrowth can lead to acne and body odor issues, while fungal infections can cause persistent skin problems such as athlete’s foot and ringworm. To give you a couple of examples, Tea Tree oil is a tried and tested ingredient in anti-acne preparations (Enshaieh et al 2007, Malhi et al 2016) and Lemon-scented Eucalyptus is an excellent oil for combating fungal infections (Shahi et al 1999).

Another issue is body odor, and the main bacteria causing this are Staphylococcus haemolyticus and S. hominis. The most useful essential oils for combating these are Elemi, Patchouli, May chang and Vetiver.

Using essential oils can contribute to keeping the general balance of your skin’s microbiome. While we’re just staring to discover the effects of essential oils on our skin microbiome as a whole, from the evidence in other areas it is reasonable to assume that when used in safe concentrations essential oils would be useful to prevent bacteria from becoming virulent, aka acting in a harmful way. Plus it seems to be much harder for bacteria to develop resistance to essential oils than to antibiotics.

Smell your way to healthy skin (the skin / brain axis)

You may have heard of the gut-brain axis, where a growing body of research is revealing the interconnectedness between the health of our digestive and nervous systems. And we are also finding connections between our mental state and our skin health.

Indeed, many skin conditions, such as eczema, rosacea, and psoriasis, have a known psychological aspect, and may flare up in times of stress, while having a skin breakout or rash can in turn cause psychological trauma – anxiety, even depression.

What happens is that the stress response in our bodies results in elevated cortisol levels and a heightened inflammatory response. Cortisol travels to the skin where it disturbs barrier function, and as we have already explored, inflammation reduces the ability of skin to function optimally. It stands to reason that calming the mind and managing our mental state should reflect positively on our skin, and this should be reason enough to incorporate the principles of aromapsychology in your skincare.

But there is more! A Japanese study on female students showed that those who inhaled Rose otto were less stressed than a control group, but they also had a measurably better skin barrier function (Fukada et al 2012). Equally amazing, a Thai study found that a dilution of rose oil applied to the abdomen lowered blood pressure, and increased subjective calm in young volunteers. Why is this amazing? Because they wore breathing masks so they could not smell the aroma (Hongratanaworakit et al 2009).

So, the link between our brain and our skin seems to go both ways, giving us all the more reason to incorporate essential oils into our formulas.

How to approach formulation with essential oils

Now that I’ve got you all excited about incorporating essential oils into your skincare, you may be asking yourself how to go about it. I always like to start with the WHY, or figuring out what the main purpose of your product is, what are you trying to achieve. This will also be the basis for how you move forward.

Therapeutic effect first

If you want to address an acute skin issue, the scent part will be secondary. Indeed, Tea Tree oil, the workhorse of anti-acne preparations, is definitely not among the most pleasant scents yet that does not hinder its popularity in this arena. You will also probably limit the total number of essential oils in your blend, to maximize the therapeutic effect and possibility to easily adjust if needed.

It is also fair to assume that this will be an extremely limited edition product – either made as needed, or in small batches. Which again means that you have a good control over any tweaks you may need to introduce.

Fragrance first

If you want to focus on creating a fragrance-forward experience, you open yourself to being able to use more complex blends in order to come up with something unique, which is especially important if you’re hoping to establish a fragrance anchor.

You may also be able to use lower concentration – just enough to impart the scent.

Balancing both

Whether you want to or not, there will always be a dual impact of essential oils in your products – they will have a scent, and they will impact your skin. So you may want to lean into it, and blend for both function and fragrance. According to Robert Tisserand, the best strategy to do so is to pic two or three “hero” essential oils with the best match for the function, and then complement them with a few others to round out the fragrance.

Safety

Safety should come first, but I have saved it for last – anytime you put essential oils on the skin, you should follow the general dilution guidelines. It’s important to understand that using more than the recommended dilution range can be counter-productive, and could cause inflammation for example.

Most importantly, do not apply undiluted essential oils to your skin. The most common adverse reaction, experienced by thousands of people every year, is a skin reaction, and the most common cause is using an undiluted essential oil, or an unsafe dilution.

In Conclusion

Essential oils are a great, multi-functional addition to any formula that is intended to be put on the skin, whether to address a specific issue or to modulate your mood. Being able to incorporate them as a functional fragrance element is a fundamental skill for anyone who is interested in their use.

References

Enshaieh, S., Jooya, A., Siadat, A. H., & Iraji, F. (2007). The efficacy of 5% topical tea tree oil gel in mild to moderate acne vulgaris: a randomised, double-blind placebo-controlled study. Indian Journal of Dermatology, Venereology, and Leprology, 73(1), 22–26.

Fraternale, D., Flamini, G., & Ascrizzi, R. (2019). In vitro anticollagenase and antielastase activities of essential oil of Helichrysum italicum subsp. italicum (Roth) G. Don. Journal of Medicinal Food, 22(10), 1041–1046. https://doi.org/10.1089/jmf.2019.0054

Fukada, M., Kano, E., & Miyoshi, M. (2012). Effect of “rose essential oil” inhalation on stress-induced skin-barrier disruption in rats and humans. Chemical Senses, 37(4), 347–356. https://doi.org/10.1093/chemse/bjr108

Han, X., Rodriguez, D., & Parker, T. L. (2022). Biological activity of frankincense essential oil in human dermal fibroblasts. Experimental Dermatology, 31(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/2331205X.2017.1298176

Hongratanaworakit, T. (2009). Relaxing effect of rose oil on humans. Natural Product Communications, 4(2), 291–296. Retrieved from %5C%5CRobsrv-05%5Creference manager%5CArticles%5C10965.pdf

Malhi, H. K., Tu, J., Riley, T. V., Kumarasinghe, S. P., & Hammer, K. A. (2016). Tea tree oil gel for mild to moderate acne; a 12 week uncontrolled, open-label phase II pilot study. Australasian Journal of Dermatology, 58(3), 205–210. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajd.12465

Shahi, S. K., Shukla, A. C., Bajaj, A. K., Medgely, G., & Dikshit, A. (1999). Broad spectrum antimycotic drug for the control of fungal infection in human beings. Current Science, 76(6), 836–839. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/24101072