Thread: Cream or Soap?

Does cream or soap give better protection?
Curious, what are your favorite soaps and creams?
Has anyone heard of Tabula Rasa shaving cream?

Hi, I can't say I've heard of that one. Normally, Shave Creams offer better protection, more cushion, whereas soaps are thinner and give you better feedback when shaving.
Some of my Favorites are SRD's Shave Soaps, Mama Bear's and Tabac.
For Shave Creams, Castle Forbes, Truefitt and Hill, Art of Shaving, TOBS and one of our members here, "Alraz" makes something called the "Da Bomb" which I'm currently testing and is pretty awesome so far. I just got it the other day....

I am going to have to go with soap. Any soap from TGQ, Tabac, SRD soap is also good. I have some creams that are good, I just prefer soap.

i use a genuine, old school, made long before my birth, old spice shaving soap that i found in a second hand shop.

moulded into it's mug

it's the freakin best

combined with my 1970s AVON aftershave, i smell like the sexiest old dude in town

There are arguments on both sides. It really gets down to personal choice. Get some of both then you can decide which you prefer. Just ensure you get some quality products for comparison. I use TGQ soaps exclusively. I also like T&H creams. I just purchased a TOBS cream and like that as well.

I would recommend reading the relevant review section. Using the "category tools" link, you can sort by rating (we recently cleaned up the reviews, so the member rating now yields a meaningful result in all cases).

Personally, I use Domenico Caraceni, Castle Forbes, Taylor of Old Bond Street, and Edwin Jagger (thanks for the tip, ben.mid!). Incidentally, none of these are soaps. If I absolutely had to use a soap, it would be Xpec.

Get samples if you can. Skin is personal, and no review can replace an actual test shave.

Why not head over to the vendors' corner and order some samples?

The truth is there is no wrong choice. Both soaps and creams are able to provide lathers which will enable you to have a close and comfortable shave.

Cheers!

Originally Posted by cubed1

The truth is there is no wrong choice. Both soaps and creams are able to provide lathers which will enable you to have a close and comfortable shave.

While this remark is true in general, there are subtle differences. And I'll readily challenge you to find me a soap that performs as well as, or better than, Caraceni or Castle Forbes.

NB, there is a good number of creams and soaps about which I never wrote a report, either because I found them lacking severely in one or more rating categories, or because I found them otherwise inadequate.

On a personal note, if you were a beginner, I would advise you to get a high quality English cream like TOBS or Jagger. Biggest bang for your buck.

Let's see: 1) YES! Creams in general give you more protection (cushion) but that is only a fraction of the full picture. Cushion is important but not the only factor to consider when judging a shaving soap/cream performance, other qualities are also important: beard prep, glide, stability, robustness conditioning, economy and some also include the scent ;-).

If you are wondering, in order for the soap/cream to perform well, it should allow the whiskers and the skin to be softened and lubricated, this is the prep aspect. The product should also allow the razor to do its job easily, this is known as glide. Glide, along with cushion, are the qualities that people generally tend to focus the most when selecting a soap/cream.

In addition, the soap/cream should stay wet and not disappear during the shave and is what I call stability. Clearly, you cannot get all of these if the soap/cream does not lather well under a variety of circumstances such as: variable water conditions, technique, etc., the product also should not take hours to build good lather, this is robustness.

Finally, your soap/cream should help the skin to recover after the shave and prevent irritation, razor bumps, burn, etc... For me, this is perhaps the most important quality required on a product of this kind, and the one where most products fail, or do not perform as well, especially creams. Also, conditioning is probably the most overlooked quality as well.

Using a product that can build good lather with a minimal amount is also important, this is economy. You should not spend more time loading your brush than building your lather. People often use price as a measure of economy not thinking that the price is only half of the story. Needless to say, it is very hard to get all of these qualities in a single product and there are only a handful of examples that excel in all these areas, I will get to these in the next section.

To go deeper on your question, the reasons why creams can give you more cushion is because they do not have to form a puck, although some could ;-). There are great soaps that give you just about the same cushion as creams but generally the extra cushion found in creams comes at the expense of decreased glide; typically, soaps have better glide.

2) Without a plug, I like Castle Frobes and Truefitt & Hill for creams. If you are going for value, Proraso/C.O Bigelow or Taylor of Old Bond Street, are excellent for the money. There are a lot of soaps great soaps in the market but perhaps the best is Mitchell's Wool Fat. For value, Tabac cannot be beat. I also like Caswell Massey but I am probably the only person in the world that likes it, I think that it is a very underrated product but there is a lot of that around. As with almost anything else, you get what you pay for, this is the bottom line. In my experience, once you try one of these high end products, you would not go back.

3) Never heard of it but according the ye old wikipedia, it means blank slate.

Originally Posted by carlh327

Does cream or soap give better protection?
Curious, what are your favorite soaps and creams?
Has anyone heard of Tabula Rasa shaving cream?

Originally Posted by zib

one of our members here, "Alraz" makes something called the "Da Bomb" which I'm currently testing and is pretty awesome so far. I just got it the other day....

He he he ;-), I see you got it. It did not take long ;-) and thanks for the plug.

Al raz.

1. Some soaps are better than others and some creams are better than others. It depends on your own interests.
2. One cream what gives a good protection and performance for me is Anthony logistics shaving cream. Great scent too.
Two soaps what give a good protection and performance for me is Truefitt & Hill luxury(tallow) and SRD shaving soaps (glyserin based).
I think the best protection is to get a thick lather in overall. E.g Williams shaving soap dries so fast that it loses the protection.
3. Heard but never tried

Scent is an important point for me too. It's hard to shave if don't like the scent. Hate the Tabac scent makes me puke. It is a highly recommended soap overall and well performer.
Try samples they are cheap ways to find out a short feelings.