Thread: Best soap with hard water?

So I'm new to this site, but have been shaving with a straight razor for a while now. I've always preferred using puck style soap; I guess I'm old fashioned like that. The issue I'm now facing, though, is extremely hard water. We moved into a new apartment a little while back. It's nice but for the fact that the building has no water softener and the town sits on limestone. It's hard to make any sort of lather here. Our dishes don't get clean, my wife can't take her bubble bath, and I can only whip up the thinnest of lathers in my shaving mug. I need to shave immediately after my shower and be extremely careful with the razor. Those are good habits, to be sure, but does anyone know of a soap which works well with hard water? I can't bring myself to buy bottled water just to shave with it.

Buy some distilled water and use that. Warm it up in the microwave for a few secs. I know that some hard water can be a real arse to use for making lather.

If you live in the states and are near a Grocery Outlet store I would suggest that for a cheap experiment pick up a tube of Kiss My Face shaving cream. I don't know if it will work in hard water, but I get a decent lather with it in cold water. As a cold water shaver I've found that a number of soaps and creams are unaffected by the cold water. It's worth a couple of dollars try. I'm sure KMF is available elsewhere but Grocery Outlet generally is cheaper than most places.

+1 The Kiss my Face is one of my goto products for our well water

Poraso aka Bigelow is another

SRD Brand soap also performs rather well with my well water. LOL

Col Conk Amber is another


I have become an Überlather aficionado living out here in the boonies

Get some food grade citric acid add 1 gram to 1 litre of water this will bring the water back to a neutral ph. It may fizz a little! You should then be able to produce lather from any soap.
Citric acid is used in cooking instead of lemon juice it's also used in those fizzy bath bombs so it's safe to use.
If you give it a go let us know how you get on.
Over here in the UK 1kg of citric acid is about $7 so it's cheap enough
I also believe that Arko shaving soap is formulated especially for hard water

I've had good luck with the La Toja shaving soap stick.

Most of the shaving creams I've used are unaffected by hard water, just the soaps.

Thanks for the advice, gentlemen. I've been buying 12 packs of Van der Hagen on the cheap since I started wet shaving. I suppose it's time to try a slightly higher quality product.

Pick up some Proraso or Bigelow, you will not be disappointed .

What? No recomendations for Tabac and Cella? Allow me to be the first.

Oh, and Palmolive shave sticks.

Might want to try Barrister & Mann - their soaps are a little thirstier than other soaps (need to add a little more water than with most others) but are insanely easy to lather and produce some of the thickest, slickest lather I've seen from soaps.

Given how easily they lather in my slightly hard water, I suspect they'd be a good candidate for very hard water...

And if you email Will (the owner) before ordering and explain your hard water hurdle, I'm sure he'd be able to fill you in how it may or may not affect the soap before you buy - he's a very knowledgeable and forthright guy who is very willing to go the extra mile to help someone out.