Soaking in a bathtub is psychologically soothing. But it has physical benefits too. These advantages depending on what you add to your bath. Essential oils are aromatherapeutic. Carrier oils are moisturizing. Bubbles are fun and cheerful. Salts can relieve aches and pain.
Bath milks are a special category that can be especially medicinal. Many are antibacterial and reduce itching, so they’re great for eczema, chickenpox, hives, sunburn, or rashes. And they feel luxurious and silky on your skin. So let’s look at 33 DIY bath milk recipes you could try.
1. Three Little Ferns DIY Coconut Milk Bath
DIY bath milk recipes often contain dairy. But it doesn’t have to be whole milk. You can use yogurt, buttermilk, coconut milk, goat milk, powdered milk, and even breast milk! (Amy uses hers to bathe her youngest.) Colloidal oats are a popular ingredient too. This recipe has powdered milk, lavender essential oil, and baking soda. You can use a whole cup per bathtub.
2. Vanilla + Rose + Salt DIY Milk Bath
If you’re using flower petals, buds, infused water, or glitter in your DIY milk bath, you need two things. One, polysorbate or a similar emulsifier. Two, a muslin bag to hold the non-soluble materials. The recipe includes powdered buttermilk, bentonite clay, titanium dioxide, and (colloidal) bath oats with cocoa butter, shea butter, bath salts, petals, and essential oils.
3. DIY Mint Milk Bath
Emulsifiers break oil into tiny, almost invisible particles. This way, they mix into the water better, won’t for greasy floating blobs, and absorbs into your skin more easily. But this DIY milk bath recipe only has a few drops of minty oil, so you don’t need an emulsifier. Mix the oil with baking soda, powdered milk, and corn starch. The starch turns your bathwater silky.
4. DIY Coconut Milk Bath
Rose petals, lavender buds, chamomile, and mica make your bath look pretty and smell amazing. But they can clog your pipes. So if you’re adding any of these to your DIY milk bath recipe, use a muslin bag or cloth bag to hold your bath milk. Other ingredients are bath oats (sometimes called colloidal oats or oat flour), Epsom salt, and powdered coconut milk.
5. Ms. Health Esteem DIY Coconut Milk Bath
Powdered coconut milk offers a convenient shortcut for DIY milk bath recipes. But here’s a recipe that uses fresh coconut instead. You can shred it by hand or buy pre-shredded coconut. And the recipe has both shredded and creamed coconut. Other ingredients include essential oil and corn starch to go with that creamy coconut. Mix everything in a blender.
6. DIY Lavender Milk Bath
DIY bath milks and other bath products often have infused waters like rose water or lemon water. Or even just plain water. This can get moldy in the bottle, and emulsifiers can help you prevent that. If you’re sticking to powders, you can leave out the emulsifier. This recipe has three milk powders (coconut, whole-fat, non-fat) plus lavender + lemon essential oils.
7. DIY Goat Milk Lavender + Chamomile Bath
Sometimes, you put a teabag into milk tea to flavor it. You can use teabags for DIY milk baths too. Particularly caffeine-free herbal tea bags, sometimes marketed as tea infusions. You can split the bag into your bath milk mixture, then scoop it into a (different) cloth bag to stop the tea bits from floating in the tub. Or you could just swirl unbroken teabags in the tub.
8. DIY Foaming Coconut Bath Milk
DIY bath milks are silky rather than fizzy. But if you want a bit of froth and foam, add baking soda and citric acid to your recipe. These two will react when they hit the water and create that bubbling hiss. But only for powdered bath milk recipes – otherwise, the liquid milk could curdle. If you want bigger bubbles, use a surfactant like SLSA or Castile to make it fluffy.
9. DIY Honey Milk Bath
If you’re making a DIY bath milk recipe with baking soda and citric acid, always air-dry the powder before packing. This prevents premature effervescence. Any drops of water could cause the acid and alkali to react before they hit your bathwater, flattening your fizzy bath milk. This recipe uses lavender oil, Epsom salt, liquid milk, and honey, so no citric, please!
10. DIY Foaming Cocoa Butter Milk Bath
Polysorbate 20 (or 80) is a synthetic emulsifier. So while it does make oil-based DIY bath milk easier to absorb, breaking up the oil particles makes it easier to clean the bathtub after your bath. This recipe uses SCI/SLSA as both an emulsifier and a surfactant. It has coconut milk powder and silk powder too, so your bath milk feels fluffy and creamy on your skin.
11. DIY Milk Bath Powder
You already know baking soda – when used with citric acid – adds fizz to your DIY bath milk. But you can use it solo for its cleansing and exfoliating properties. This recipe has baking soda mixed with milk powder and cornstarch. You can use any type of powdered milk – goat milk, buttermilk, or coconut milk. But full fat is better for your skin so don’t skimp!
12. Fizzy DIY Bath Milk
We’ve talked about the foaming benefits of citric acid and baking soda. And how it needs to be dried before packing. So here are three alternatives you can try. To your fizzy formula, add any milk powder, starch (cornstarch, tapioca, or natrasorb), non-iodized salt (fine dendritic and coarse pink), bath oats (aka colloidal oatmeal), and a fragrance oil or essential oil blend.
13. DIY Vanilla Milkshake Bath Bomb
You can use whole milk to make a liquid DIY milk bath. Powdered versions are more common, but you could also opt for a milk bath bomb like this one here. It dissolves into your bathtub (or bucket) with a fizzy, foaming splash and the infused oil gives your skin a silky treat. This velvety bath milk has vanilla essential oil and fractionated coconut oil.
14. Our Oily House DIY Milk Bath
Did you know breast milk can unclog your baby’s stuffy nose? And babies can bathe in breast milk too – it’s great for their skin. But for the adults, try this recipe with any powdered (non-human) milk including goat or camel milk, Epsom salt, baking soda, and lavender essential oil. The salt is optional, and you can use a different type of essential oil if you prefer.
15. DIY Rose Milk Bath
Layered DIY bath products look so pretty in their bottles. But you need to shake them carefully before use. That ensures all the bits and pieces get equal amounts in the bathtub or bucket. This DIY milk bath has coarse pink salt, milk powder, bath oats, and dried rose petals stacked in rows. You could also add rose essential oil or rose fragrance oil if you like.
16. Cleopatra’s DIY Milk Bath
Lactic acid is the reason milk ends up in the bath. It gives a mild acid peel so it’s a natural exfoliant. It’s also soothing and the fat content in milk is great for ‘pulling’ the muck out of zits. For this simple bath solution, just pour the milk, honey, and rose petals straight into your bathwater. Or pour them into a bucket and splash it over your skin if you don’t have a tub.
17. DIY Milk and Honey Bath Soak
Pouring fresh milk into the bath is the simplest way to prep your DIY milk bath. Liquid milk has more lactic acid but powdered milk is more concentrated, so use both. But if you want to premix your bath milk, warm the milk in a saucepan, getting it to lukewarm, not boiling. Add the honey to the pot and stir until fully dissolved. Then offload the warm tonic into your tub.
18. DIY Goat Milk Honey Bath
Goat milk has less lactose (and therefore less lactic acid) than cow milk. But it has more fat content, so it’s better at moisturizing and hydration. To enjoy both benefits, this DIY milk bath pours liquid cow milk plus powdered goat milk into the bathtub. Add organic honey, rose petals, lavender Epsom salt, and for an extra treat, aromatic champagne bubble bath.
19. DIY Peppermint Milk Bath
‘Hot essential oils’ with minty or citrusy scents are best used in a lukewarm bath. Especially if your skin is sensitive. Otherwise, when mixed with water that’s too hot, that tingle could turn into a scald. To make this DIY milk bath, split a peppermint teabag and mix it with powdered milk and peppermint essential oil. Stuff this into a bauble to make an ornament.
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20. DIY Skin Brightening Milk Bath
If you’re ‘cooking’ a milk bath, don’t let it boil. It needs to be just warm enough to dissolve any salts or oils you’ve mixed in. This recipe has whole (goat) milk powder, baking soda, Epsom salt, dried rose petals, and lavender buds. If you’re a fan of flowers and regularly receive bouquets, freeze the flowers whole so you can use the freeze-dried petals later.
21. DIY Milk + Honey Bath Melts
Cleopatra’s baths of milk and honey are quite popular today. She used donkey milk in hers, but goat, cow, or coconut will do. This recipe uses solid bath melts that dissolve into the tub or bucket. So you’ll mix the powdered milk and honey with almond oil and melted shea butter. Mix thoroughly then pour into soap molds or ice cube trays and freeze for later use.
22. DIY Cleopatra Milk Bath
Milk and honey are great, but what you really need to elevate your DIY milk bath recipe is essential oils. This recipe uses fresh milk (liquid, not powdered), organic honey, olive oil, and sandalwood oil. You can add rose petals too, or any other essential oil you like. A quick hint is to match your essential oil to the type of flower petals or buds, so you’d use rose here.
23. DIY Luxurious Lavender/Rose Milk Bath
Rose petals symbolize passion, beauty, and youth. The petals are rich in oils and are a great anti-aging treatment. So for this recipe, the milk is infused with lavender oil when you want to relax or rose oil when you’re feeling unsexy and want a rejuvenating skin boost. You can use powdered cow, goat, or coconut milk for the base. Add baking soda, Epsom, or starch.
24. DIY Cappuccino Milk Bath
It would probably be expensive to take a Starbucks bath. But you can still mix your favorite drink into the tub or bath bucket. You’ll need powdered milk, corn starch, and baking soda to make the bulk of your bath milk. You can also add coarse colored salt for bulk. Epsom, Himalayan, or Black Lava work great. Finish with instant coffee and vanilla essential oil.
25. DIY Oatmeal Milk Bath
Oats come in various forms. You can grind them at home in a blender, which gives you the same consistency as store-bought oat flour. Or you could buy colloidal oats, sometimes sold as bath oats. These are super-fine and are often mixed with Avena Sativa. This recipe uses bath oats and baking soda (great for itchy skin), milk powder, cinnamon, and eucalyptus.
26. DIY Herbal Milk Bath Bombs
When you’ve just had a baby, you probably try everything to help your milk come in. So why not try these – irony-noted – milky bath bombs? They’re great for post-partum pampering. Use your favorite bath bomb mold and stuff it with mineral + Epsom salts, baking soda, corn starch, citric acid, goat milk powder, olive oil, lavender oil, and bright calendula petals.
27. Rose + Ylang Ylang Milk Bath
The Brits say ee-lang ee-lang. We Americans call it lang-lang (and keep the Y silent). But however you pronounce it, this milky bath tonic is a treat. And it suits tough ethics too – it’s vegan, sugar-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, and cruelty-free. You’ll need coconut milk powder, rose blossom teabags (or loose tealeaves), baking soda, starch, rose oil, and Ylang Ylang oil.
28. DIY Flower Milk Bath
Many DIY bath products use dried petals crushed into the DIY bath bottle. But this version puts fresh petals in your ‘goddess bath’ for that pampered presentation. You can freeze fresh flowers too – they’ll hold their color better. Use the same essential oil as your flower petals. Then add milk to the tub. It can be powdered, liquid, or you can use a combination of both.
29. Foamy Frothy DIY Milk Bath
When you can’t decide between the lustrous silk of bath milk and the creamy foam of bath bubbles, do both! This DIY bath milk has castile soap in it, so it doubles as a bubble bath. The other items you’ll mix include fresh rose petals and essential (rose) oil. Use two cups of liquid coconut milk. Add a fourth cup of fractionated coconut, though water works here too.
30. Divine Serenity DIY Milk Bath
Taking a milk bath at home can feel like dumping the fridge (and pantry!) into your bathtub. But each of those edible ingredients has a role. Oats relieve itchiness and heal rashes. Flower petals have oils that make your skin look younger. Honey is softening while milk exfoliates dead skin. And all that citrus (strawberry, grapefruit, lemon) is soothing and healing. Enjoy!
31. DIY Cinnamon + Oatmeal Milk Bath
You may have heard that cinnamon is great for coughs because it scratches that itch in your throat. And you probably know oats release a healing, hydrating gel when they get wet. So this combination is perfect for sunburn, ivy, eczema, or heat rash. Mix powdered milk, colloidal oats, ground cinnamon, and corn starch in a blender. Add them to your bathwater.
32. DIY Rose + Coconut Bath Milk
Emily’s romantic bath milk (it’s pink!) only has three ingredients – liquid coconut, pure rose essential oil and beetroot juice. You want essential oil as opposed to fragrance oil, which is far less concentrated. For the coconut, you can use fluid coconut milk or thicker coconut cream. If you don’t like rose oil, you can try lavender, ylang-ylang, or any oil you prefer.
33. DIY Miracle Milk Bath
This super simple DIY milk bath recipe is good for up to a year. But it’s an extremely bare-bones recipe – you just need baking soda, powdered milk, and salt in equal amounts. The bath milk doesn’t have any oils in it, so you don’t need emulsifiers or surfactants. You can use colored salt (pink or black) if it’s too plain. Or replace the milk with coconut powder.
What’s your favorite DIY milk bath recipe? Show us how you make it in the comments!
