Body Butter, Body Cream, What's The Difference & Do I Need Both?

Body Butters are crafted from a mixture of butters and oils, sometimes fragrance oil, essential oil, and specialty products are added. Adding vitamin E oil for instance, to help minimize stretch marks or adding lime oil to boost the antioxidants in the formula. Additional ingredients might be added to make the combination less greasy on your skin.

The types of oils and butters that are blended can be modified by their properties for a specific use. Argan oil may be used for acne prone skin where oily skin may benefit from jojoba oil which is known to regulate oil production. Some butters like mango butter seem to be good for all skin types. Shea butter is extra rich and really good to use in cold, dry climates in the winter. Cocoa butter is a brittle butter and will help to harden a mixture and make it “scoopable” when combined with softer butters and oils like almond oil or hemp seed oil. Formulators mix and match these oils and butters to get the right texture, skin feel and infuse with ingredients to benefit your skin. 

Some companies, many in fact, will add additional ingredients that may not be so skin loving. Preservatives with formaldehyde do come to mind here. Sure, formaldehyde will help your product last a really long time, but at what cost to your health? That rabbit hole will be explored in a different blog post, but know this, we source our ingredients to be free from harmful parabens and try to stay as close to nature as we can while still formulating a product that will last. 

Back to business here. Now that we know what is in a true body butter, did you notice I didn't mention water or any water soluble ingredients? When you start adding water to body butter, it is no longer a butter, but a cream. Further diluting a cream will make a lotion. Is that important? Actually, it is. 

If you craft a body butter and add frankincense hydrosol, you have just created a cream. It may be just as thick as body butter, but it is different. Creams and lotions are hydrous, meaning they contain water or water molecules. The key difference is that in order for something to hydrate your skin, it must contain water. Adding the frankincense hydrosol has just made this cream moisturizing and hydrating. “Doesn’t my body butter hydrate and moisturize my skin too?” you might ask. Actually, it doesn't. But that doesn’t mean it's not good for your skin, body butters are wonderful for your skin! They just function a little differently. Body butters will lock in moisture that is already present. But here is the thing, make sure moisture is present. After bathing is a really good time to add butters. Your skin is moist and that body butter will lock in the moisture on your skin. Your creams and lotions can be used anytime. They also apply well on moist skin, but given that they already have water, the skin could be dry and it would still moisturize. Water ingredients could be water, glycerin, aloe gel or juice, hydrosols or other water containing ingredients. 

When it comes to creating a cream, you will also need a binder. We all know that oil and water don’t mix, but we also know that our lotions and creams have oil and water. The binder, also called an emulsifier, is required to blend the two together. Otherwise they would separate and it would not be fun to try to use a separate mess on your skin. 

So what are the benefits of both?

Body butters may have less ingredients that are more concentrated and often is a more natural state. Body butters are thick and creamy and will stay on the skin, taking longer to absorb. For this reason, many people use them before bed or after the bath/shower. Anhydrous butters do not require a preservative, the absence of water makes it so mold and bacteria won't grow. However, if you scoop out products with a damp hand, you have just introduced water and using your hand may also have introduced bacteria. It is recommended that body butters be stored in a cool, dry place and that you use a clean dry spoon to scoop it out to help preserve your product. Body butters are wonderful for dry patches of skin (not the face) and cracked, winter skin.

Creams and lotions are great daily moisturizers. They will have a preservative because they have water. Ingredients may be more refined and additional ingredients may be found in creams and lotions, but they are in some ways, more convenient. Creams and lotions are lighter on your skin than body butters and will typically absorb into your skin quicker than butters, making them easier to use “on the go”. You can have a lotion in a pump where the butter is too thick, you can use the cream or lotions at any time and still be moisturizing. You can get benefits of other water and water soluble ingredients, you can mix the best of both worlds in a cream!

Do I have a recommendation for one or the other? It really depends on what you are trying to do. I would not use body butter on my face. But in the winters of Maine? I use it all the time on my body!