How to Dilute Clary Sage Oil, Drop by Drop

Diluting clary sage oil is a percentage sum, and most slips come from guessing the percentage by eye. A 1% blend is one part oil to 99 parts carrier, which is about 6 drops in a 30 ml (1 fluid ounce) bottle, using the rough convention of 20 drops to a millilitre. The rest of this page is how to pick the percentage, do the sum for your own bottle, and keep the blend fresh.

Clary Sage Essential Oil bottle

Clary Sage Essential Oil

Our own Clary Sage Essential Oil, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.

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Pick the percentage from the use

There is no single "standard ratio", and "2% is the safe dilution" is the idea we would most like to retire. We recommend 0.5% to 2% in a carrier oil, with a patch test first. The Tisserand Institute's general ranges for essential oils, which it calls guidelines rather than rules, vary with where the product goes: 0.2% to 1% for sensitive skin, 0.5% to 1.2% for facial products, 1% to 3% for body oils and 2% to 4% for wash-off products such as soap (Tisserand Institute, dilution). That page gives no figure for clary sage specifically, so we take the lower of the two sources:

Our skin article explains the reasoning behind the cautious end.

Do the sum for your bottle

A percentage here means the share of the finished blend that is oil. Blend volume in ml times the percentage as a decimal gives ml of oil, and multiplying by 20 gives drops. Thirty ml at 1% is 30 x 0.01 = 0.3 ml, or 6 drops. Real droppers vary, so treat drop counts as approximate.

Blend size0.5%1%2%
10 ml roller bottle0.05 ml (1 drop)0.1 ml (2 drops)0.2 ml (4 drops)
30 ml (1 oz)0.15 ml (3 drops)0.3 ml (6 drops)0.6 ml (12 drops)
100 ml0.5 ml (10 drops)1 ml (20 drops)2 ml (40 drops)

If you weigh instead, as soapmakers and formulators do, work in grams. The certificate of analysis we have for one batch lists a relative density of 0.892, so 1 ml of that batch weighs about 0.89 g, and another batch will differ slightly. For 100 g of blend at 1%, you need 1 g of oil. Pick one method and stay with it; mixing "1% by volume" with a weighed carrier is off by roughly a tenth.

A pharmacy oral syringe measures 0.1 ml more reliably than counting drops. It matters because one extra drop in a 10 ml roller moves 1% to 1.5%.

For a sense of scale, a half-ounce bottle holds about 14.8 ml, roughly 300 drops, enough for around 50 blends of 30 ml at 1%.

The carrier

We do not sell carrier oils; a cosmetic-ingredient or craft supplier does. Jojoba and sweet almond oil are the classic partners. Sweet almond comes from a nut, so anyone with a nut allergy should ask an allergist first, and jojoba is the alternative. Carriers age as well: vegetable oils oxidise and can go rancid (Tisserand Institute, oxidation). Buy a size you will finish, write the mixing date on the bottle, and make small batches for use within a few weeks.

Lower is often better

People read a range as "use the top end to make it work". For a scent, the opposite is true. Clary sage has a distinctive dry, herbal aroma, and the measure of success is whether you can smell it, not how much oil is in the bottle. Start at 0.5%, give it a day, and climb one step at a time. That matches Tisserand's own advice to start low.

Where blends go wrong

Who should skip it

We recommend avoiding clary sage oil during pregnancy (see the pregnancy page, and ask an obstetric clinician or midwife), and it is not the oil to reach for before driving. Keep it away from eyes, children and pets. If you have eczema or tend to react to fragrance, ask a dermatologist first and stay at the bottom of the range. Diluting does not make it suitable to swallow.

When you want finished formulations worked out with this arithmetic, the massage oil batches and the roll-on sums are built from the same guidance.

Clary Sage Essential Oil bottle

Clary Sage Essential Oil

Clary Sage Essential Oil from our own shop, in sizes from 0.5 oz to bulk.

From $19.99

Shop Now →

Sources & Further Reading