An Aromatherapy Wellbeing Range that happens to make Skincare
If you have just discovered JustBe Botanicals, you might be forgiven for thinking we are a skincare brand. Our face creams, cleansing balms and eye serums certainly suggest as much. Or perhaps you found the chocolate first: the award-winning, essential oil-infused bars that Condé Nast Traveller included in their Most Wanted list.
At JustBe Botanicals we like to think of ourselves as an emotional wellbeing brand. Everything else: the skincare, the chocolate, the herbal teas, the aromatherapy candles, the pulse point rollerballs, the professional spa treatments, flow from that single founding idea.
The idea that how you feel matters more than how you look: that scent, touch, taste, sight and sound can all be used to positively shift your emotional state. And that a small, hand-blended brand built in Scotland with positive intention, can create products that genuinely help people feel more like themselves.
Where the Idea Was Born
The JustBe story begins in Turkey, where founder Gail Bryden was working as a holistic therapist on a retreat. She noticed something in the guests around her. They thought they had come for rest, recovery, perspective but what they were really looking for was love, peace and happiness along with 'permission' to be themselves.
The idea of JustBe was born in that moment.
Back in Edinburgh, Gail couldn't find a massage oil she truly loved working with. So she created her own. The first four blends — JustBe Loved, Happy, Energised and Sweet — were chosen because they reflected universal emotional states. Not what people thought they should feel. Not what a skincare brand told them they needed. Simply how they wanted to feel.
JustBe Botanicals was founded in Edinburgh in 2010. It has been hand-blended, emotionally intentional and nut-free from the very first drop.
The Emotion-First Philosophy, How It Works
Every product in the JustBe range is organised around a mood, not a skin type or a product category. There are seven mood collections:
Happy —-for joy, brightness and optimism. Pink grapefruit, lime and bergamot.
Tranquil - for calm, rest and sleep. Cedarwood, lavender and geranium.
Energised - for motivation and a natural lift. Geranium, grapefruit and ylang ylang.
Active - for recovery and invigoration. Bergamot, clove and eucalyptus.
Detox - for clarity and fresh starts. Juniper berry, geranium and pink grapefruit.
Pure - for sensitive skin and gentle moments. Mandarin and lavender. Pregnancy-safe.
Kind - for self-compassion and emotional support. Bergamot and mandarin. A percentage of every sale supports the Scottish Action for Mental Health (SAMH).
The question at the heart of every JustBe product is always the same: how would you like to feel?
The Five Senses Approach
JustBe Botanicals was designed from the beginning to engage all five senses, after all genuine wellbeing is never just skin deep.
Scent - every blend is created with pure essential oils, chosen for their emotional and therapeutic properties. Our sense of smell connects directly to the limbic system, the brain's emotional centre, which is why the right aroma can shift your state within seconds.
Touch - from the intentional application of a body oil, warmth of a massage candle poured onto skin to the slow or a JustBe Spa Treatment, touch is a direct line between what we do to our bodies and how our minds respond.
Taste - the aromatherapy chocolate range and organic herbal teas bring the JustBe philosophy into every sense, including the ones most beauty brands never reach.
Sight - the Inspiration Cards, one for each mood blend, provide a visual and contemplative dimension to the daily ritual.
Sound - JustBe In-Tune, our music album, was composed in 432hz, the same natural frequency as birds and bees and written based on the botanical DNA of the essential oil blends.
This is what makes JustBe genuinely different from a skincare brand, the range has been developed with a much deeper intention.
JustBe Botanicals Range, 40+ Awards and Counting
JustBe Botanicals wellbeing range has earned over 40 industry awards since the first two recognitions in the Ultimate Natural Beauty Bible in 2014.
Those first wins, for the Eye Makeup Remover and the Cleansing Balm, were earned by real testers who used the products every day for a month. One described the Cleansing Balm as smelling "like walking through an English cottage garden." Another called the Eye Makeup Remover "like an eye treatment in itself."
What followed was extraordinary. Caroline Hirons, one of the UK's most trusted skincare voices, called the Cleansing Balm "one of the nicest I have ever used," sparking international demand from Ireland, Europe and Australia overnight. The Cleansing Balm was later featured in Vogue's All Star Glamour issue. The Eye Makeup Remover became our most awarded product. The Hydrating Serum and Treatment Oil were chosen as a subscriber gift by House & Garden magazine and sold out in three hours.
Every product in the range is hand-blended in small batches in Scotland. Nothing unnecessary, nothing synthetic, just ingredients chosen for what they genuinely do.
Recognised by the FreeFrom Skincare Awards, the Beauty Shortlist, the Pure Beauty Awards, the Green Parent Natural Beauty Awards, the OK! Beauty Awards, the Ultimate Natural Beauty Bible and Great Taste Awards, JustBe Botanicals has been independently validated by over 40 times from judges who know nothing about JustBe beyond the product in their hands, that what we make is genuinely exceptional.
The Chocolate Range, Where Wellbeing Becomes Edible
The JustBe aromatherapy chocolate range is, by any measure, one of the most unusual and distinctive product lines in British independent beauty and food.
Seven bars of dark, milk and white chocolate, each infused with pure essential oils and botanicals chosen for their mood-supporting properties. Loved with rose oil and rose petals. Detox with juniper, fennel and milk thistle. Kind with bergamot. mandarin and pink Himalayan salt, Energised with geranium and cardamom. Active with spearmint and clove. Tranquil with lavender and dried raspberry. Happy with pink grapefruit and lime.
Two of the range has been independently researched by Queen Margaret University with statistically significant results for cognitive reaction time (Detox) and mood and perceived stress (Tranquil). It has won Great Taste and Beauty Shortlist Awards. It was featured in Condé Nast Traveller's Most Wanted list in December 2019.
Have you tried Mindful Chocolate Meditation? One square, slowly, without distraction. That's the whole ritual and it's enough.
The JustBe Spa Treatment Range
JustBe Botanicals has always been more than a retail brand. From November 2010, when Armathwaite Hall Spa in the Lake District launched six bespoke JustBe massage oils and subsequently introduced the JustBe Elemental treatment, using Atlantic sea salt and Scottish peat, the brand has been delivering professional spa experiences through trained therapists.
The JustBe Elemental treatment became the number one treatment at Armathwaite Hall. The spa story continued through YTL Group in Bali and at Pangkor Laut in Malaysia, The Gin Spa in Glasgow and De Vere Spa's in the Cotswolds.
Gail personally trains the therapists who use JustBe products professionally, ensuring that the intention behind every blend is understood and honoured in the treatment room.
The JustBe Kind Collection: Kindness with Purpose
The JustBe Kind collection was launched during Mental Health Awareness Week in May 2019, created as a reminder that self-compassion is not a luxury but a necessity.
Every purchase from the Kind range contributes to the work of SAMH, the Scottish Action for Mental Health, which has been supporting mental health across Scotland since 1923. To date, JustBe Botanicals has raised £3,600 for SAMH through Kind collection sales.
The Kind Aroma Roller won Gold for Best New Wellness Product at the Pure Beauty Awards 2019. The Kind Body Butter won Bronze for Best New Body Product. These are a reminder, in every application, that you are worth care.
The Community, From Edinburgh Fringe to No.10
The JustBe story is not just a product story, it's a community story.
In 2016, JustBe Botanicals was selected for the Small Business Saturday 100, one of 100 inspiring independent businesses chosen to represent the best of UK entrepreneurship. The JustBe logo appeared on the side of the Small Business Saturday bus tour as it travelled across the country. In December of that year, Gail set up a display stand inside No.10 Downing Street as part of the official campaign launch. From a kitchen table in Edinburgh to the most famous door in Britain.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe was a natural home for JustBe in 2017, when the Fringe chose JustBe Loved, Active and Happy chocolates, repackaged in exclusive Fringe branding to celebrate the festival's 70th anniversary. That summer, JustBe chocolates were photographed at the Roman Forum, on the Croatian coastline, in the arms of a Balinese temple statue and on the streets of Chicago. JustBe chocolate was shared with Graham Norton, Sir Chris Hoy and the late great Steve Wright, who mentioned JustBe live on BBC Radio 2 (twice!)
JustBe Botanicals is also proud to be part of Not On The High Street and a Women's Enterprise Scotland Ambassador.
40+ Awards, Five Publications, One Consistent Story
Vogue, House & Garden, Condé Nast Traveller, OK! Magazine, No.1 Magazine
Over 40 industry awards. The Scottish Skincare Brand of the Year 2025/26. A Joe Wicks endorsement. A Caroline Hirons endorsement. A subscriber gift for House & Garden readers. A Most Wanted feature in Condé Nast Traveller. An exclusive partnership with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
From the kitchen table where it started to the treatment rooms, spa menus and gift boxes where it arrives today — the story of JustBe Botanicals is the story of what happens when a small, independent, purpose-led brand stays true to a single idea for fifteen years.
How would you like to feel?
Still Hand-Blending, Still Independent & Still JustBe.
Every product is still made in small batches in Scotland. Still hand-blended with positive intention the majority still by Gail often freshly made to order. Still organised around how you want to feel, not what the beauty industry tells you that you need.
JustBe Botanicals whilst not a household name yet, is the kind of brand that, once found, stays with you. In your bathroom, in your bag, in your memory and increasingly, in your gift drawer, because once you've experienced it, it's the first thing you reach for when you want to give someone something that genuinely means something.
You always have permission to Just Be You.
With love from Edinburgh, Gail
Explore the full JustBe world: