Not in my process. Every bar I make starts from a clear, natural glycerin base that's already soap when it reaches me, so I never measure, mix or handle lye. The soap part of that base shows up on the label as sodium stearate and sodium palmate, and that's finished soap.
It's a fair thing to ask. The word sounds scary, and a lot of pages online answer it with a chemistry lecture. Here's the short, honest version, with my own labels as the proof.
Where does lye come into soap at all?
Somewhere upstream, soap chemistry needs an alkali. Soap is the salt of a fatty acid, and you get there by reacting fats with a strong alkali, usually sodium hydroxide. That's the lye people mean.
The difference is where that step happens. With a glycerin base, it's already done before the base gets to me. My work starts after that: I add what each bar needs and pour it into the mold. I wrote more about why I make my soap with a clear glycerin base on its own page.
Is there any lye left in my bars?
Read the back of the label. You won't find sodium hydroxide on any of my soap ingredient lists. What you'll find near the top is vegetable glycerin, water, sodium stearate and sodium palmate. Those last two are what's left once that reaction is finished. In other words: soap.
Take the Cleopatra Loofah Soap. After the base, the list goes on with coconut oil, sweet almond oil, hydrolyzed collagen, sodium hyaluronate, wildflower extract and tocopherol. Nothing on it you'd need gloves for.
Why does "lye soap" have such a bad name?
Mostly because of old homemade soap. When the alkali came from wood ash, nobody could measure how strong it was, and some batches came out harsh. That's a story about ingredients nobody could weigh, not about soap itself. And it isn't how my bars are made.
If there's no lye, why is soap still alkaline?
Because that's what soap is. Any real soap sits on the alkaline side, and that's true of mine too. Alkaline isn't the same as containing lye. If you want to know what that means for your skin, I went through it in is alkaline soap bad for your skin?
What if a bar stings?
Rinse it off and don't keep using it on that spot. Skin that runs reactive can be touchy about any cleanser, handmade or not, and some of my bars carry ingredients like salicylic acid or loofah that you'll feel more than others. If you're not sure where to start, how to choose a bar of soap for your skin will point you to the gentler ones.
Cosmetic products. Not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.