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Calendula oil is easy to make and endlessly useful in skincare. This gorgeous golden oil is a fun DIY, and you’ll soon wonder how you ever lived without it. Learn how to make calendula with this simple tutorial!
Calendula (Calendula Officinalis) is sometimes called the ‘pot marigold,’ and you will likely recognize the bright yellow/orange flower. It is a gorgeous plant loved for its fresh flowers and medicinal properties.
I like infusing calendula in olive oil to make soaps, lotions, and other skincare products. Learn how I make calendula oil in just a few simple steps!
Why You Will Love This Recipe
- It’s Unbelievably Easy: The great thing about an oil infusion is that no fancy equipment or ingredients are needed—just some patience.
- Beautiful Golden Color: When you are finished, you’ll love the oil’s rich, sunny color. You might even start thinking of it as liquid gold!
- Soothing and Calming: Calendula is a superstar herb for its skin-soothing and calming qualities. Calendula oil is useful for soothing skin irritations like sunburns, dry skin, and scalp.
- Earth-Friendly DIY: Bottling up your own calendula-infused oil is one way to eliminate single-use plastic packaging.
- Get Your Garden Gloves: If you like working in the dirt, you can even grow your own calendula flowers.
What You’ll Need
Dried flowers – Dried calendula can be purchased, or you can grow and dry your own! Don’t worry about buying a bag of these and not knowing what to do with the extra. These gorgeous, bright, dried calendula petals can be used in DIY recipes, such as my Melt-and-Pour Soap and Oatmeal Bath recipes.
Cold-pressed olive oil – I chose olive oil because it was a budget-friendly option for preparing this recipe. You are welcome to use the carrier oil of your choice.
Airtight container – A glass jar is ideal.
Cheesecloth – For straining the oil. You can also use a fine mesh strainer.
How to Make Calendula Oil
Step 1: Fill the clean glass jar about halfway full with dried calendula flowers.
Step 2: Pour the cold-pressed olive oil over the flowers until they are completely submerged. Ensure at least one inch of oil covers the top of the flowers. I use an 8 oz mason jar.
Step 3: Secure the lid tightly on the container. Place the container in a cool, dark location for 6 weeks. Gently swirl or shake the container daily to help distribute the herbs and prevent them from clumping during the infusion process.
Step 4: After 6 weeks, strain the calendula oil through a cheesecloth or fine-mesh sieve into a clean container.
Step 5: Press down on the calendula flowers to extract any remaining oil.
Step 6: Keep your finished calendula oil in a cool, dark place (like a cabinet) in a dark, airtight container. This will help it last longer.
Expert Tips
Always Do A Patch Test
You should always do a small patch test on your skin before using any bath and body product. Rub a little bit into your inner arm and watch for adverse reactions before further use.
Have Fun With This One
It feels so good to get my hands dirty in the garden. Working with flowers and petals like I do in this recipe is another chance to get a little messy.
Don’t be afraid to use your fingers to smash those petals into the cheesecloth to extract the maximum amount of oil.
Use Whole Flower Heads, Not Just Flower Petals
If you grow and dry your own, be sure to dry the entire flower head, including the green base that holds the petals together.
The green part is called the involucre, and it is rich with resins that provide the healing properties calendula is known for.
Dry Thoroughly
This recipe is pretty much fool-proof, but if you grow and dry your own flowers, be sure they dry out all the way. If there is any moisture left in the petals, it could cause your oil to become rancid.
You don’t have to worry about that if you’ve purchased dried flower heads.
Recipe FAQs
The most common oils used in this preparation are jojoba oil, sweet almond oil, or fractionated coconut oil. Be sure to look for quality oils that are unrefined and cold-pressed or expeller-pressed.
You can store your homemade calendula oil in any jar or bottle. A dark glass bottle will help with a long shelf life. Most importantly, keep it out of direct sunlight.
Storing it in a tall bottle with a narrow neck would make it easy to pour your oil as you use it in lotions and other recipes. You can use a funnel to pour your oil into a narrow-neck bottle.
If you use a high-quality carrier oil and store your calendula oil in a dark, cool place, it should last for a year.
This oil can be used for any skin application. It makes an excellent addition to DIY massage oil or homemade moisturizing body oil.
I use this oil as an addition to several of my lotion and soap DIYs. It is a versatile oil that can be mixed with other essential oils in your DIY recipes.
This DIY project is worth the wait. I love being able to control the quality of the ingredients in my herbal remedies and don’t have to wonder how long they have been sitting on the shelf.
I also love being hands-on and enjoying the beauty of the bright orange blooms. If you like to garden like I do, you can really immerse yourself in the process by growing your own fresh calendula flowers.
It’s a beautiful project from the moment you immerse the dried blooms in the jar until the golden oil is ready to use on your shelf. I love anything that brings a little bit of the outside into my home.
Other Oil Infusion Recipes
If you tried this tutorial for How to Make Calendula Oil or any other tutorial on my website, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the 📝 comments below. Thanks for visiting!
How to Make Calendula Oil
Equipment
- 1 Clean, airtight container (glass jar is ideal)
- 1 Cheesecloth or strainer
Ingredients
- Dried calendula flowers
- Cold-pressed olive oil, enough to fully submerge the flowers and cover them by 1 inch
Instructions
- Fill the clean container about halfway full with dried calendula flowers.
- Pour the cold-pressed olive oil over the flowers until they are completely submerged. Make sure there's at least one inch of oil covering the top of the flowers.
- Secure the lid tightly on the container. Place the container in a cool, dark location for 6 weeks. Gently swirl or shake the container daily to help distribute the herbs and prevent them from clumping.
- After 6 weeks, strain the calendula oil through a cheesecloth or fine-mesh sieve into a clean container. You can compost the leftover plant material!
- Keep your finished calendula oil in a cool, dark place (like a cabinet) in a dark, airtight container. This will help it last longer.
Would jojoba oil be a good carrier oil for this? What are some other options?
I chose olive oil because it was a budget-friendly option for preparing this recipe. You are welcome to use the carrier oil of your choice.
This is such an easy recipe!