Baume.Be Shaving Soap Review – Small Bang for Big Bucks
Baume.Be Shaving Soap
Baume.Be is a Shaving soap specifically formulated for sensitive skin.
Pros
Nice masculine scent without being overbearing
Comes with a Pretty and Reusable Ceramic Lather Bowl
Cons
On the Expensive Side
Lather takes time to build
Uses more water than most other soap
Lather dries extremely quickly
The next soap on our journey through finding the best shaving soap for you, the Baume.Be shaving soap comes to us all the way from Belgium.
Baume.Be is specifically formulated for guys with sensitive skin. The creator was a dermatologist who was cursed with sensitive skin and couldn’t find a good soap for his own face. Therefore, he decided to create his own.
Baume.Be has a full catalog of shaving cosmetics including pre-shave, post shave, shaving brushes, and razors.
Baume.Be Shaving Soap Description
When the Baume.Be soap arrived, it was packaged to the nines. The box was full of packing peanuts and the interior had bubble wrap inside. This wasn’t to protect just the shaving soap, but also the ceramic bowl the soap sits in.
The bowl is nice and looks good with the soap, designed to hold the puck of shaving soap so you can lather it up easily. Ceramic is great for a lathering dish because of its ability to hold heat from the warm water you use to charge the soap.
The soap itself is a puck about 3 to 4 inches across with the Baume.Be logo and name carved into the top.
Like the Sir Hare we reviewed recently, this soap advertises itself as a soap you can lather without another separate lather bowl. If you’d like to know how well that worked, read on below.
Ingredients: “Sodium palmate, Aqua, Sodium palm kernelate, Glycerin, Sorbitol, Palm kernel acid, Parfum, Sodium chloride, Sodium borate, Glycine soja oil, Potassium palm kernelate, Potassium palmate, Propylene glycol, Ci 77891, Pentasodium pentetate, Tetrasodium etidronate, Beta-carotene, Daucus carota sativa root extract, and Tocopherol.”
Scent
Parfum is a scent that is common in many soaps and perfumes. It is a sweet and floral aroma that brings in feelings of cleanliness. It’s not incredibly remarkable, as it is a common scent in most commercial soaps and cleaners.
Honestly, it often makes me think of just the generic soap you get in most public bathrooms. It’s clean and nice, but very generic.
The good side is the scent is not going to clash with any of the other products you use that might have their own scent.
That is a bunch of words that mean a great many things. It’s full of ingredients that are hard to pronounce and esoteric. For the most part, though, they are mostly what you get in normal soap. Most of it is coloring or preservatives, with a few things to make the scent and keep it good for your skin.
The Soap comes with Vitamin E and Carrot Oil to protect your skin and keep it healthy. I can say it does that job well as my skin feels good after using the soap, but that could also be the pre-shave and post shave I use.
The Lather and Shaving Experience
For this soap, I did my usual shaving routine of three passes over the face. In this instance I was using a normal safety razor with a Muhle Razor blade.
How well does it Lather?
In short, Baume.Be soap doesn’t.
It does build a small amount of lather when you really start to work it, but the lather is very very thin. In the same amount of time I was working my brush, I could have gotten twice as much out of almost any other soap I have tried.
Barbasol would have gotten me a better lather to be honest.
It was so thin when I applied it that it was drying on my skin before I could even get to it with a razor. I even tried to rebuild the lather multiple times, going over and over with the soap and my brush. It just wouldn’t last at all.
This soap just sucked up the water like no other soap I have ever used. It was dry within 5 minutes of me attempting to charge it.
Attempting to build a lather in the ceramic bowl provided with the soap just created a mess. The bowl is too shallow with the soap puck inside of it, and all the lather just splattered out of the bowl. Even then there is no texture in the bowl for the friction necessary to build a good lather with your brush.
How is the Texture?
The texture of the soap feels like a bar of soap you would use in the shower. It is very solid, like normal triple-milled soaps.
When applying the lather, it feels like a normal bar soap I would use in the bath. It was almost like I was just giving my face a good scrub rather than preparing it for a nice shave.
The good news is that it doesn’t leave any kind of residue, and washes off very cleanly. My skin felt smooth and healthy overall, and in no way dry or touched by razorburn.
How is the Overall Shave?
Overall shaving with this stuff was not pleasurable.
Baume.Be dried way too quickly, and didn’t lather up enough for me to relax and enjoy the shave.
The scent wasn’t even interesting enough for me either.
Mostly I just kind of muddled through and took my time shaving. Though, the fact that the lather dries so quickly makes it feel like I was shaving dry rather than wet.
Value for the Money?
This soap is sort of on the expensive side. Though, theoretically most of that is coming from the nice ceramic bowl you are getting with the order of the soap. There are refills that are just the soap bar itself.
Based on the experience I had shaving with this soap, I would say it really isn’t worth the cash for this soap.
Any Common Consumer Issues, Complaints, or Positive Reports?
The internet seems to be torn on this one. There are a ton of people who are disappointed in the lather-ability of this soap and the fact that it dries so very quickly upon applying it to your skin.
Those that love this soap talk about how much they enjoy the feeling of the slick lather on their faces, and how good their skin feels when they are done shaving. I’m not saying they are wrong at all. Personal taste is a hugely subjective part of this business.
I will definitely say I agree with almost all these complaints about how thin the lather is and how fast it dries.
Final Thoughts – Who is the Baume.Be Shaving Soap Best Suited For?
Honestly, I cannot recommend this soap for anyone. Maybe if you have the money to spend and you just want to try it AND you have sensitive skin, it could be for you. Otherwise, your money is better spent elsewhere.
If you do have sensitive skin you could think about looking at some of the best shaving creams for sensitive skin and soaps that are fragrance-free.
